Finger Pointing

by WiredBerries Editors — December 12, 2007

Have you ever wanted to see a picture of the largest polluter in the United States, find out what's in that smoke from the company down the street, or learn more about what companies near you are doing to protect the environment? If so, your answers can be found on a new Web site released today and created by faculty at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Harvard Business School, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, as well as students at Dartmouth.

The site, MapEcos.org, provides a balanced view of the environmental performance of more than 20,000 industrial facilities across the US. The map portrays government data on toxic pollution as well as data the site's developers are collecting from the facilities themselves about the latter's efforts to protect the environment. Shaped by three faculty members and built by a group of entrepreneurial students, the site uses advanced mapping tools to reveal the pattern of industrial pollution across the entire United States.