Transparency
Methodology
PaperStraw is an aggregate climate-awareness project. It estimates private jet CO2 from imported flight records, aircraft-type filters, and configurable emission factors.
How emissions are estimated
PaperStraw multiplies each flight distance by a configurable aircraft-type emission factor. The default basis is kilograms of CO2 per kilometer, stored in the EmissionFactor table. Every value shown is labeled as an estimate because actual fuel burn depends on aircraft configuration, weather, routing, load, taxi time, and operations.
Equivalent calculations
Cars, households, trees, and paper straws are plain-language comparisons derived from configurable constants in code. The paper-straw comparison assumes 0.0015 kg CO2 per straw for a simple production-emissions estimate. Tree comparisons are illustrative. They estimate how many newly planted trees would be required to absorb the same amount of CO₂ over an assumed 45-year lifetime, not how many trees would offset the emissions immediately or annually. Actual absorption varies by species, climate, survival rate, soil conditions, and forest management. These equivalents are awareness aids, not precise lifecycle analyses.
Scheduled batch updates
The app is designed around regular automated updates throughout the day. The homepage reads stored aggregate rollups from the latest import rather than live aircraft positions. This keeps the project lower cost, reliable, and focused on trends rather than real-time tracking.
Data sources and aircraft filtering
ADSB.lol historical archive releases are the primary scheduled data source. OpenSky is available as a fallback and research source, and CSV upload remains available for audited backfills. Imported records are filtered to configured private and business jet aircraft type codes before aggregation.
Privacy and limitations
PaperStraw avoids personal naming, private ownership claims, and individual leaderboards. Coverage can be incomplete, delayed, rate-limited, or missing route context. Rankings, trends, and equivalents should be read as estimates for awareness and research, not definitive attribution.