The production and transportation of products emit greenhouse gases. With globalization, manufacturing is often outsourced to countries in the Global South, while consumption is concentrated in the Global North. Although the Global North is responsible for the majority of consumption and emissions, it is the Global South that bears the most of the negative environmental consequences. On one level, production activities in the Global South lead to local environmental degradation, including resource depletion and pollution. On another, the broader impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events, food insecurity, and sea-level rise, are more acutely felt in the Global South. Consumers in the Global North may underestimate the consequence of consumption and fall into a spatial trap, which is a social dilemma that hinders the progress of a sustainable future.

The design Tangible Emission is a device that releases fog to visualize the carbon emission of products. The amount of the fog being released equals to the carbon emission of the products. The fog released from the device visually looks like dirty smoke which may make people feel uncomfortable. Because consumers in the Global North usually don't experience the emission from the production directly as they are released into the air somewhere else behind the scenes, the design seeks to bring this distant problem closer to the consumers and let them experience what's has been missed in the Global North. Additionally, unlike abstract information like "5 kgCO2e," which can be hard to interpret, the visualization of the emission with fog makes the scale and consequences of emissions more tangible and relatable.