Welcome to our Good Ideas Blog.
Here we gather examples of products, tools and services that we love and that have been created following our own ethos: they don’t nag people to “do good”, but instead are all things people simply use and like because they are fun, cool, money saving or useful.
And yet in using these things, people are incidentally “doing good” and their actions are having positive effect on a major social or environmental issue.
Ideas posted regularly so keep coming back for fresh inspiration…..
August 27, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Easy, Saves money, and Saves time.
Issues: CO2 Emissions and Environmental.
In 2012 GetGoing (https://www.getgoing.com/), a startup dedicated to discounts travel, launched a new service called Pick Two, Get One™ which lets flexible travellers design itineraries for two trips and then leave it up to GetGoing to book one for them. The idea is that GetGoing is then able to negotiate deals with airliners willing to get rid of spare capacity for huge discounts. When we consider that in 2012, passenger flights were only 78.94% full (the equivalent of one empty plane for every five flights) its evident that GetGoing has a lot of inventory to work with.
This has the potential to provide a triple win as airlines are making money on otherwise empty seats, travellers are getting cheap holidays with a touch of serendipity and the world is (theoretically) seeing less wasteful, half-empty planes sent into the sky. To give you just one stat, if companies like GetGoing could fill even half of the spare capacity of just 200 flights sent from London Heathrow to JFK this year, they’d save the planet 5.93 million kg of unnecessary CO2 emissions. That’s huge.
So while the company trades on value, discounts and the underrated element of surprise, we think GetGoing’s Pick Two, Get One™, which uses the same ‘spare capacity’ model that was pioneered by Lastminute.com 14 years ago, has the potential to deliver huge and scaleable incidental environmental benefits in a sustainable way.
August 20, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Easy and Useful.
Issues: Environmental, Health, and Local Business.
When we first heard about Hubbub (https://www.hubbub.co.uk/) in 2011, the company with a mission to save the high street, we knew it had the potential to be something quite special. Bringing all of the convenience of online grocery shopping to your local independent, Hubbub lets you purchase items from various local shops, online, and have them sent straight to your door in a single convenient delivery.
Now, just 2 years after they launched, Hubbub is already operating within 35 stores and selling over 4000 products to thousands of customers. Hubbub works by attracting online supermarket shoppers and busy commuters, who wouldn’t ordinarily their local grocer, butcher or artisan baker, to their online shop and taking a small cut of these brand new sales. That’s a win-win for local retailers who, as Hubbub founder Marissa Leaf says, rely on volume to survive.
We think Hubbub is great because it helps to get fresh, healthy and tasty produce into the nations homes without relying on messaging, bribery or government intervention. Rather, it takes traditionally niche behaviours such as ‘shopping local’ and makes them accessible by building them into a convenient, easy to use online service. Plus, as a successful commercial business with a viable model for growth, Hubbub represents a sustainable form of facilitative behaviour change that has the potential to become ingrained in our national culture.
August 13, 2013, 3 comments. See and add yours.
Good is: Easy and Saves money.
Issues: Health.
We all know that cigarettes are terrible for our health, yet 10 million of us Britons are classified as smokers. Most efforts to break this national habit have focused on communications, government interventions and cheap or free alternatives. However in a 2012 survey by electronic cigarette brand SkyCig, 83% of smokers said they did not want to give up the physical act of smoking (http://bit.ly/1323YKh). This indicates that even when these measures are successful in helping a smoker to quit, switch from stick to patch or chew gum, there would still be many large and unfilled cigarette shaped holes in their daily routine making this new behaviour unlikely to last.
SkyCig’s electronic cigarette presents a different way. Rather than aiming to completely change people’s (often habitual) behaviour, they help smokers to quit by providing a product that allows them to carry on smoking. Electronic cigarettes are nicotine vapourisers that look, act and taste like a normal cigarette, providing all of the social, personal and physiological upsides of smoking (including happy hands), without the dark side affects. Plus, while e-cigarettes are relatively inexpensive, they still take enough of a bite out of the smokers purse for the desired behaviour change to be taken seriously.
There are of course still debates and issues yet to be ironed out as this change-making technology enters new markets, but we think this $2billion industry is definitely one to watch.
August 6, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Cool, Fun, and social.
Issues: Community and Education.
As part of the yearly series of Priceless London Lates presented by Mastercard, spanning London Zoo, The Victoria & Albert Museum and The Natural History Museum, The Science Museum Lates (http://bit.ly/ZXvdVh) provide a fun and nostalgic experience for big kids looking for an alternative night out in the city. Filled with after-workers and friday night socialisers clutching beers whilst rehashing the science lessons of their youth, the Science Museum pits itself as a quirky alternative to bars and pubs for over 18s.
We think Lates, as well as being a cool night out, are a great device for kick starting adult learning, taking grownups back to school with all the fun of not being a child.
July 30, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Cool, Entertaining, Fun, and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions and Environmental.
The concept of Soccket, by Uncharted Play (http://unchartedplay.com/), is a beautifully simple one which puts fun theory to work. Soccket is a football with a difference. As well as providing kids of all ages with hours of fun, this clever device converts the kinetic energy of play into green energy that’s powerful enough to light a room for hours.
Currently Soccket’s core market comprises of children without reliable access to energy and whose only alternative to a Soccket is often a dangerous kerosene lamp, diesel generator, a wood burning stove or darkness. However, we also think this provides an interesting example of how to embed change initiatives into our daily routines. If every child in the western world was given a Soccket, whose green energy they used to light their room at night or charge their mobile phone, imagine how much electricity could be saved. Not to mention the impact on childhood obesity.
Soccket makes using alternative energy sources interesting and easy, by prioritising play and fun over sanctions, campaigns and guilt.
Currently Sockett’s core market comprises of children without reliable access to energy and whose only alternative to a Socckett is often a dangerous kerosene lamp, diesel generator, a wood burning stove or darkness. However, we also think this product provides an interesting example of how to embed change initiatives into our daily routines. If every child in the western world was given a Socckett, whose green energy they used to light their room at night or charge their mobile phone, imagine how much electricity could be saved. Not to mention the impact on childhood obesity.
Socckett makes using alternative energy sources interesting and easy, by prioritising play and fun over sanctions, campaigns and guilt.
July 23, 2013, 2 comments. See and add yours.
Good is: Saves money.
Issues: CO2 Emissions and Environmental.
Since the the Oyster Card was introduced to London by Transport For London (TFL) in 2003, there have been over 43 million Oyster Cards issued. While there have been reports of waste on the Oyster Card with almost 44% of these lying unused, the Oyster Card seems to also be responsible for some interesting environmental benefits.
According to the minutes of an Oyster Card Briefing between the London Assembly and TFL, by 2009 sales of paper tickets had been reduced by 65%. Today it appears that figure may be up, with over 80% of journeys through London now being made using an Oyster Card. In 2010 TFL recorded 24.8 million trips to, from or within London. This means that in 2010 alone, the Oyster Card system was responsible for reducing our use paper tickets by 19.84 million. One report suggests that it is responsible for a saving of as much as 32 million paper tickets each year since it was launched. This is the equivalent of 26,335,507.98 kilograms (26335.5 metric tonnes) of paper saved yearly. That’s a saving of around 74.9m gallons of water, 16.8m pounds of solid waste and 82m pounds of CO2.
Considering that the 43 million issued Oyster Cards used a comparatively tiny 218,010kg of plastic and 903,000kg of CO2, this seems like a good trade.
*weight of paper tickets calculated using 100 business cards weighing 2 pounds or 0.907185kg
