September 10, 2013, 1 Comment. See and add yours.
Good is: Easy, Saves money, and social.
Issues: CO2 Emissions, Community, Environmental, and Inter-personal Contact.
Have you ever made one of those journeys that take forever, where there’s nothing to do but stare at the countryside and dip in and out of radio stations as you weave up the motorway. With BlaBlaCar (http://www.blablacar.com/) that can now be a thing of the past. BlaBlaCar is a trusted community marketplace that can help you make some extra money by filling up the empty seats in your car. So not only will you make back some of your petrol money and have someone more interesting to talk to than the voice in your head, you’ll also help to save the planet. So far BlaBlaCar reports that it’s 3 million members have shared over 1.8 billion miles and shaved almost 500,000 tonnes off of our global CO2 output, making this a really great example of environmental behavioural change for the masses.
September 3, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Cool, Easy, Saves energy, Saves money, and Saves time.
Issues: CO2 Emissions and Environmental.
We love Nest (http://www.nest.com/)! It exemplifies the power that beautiful and intuitively designed commercial products can have in facilitating huge social and environmental change.
Nest, a new age thermostat, is a clever gadget that learns what you like and what you do over time to help you make tiny changes to your heating habits, saving you money on your energy bill. Brainchild of Tony Fadell, inventor of the iPod, Nest is an easy to fit, easy to use device that is very easy on the eyes. Boasting a iPhone app for controlling the temperature of your home remotely, and features like ‘Auto-Away” which autonomously lowers the temperature when it realises you’ve popped out, the Nest is said to be capable of saving a household $173 per year (and that’s before you’ve even begun experimenting with these amazing features).
This is a product that takes all of the advice of popular money saving communications and distills it into a practical and easy to use commercial product that keeps lowering your energy consumption even when you forget. That’s a clever, facilitative way to change behaviour. Saving households from huge energy bills, while providing huge incidental benefits for the environment that no one at the company even needs to shout about.
To read about Nest’s impact so far download their White Paper here: http://downloads.nest.com/efficiency_simulation_white_paper.pdf
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.
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, 1 Comment. 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
July 16, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Cool, Easy, Fun, Saves energy, and Saves money.
Issues: CO2 Emissions, Environmental, and Health.
Named by Fast Company (http://bit.ly/ZzMPa5) as one of the most innovative companies of 2013, Green Revolution (http://www.egreenrevolution.com/) is a company that applies a niche concept (renewable energy) to a mass activity (the gym).
Selling $200 generators to gym owners, Green Revolution’s technology helps people to convert their exercise into electricity. We think this is a deliciously simple and practical way to introduce green energy to a mainstream market, using behaviours that millions of people perform every day to help cut their carbon footprint. At the time of writing, Green Revolution had already helped gyms to generated 214,049,837 watts-hours of green energy. That’s enough to power the Olympic Stadium for well over 8 days.
June 18, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Cool, Saves energy, Saves money, and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions, Environmental, and Food Waste.
The Samsung Smart Fridge is the latest in a new wave of products hoping to form the first wave of commercial products to deliver on the promise of the Internet of Things. The Samsung Smart Fridge, as you probably suspect, is a connected refrigerator. It runs on Google’s mobile operating system Android, and comes equipped with a 10-inch wi-fi enabled touch screen that helps users to do many handy things like look up recipes, check their calendar, send emails, receive coupons, check their twitter and even track the expiry date of their food.
Whilst there is a public impression that more gadgets means more energy usage, this isn’t necessarily the case.
As technologies like this becomes more pervasive, they can make ‘environmentally good actions’ much more convenient. Imagine what a dent we could make in the 1.3 billion tonnes of food wasted globally every year if every standard fridge never let us forget that the cheese in the back was about to go mouldy, or that we should really make lasagne today because as well as that cheese there’s also a packet of mince we bought and it’s expiring tomorrow.
We think smart, connected, ambient technology like the Samsung’s Fridge, may not only help to create a world that is ever more convenient to live in, but also one in which it’s increasingly easy it is to perform those little simple positive behaviours we often forgot, overlooked or couldn’t be bothered with in days gone by.
April 9, 2013, 1 Comment. See and add yours.
Good is: Cool, Easy, Saves money, and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions and Environmental.
Since Amazon released the first Kindle in 2007, the world of reading has never been the same. The Kindle, designed by Google’s Lab126, is pretty revolutionary. Not only has it created new norms for readers everywhere, provided us with often cheaper alternatives to physical books and allowed us to carry thousands of bestsellers in our pockets, it also packs a powerful environmental punch. According to one report by CleanTech Group LLC, a Kindle DX emits 167.78 kg of CO2 per year. The same report also states that the average book is responsible for 7.46kg of CO2 over its entire lifetime. Now, in a survey by Ipsos Public Affairs the average person is said to read 6.5 books every year. That would mean that the average CO2 cost of each ebook read in a year is 25.812kg. You’d need to read 23 books each year on your Kindle to make it more environmentally friendly than buying physical books, but then every extra ebook you bought on your Kindle would mean a 7.46kg saving in CO2 for the planet. Not to mention a £1.57 – £3.66 saving for yourself!
March 11, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions and Environmental.
Tom Tom is perhaps the best known sat-nav system for our cars but there are a whole host of similar products. Over the last decade more and more people have bought some form of sat-nav to take the stress out of navigating. The incidental effect of this has been that we have likely saved vast quantities of oil consumption through avoidance of getting lost and having a much more efficient system of finding the quickest route for journeys. The average distance travelled per person in the UK in 2011 was 6,826 compared to 7,206 miles in 2005. Who knows how much of this 5.2% reduction was down to good old Mr Thomas-Thomas.
January 29, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Saves money and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions, Education, Environmental, and Health.
The Waka Waka Light http://www.wakawakalight.com/ is a solar powered device that can charge electrical gadgets or provide a minimum of 8 hours light (and up to 80 depending on the setting used) from a single day’s sun. They are a much cheaper alternative to kerosine lamps so are becoming popular in Haiti, Ethiopia, Kenya and other developing nations for families looking for the cheapest solution.
However the benefits of these nifty lights extend much further. Not using kerosene improves air quality and reduces house fires and injuries from burning. Most inspiringly, there is research that highlights the improvements to school results that can be seen when free solar lighting replaces kerosene lighting. This is attributed to a number of factors including more income free for the parents to spend on education and more time in the evening for the children to do their schoolwork. Lots of hidden benefits for a lamp bought for its low price point.
June 26, 2012, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Easy and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions.
Taking public transportation is good for the environment and your wallet, but having to wait for the bus, especially on a rainy day, can discourage many riders. Bus Checker, the UK’s number one travel app, makes it easy to find out when your bus will arrive without ever stepping out your front door and makes public transport more convenient and appealing.
June 19, 2012, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Easy, Saves money, and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions.
Zipcars (previously known as Street Cars) are a revolution in cutting down the number of cars on the road. Their site claims every Zipcar takes at least 20 personally-owned vehicles off the road. Multiply that by the more than 9000 cars in their fleet and you’ve got a really big number. Super practical, people use them to cut down on the faff and costs of owning a car, but also indirectly cut down on the number of journeys they make by car vs other forms of transport as they don’t have the own vehicle parked in their drive tempting them. After joining Zipcar, the company reports that 90% of their members drove 5,500 miles or less per year. That adds up to more than 121 million litres of crude oil left in the ground—or 829 litres saved per Zipster.
May 16, 2012, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Easy, Saves money, and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions, Plastic/Paper Waste, and Recycling.
ifixit makes it easy for you to fix technical items yourself with online step-by-step repair guides, troubleshooting tips, and thriving community of repair technicians who want to help. They also sell service parts and tools.
They were set up as a profit making business that would be useful for people, helping them do their own repairs to and save money, but have great eco-credentials built in which have only more recently been mentioned as a benefit on their site.
May 4, 2012, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Saves money.
Issues: CO2 Emissions.
The government guarantees you a fixed price per kW hour of electricity you produce, whether you use it or not, via Feed-in tariffs. This price depends when you install your panels and connect to the grid, but it currently 41.3p per kWhr, and is guaranteed for 25 years. Solar panels (eg from this good company) are now for money-grubbers not just eco-warriors.
April 16, 2012, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Easy, Saves money, and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions and Communication.
Skype makes not flying for face-to-face business meetings a reality. In a 2010 survey, almost half of SMEs in the UK reported plans to increase their use of video conferencing and 59% expected to reduce their business travel as a result. Given that business flights account for around 10% of air travel and air travel accounts for 6.3% of all the UK’s carbon emissions, this represents a significant contribution to efforts to reduce our impact on climate change. Most people don’t use Skype for eco reasons – but because its cheaper and more convenient than flying.
April 14, 2012, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Easy and Useful.
Issues: CO2 Emissions and Health.
Punctures. The cost of a new one (or the faff of assessing a second hand one’s worth). Finding a big enough space to store it. The issue of when you want to cycle to the pub but not back. All avoided with our beautiful Boris Bikes (Sorry Ken, who actually brought them in…). Also available in other countries.
