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…..
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.
July 9, 2013, 1 Comment. See and add yours.
Good is: Entertaining and Fun.
Issues: Education and Health.
This week’s Good Ideas Blog is all about The Walking Classroom (http://www.thewalkingclassroom.org/), an amazing not-for-profit set up by American teacher Laura Fenn. After noticing a direct link between the academic performance of her students and regular physical activity, Laura came up with a way to fuse the two.
The Walking Classroom provides teachers with Walkkits for their entire class, preloaded with age appropriate literary content based on national education standards and the school curriculum. The Walkkits, which are iPod sized audio players, make it easy for teachers to get students out of the classroom for 30 minutes. This helps to wake up sleepy kids, entertain active ones, and kick start students’ learning potential. We think this is a really simple and interesting product which bypasses the need for communicating the benefits of exercise for childhood health and education, and gets right down to business. It encourages children to get moving, pay attention and learn, all by letting them do the one thing that any kid wants to during the school day. To get out of class.
Currently hundreds of teachers across the United States use Walkkits as part of their lesson plan, and we hope to see products like this becoming more pervasive throughout the educational sector.
July 2, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Entertaining and Fun.
Issues: Health.
At around 40 square miles, the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida (https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/) is almost twice the size of Manhattan. That’s huge, and with four theme parks, two water parks, two spas, fitness centers, five golf courses, and much more it is every bit a gigantic playground “where dreams come true”.
However, hiding deep beneath the rides, shows and amusements is an amazing incidental benefit that is so cleverly disguised in fun that you’ll hardly notice it. Exercise! According to one visitor, during a 11 day trip to the resort she walked a total of 110 miles (http://bit.ly/YmrmCI). That’s the equivalent of 3 marathons in 11 days. Another visitor recorded walking up to 15 miles per day (http://bit.ly/18cHRmF), and with the parks spanning 92 miles it’s not hard to see how.
We think disguising exercise as fun is one of the most interesting mechanisms for sustained behavioural change, exemplified in sports like football which are played religiously by people every week, many of whom would never dream of joining a gym.
Next time you visit a theme park like Walt Disney World, Six Flags, Alton Towers, Chessington or the like, try to work out how many miles you rack up. We think you’ll be fascinated at how much secret exercise you can get your children to do while they’re walking, running and skipping with joy.
June 25, 2013, No Comments yet. Add yours.
Good is: Entertaining.
Issues: Community and Education.
For anyone who didn’t catch the latest BBC Two series “Toughest Place To Be A….” our first question is why not?
Based on the simple premise of taking British workers halfway across the world to do their jobs in some of the planet’s most challenging conditions, this programme has seen a bus driver, a paramedic, a firefighter, a fisherman and many more cross oceans to find out just how much tougher their jobs could be.
As well as being incredibly interesting TV, we think this programme is also an excellent device for encouraging cross cultural awareness amongst TV watching Britain. Helping to teach people about new cultures while highlighting similarities between ourselves and people who we might ordinarily never get a chance to met. We think this is a quite and clever way to encourage cultural awareness, acceptance and empathy in a mainstream audience without lectures, lessons or force.
It’s an idea we’d like to experiment with on Historypin (http://www.historypin.com/) more too, connecting people around the world with shared interests, hobbies and jobs.
