If you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas gift with lasting meaning, you could try www.ecoactiongames.org.uk. It’s a start-up from a climate change scientist-turned-entrepreneur who has launched the sustainability version of a range of traditional party games – with the claim that they could help each player save up to a tonne of carbon a year.
The games are designed to encourage behaviour change over saving energy and resources by promoting a positive, interactive approach.
Sustainability consultant Dr Paula Owen is founder and “chief fun officer” of Eco Action Games, a start-up that is marketing sustainability versions of Trump cards, Bingo, Snakes and Ladders and Play Your Cards Right.
"My biggest client is the education sector. I want people to have fun, but my ultimate goal is that they should also learn and take action."
Dr Paula Owen
The two latter games are available in a group-sized format for use in sustainability engagement sessions, for instance with office workers, tenants and schoolchildren.
The Trump cards, Bingo and Snakes and Ladders can be used for smaller groups, and Owen is also launching a Trump cards app on the Apple platform early in the New Year.
Owen sells the games via her website, and says she could consider developing a construction-themed version of the games. “My biggest client is the education sector, either for use in the universities themselves or because staff are going into schools for engagement work,” she told CM.
In 2012, Owen was named a London Leader in Sustainability, receiving a GLA grant to develop her idea for environmentally-focused games that would drive behaviour change. “I want people to have fun, but my ultimate goal is that they should also learn and take action,” she says.
In the first six months of 2013, the games were trialled in public sessions at London’s Science and Natural History Museums, in schools and with the Women’s Institute. In total, around 500 people were involved in the trials.
In the findings of pre- and post-event questionnaires, completed exclusively by adults in the studies, 92% of participants enjoyed the games, and 51% said they would be taking action as a result of what they had learned through the games.
In a follow up survey conducted three months later, the people who responded to the survey had implemented an average of four actions each, saving an estimated 500kg of carbon a year.
But the respondents could also save a further 600kg of carbon a year if they implemented the additional measures they had planned, a report Eco Action Games says.
