Games

In 2013 Wisconsin Green & Healthy Schools (GHS) and Cool Choices partnered to create a Cool Choices-GHS game – and more than 30 Wisconsin schools began using the online sustainability game in early 2014! The game—which is free to GHS participating schools—provides a fun, social and easy path to reduced resource usage, improved health and wellness, and increased environmental literacy in Wisconsin’s PK-12 public and private schools.

Cool Choices customized its game platform for GHS, which is a partnership between the Department of Public Instruction, the Department of Natural Resources and the Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education. The Cool Choices game will help participating schools engage their students, faculty and staff, while providing a streamlined approach to tracking sustainable actions in schools.

Cool Choices is delighted to support this innovative statewide effort that includes schools from urban to rural Wisconsin. Ultimately the program could reach all 3,000+ Wisconsin PK-12 schools.

Recognition is Very Cool – and Inspires Us to be Cooler!
By Kathy Kuntz, Executive Director

We’ve had a lot to celebrate lately!

In early October Menasha Corporation won an Innovation Award from the Campbell Institute and the Stewardship Action Council for their employee engagement efforts with Cool Choices and then, a few weeks later, In Business Magazine honored Cool Choices as its Eco Service of the Year!

Recognition is an interesting thing. It feels great to get that pat on the back for your past efforts but recognition is not just about the past. Recognition also prompts us to try harder going forward – to prove that the recognition was deserved and to gain more recognition.

The power of recognition to inspire additional positive efforts is one of the principles we use at Cool Choices. We partner with companies and public entities to engage employees around sustainability – to make sustainable practices the norm in workplace communities. And in our work we show companies how recognizing and celebrating the good stuff – even when it’s small – can inspire employees to do more.

As sustainability professionals we spend a great deal of time thinking about what’s not working – the number of employees who forgot to turn off their computers, the still-imperfect ratios of waste to recycling, those single-sided copies… Cool Choices’ programs demonstrate the power of positive reinforcement – when you celebrate what some employees are doing right it can motivate others to change their practices so that they get kudos too.

Yes, the recognition is much appreciated. We also appreciate that it will inspire us to continue to rock the expectations of our partners going forward.

Cool Choices and Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council Announce Strategic Partnership

Madison, WI – July 22, 2013 – Cool Choices and the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council, two leaders in promoting sustainable business practices, have established a formal partnership to streamline operations, leverage expertise and increase stakeholder value. Cool Choices, a nonprofit promoting environmentally sustainable practices, has previously partnered with the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council on the Council’s annual business-to-business sustainability conference and their annual state sustainability report. The Council, an organization serving Wisconsin businesses, was established in 2008 and runs the Green Masters Program in addition to the annual conference.

“We are thrilled to partner with the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council,” said Kathy Kuntz, Executive Director of Cool Choices. “The Council has done a terrific job of recognizing and celebrating Wisconsin businesses that are leading on sustainability. As a state leader in employee engagement around sustainability, Cool Choices sees the partnership as a great way of linking our expertise to the Council’s existing successes so that Wisconsin businesses can maintain a competitive and sustainable advantage going forward.”

“Businesses recognize the economic, social and environmental benefits to adopting sustainable initiatives – and through our Green Masters Program and annual conference they learn, develop and implement effective strategies to move them toward sustainability,” said Tom Eggert, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council. “Our partnership with Cool Choices shines a light on the great opportunity state businesses have to leverage a successful and innovative employee engagement program to meet their sustainability goals.”

ABOUT

Cool Choices
Established in 2009, Cool Choices inspires and assists individuals, communities and businesses to adopt practices reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. A Madison-based nonprofit, Cool Choices seeks to make smart practices the norm by making sustainable actions fun, social and easy. For more information visit www.coolchoices.com

Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council
Established in 2008, the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council works with businesses in the state interested in becoming leaders in sustainability. It serves businesses at all stages of development by educating, facilitating information exchange, and providing recognition and support. The Council, which hosts an annual business conference and issues an annual State of the State Sustainability Report, seeks to promote Wisconsin as a gathering place for innovative and sustainable business. For more information visit www.wisconsinsustainability.com

How much do people save just by changing their behavior? Do savings persist after the game?

Whenever we talk about our employee engagement efforts people ask about outcomes. That’s great! Cool Choices believes changing practices helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions – so we have a responsibility to prove it.

The Energy Center of Wisconsin recently evaluated Cool Choices’ work at Miron Construction showing our approach is effective. In the study Center staff analyzed player utility bills before, during and after the Miron game. Then Center staff compared actual changes in usage to actions players reported in the game. Finally, the Center conducted interviews with a sample of players to understand differences between actual savings and reported savings. In those interviews, conducted more than a year after the end of the game, the Center also explored whether participants continued sustainable practices adopted during the game.

What were the results?

The Energy Center of Wisconsin:

• Verified that Cool Choices players reduced their electric usage in the game (the median reduction for participants was 6% of household electricity – which is substantial).

• Documented that former Cool Choices players continued sustainable practices. Some one-time practices like programming thermostats to save energy remained a year later in 100% of households interviewed – and repeated practices like turning off game consoles was relatively high with respondents reporting that they maintained the Cool Choices’ sustainable practices 60-79% of the time.

Really great results – but we’re getting even better!

The Energy Center of Wisconsin’s analysis also helped Cool Choices by increasing the accuracy of our savings estimates and clarifying players’ sustainable practices (e.g. we learned that some of the refrigerators players unplugged in the game were not full-size). We have adjusted our estimates to allow for a refrigerator mix including smaller units, and are incorporating other recommended improvements to make things even better.

To learn more about the Center’s findings click for the full report (pdf).

“I convinced my family to carpool.”

“I got my dad to start recycling.”

Cool Choices is in the midst of an amazing partnership with some marvelous teachers at Waunakee High School. The teachers—along with students on their green team—are leading an effort to change commuting habits at the high school. And, along the way, they are also changing practices in households throughout the community.

The effort began last year when two WHS teachers applied for a small grant Cool Choices offered through the Wisconsin K-12 Energy Education Program (KEEP). The teachers used the grant to implement a multi-year effort to analyze and affect commuting habits at their school. When classes started in September they launched a competition where students and staff get points for reporting how they got to school each day, with extra points for the greener options. Organized into teams based on school clubs, students can win prizes throughout the 9-week competition.

Students and staff can also get ‘extra credit’ points for other environmentally sustainable actions like using re-usable lunch containers, doing a sustainable project in the community or by convincing their family members to be more sustainable.

We’re finding the student efforts at home to be quite inspiring. Almost 300 students and staff are participating in the competition (in a school population of 1,200) and thus far about 1 in 5 players have reported at least one effort to increase their family’s sustainable practices. Required to share details about their efforts, participants tell us …

• “I got all of my sisters to bring reusable containers for their lunches today instead of paper bags!”
• “I convinced my family to turn off lights before they leave rooms.”
• “Instead of using the plastic bags at the grocery store, I convinced my mom to buy 5 of the reusable cloth bags.”
• “I convinced my family to turn down the heat, because I mean COME ON people, it’s still technically summer, and why would we buy warm clothes if we weren’t going to wear them?”
• “Instead of buying all these plastic water bottles, I got them to change to using cups or re-usable water bottles, which also saves money!”
• “We switched to more energy efficient light bulbs!”
• “I had my mom take a re-usable bag for lunch today and we’re eating more vegetables and fruit at dinner.”
• “We take shorter showers”
• “I convinced my parents to carpool to work.”
• “My brother took a re-usable water bottle to football practice.”
• “I asked my parents to turn down the water heater!”
• “I was waiting in the car while my dad went into Sam’s Club and instead of keeping the car on and listening to the radio, I suggested that I turn it off and listen to my iPod.”

These stories demonstrate that students are really engaged and that they are doing a good job engaging their parents and siblings. This shared engagement is critical; it is easier for us to maintain habits when those habits are shared. More, just talking about one opportunity can lead to other opportunities.

The Waunakee project demonstrates the power of young people as the spokespeople for sustainability. A fun competition is inspiring teenagers to advocate for shorter showers, to convince their parents and siblings to adopt greener practices.

We are excited to watch these young people emerge as sustainability advocates in their homes and in their community. From our vantage point, the future looks just a little bit brighter when we look toward Waunakee these days.

A mantra here at Cool Choices is that change works best when it is fun, social and easy and we work hard to make sure our initiatives meet all three criteria.

Lately there have been a number of stories about efforts to encourage biking that reinforce the importance of ‘easy’.

Change is easy when there are not big barriers looming in the distance. When it comes to biking, folks have traditionally identified multiple barriers:

• Nowhere to store my bike at work
• No showers at work, which means if I get to work sweaty I will stay that way
• Biking looks dangerous—have you seen those guys in traffic?
• My commute is too long to consider biking

Over the last few years there have been tremendous effort to address these barriers.

Communities are tackling the last issue, for example, by accommodating bikes on public transit systems—so that people can overcome longer distances with a combination of biking and transit.  By 2008, 71% of public transit buses in the US had bike racks.

And thanks, perhaps, to the emphasis on transportation in the LEED^® rating system. Because of LEED, more and more buildings feature showers and bike parking. After all, employers see multiple advantages to encouraging employees to bike to work since biking reduces both pressure on automobile parking lots and the company’s overall carbon footprint while contributing favorably to employee wellness.

Increasingly, then, the barriers to biking come down to the issue of biker safety. In some areas—both urban and rural—biking feels pretty dangerous, especially to the inexperienced biker. Many of us cannot imagine zipping in and out of traffic the way bike messengers do in the movies. Which is why we were so excited to see a number of cities implement measures that make biking safer for the rest of us. 

Chicago, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Austin, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, have implemented a Green Lane Project that creates special bicycle lanes—separated from automobile traffic by physical barriers. Observers say the programs are working. The lanes are drawing a diverse set of bikers, many of whom might have been previously nervous about biking these urban streets. Similar efforts in London have led to a 70% increase in bike traffic.

Many cities are finding that more bikers also means fewer bike-related accidents. Experts explain that when automobile drivers expect to share the road with bikers their car driving habits change and there are fewer car-bike accidents. So biking doesn’t just feel safer, it really is safer.

Change happens most readily when it is fun, social and easy. And relative to biking, the changes are getting easier all the time.

There has been some hand wringing in recent days regarding findings from the National Geographic’s annual Greendex survey. Commentators read the survey and bemoan that Americans are not only more wasteful than their peers around the world, but we also don’t feel guilty about that waste.

Reading the survey results I see a slightly different explanation.

Greendex is a measure of consumer attitudes and opinions, as well as practices. Across four categories of consumer behavior (housing, transportation, food and consumption of goods), Americans ranked dead last, meaning our behaviors have greater environmental impacts than the parallel behaviors of our peers in any of the other 17 countries surveyed.

That ranking is no surprise. Our suburban, car-oriented culture is resource intensive and the US has ranked last each year since the survey began in 2008.

What seems discouraging is that just 21% of US respondents feel guilty about their environmental footprint, compared to higher percentages in other countries like India and China where people have lower footprints. The spin has been that we’re wasteful and that we don’t care.

Looking at some of the other findings here—consistent with other recent surveys—I think there is another story.  In the Greendex survey 52% of Americans described themselves as green. So more than half of us think we are doing our part. At the same time these same US respondents said only 35% of all Americans are green.

That means that if there’s a problem in the US, it’s not me it’s you.

This is consistent with the recent AP-NORC survey on energy use and attitudes where only 9% of respondents thought their usage was higher than others in their community—9%. The rest split pretty evenly between reporting they were average or that their usage was below average.

The problem is that we are confident that we are not the problem.

Cool Choices sees this phenomenon in our work inside corporate communities. When we do baseline surveys the majority of employees report that they are doing their part to be sustainable.  When asked what portion of their coworkers share this commitment the numbers drop. Indeed, the Greendex numbers look pretty consistent with what we have seen.

And this is a problem. Actually it is multiple problems.

• First, the perception that I’m the only one trying gives me license to try less hard going forward.  This is the ‘I’ve already done my part’ phenomena that George Marshall and others cite.
• More importantly, though, the sense that I’m in the minority has huge implications for social norms. If I think most of my colleagues do not care about sustainability then I’m less likely to speak up when I see opportunities.
• And, of course, I will feel less guilty about my overall impact—because it is not as big as the impacts of others around me.

Making sustainability efforts more visible—giving people proof that those around them are also trying to do the right thing—achieves multiple objectives.  It busts open the myth that I’m the only one who cares and it puts my current efforts (which might not be as green as I want to think) in context with the actions of my peers, ideally spurring me to do more.

Cool Choices achieves visibility through game systems that are transparent—so that players can see what actions other players have claimed. How can you enhance the visibility of sustainable actions in your work?

Extreme weather—from heat waves to flash floods and severe droughts—is fast becoming the new normal. The extremes are consistent with climate change models and, per NOAA scientists, consistent with a warming planet. The New York Times summarized the NOAA findings:

Heat waves, in particular, are probably being worsened by global warming, the scientists said. They also cited an intensification of the water cycle, reflected in an increase in both droughts and heavy downpours.

More, there are some indications that change may be accelerating. Scientists monitoring sea levels, for example, are seeing levels rise on both the east and west coast at faster rates than anticipated by current climate change models.

The heat is also generating more discussion about climate change.  This issue gets tricky because weather is not climate. Here a clothing analogy is helpful—weather is like the outfit I chose to wear today whereas climate is like the collection of clothes in my closet, a collection that works for the seasonal weather patterns in my community. Living in Wisconsin requires a different closet of options than does living in Arkansas or Alaska (assuming you spend some time out of doors in the natural environment). A single weather event is not proof of climate change but multiple events add up to trends and, as this graph from Climate Communication illustrates, the trends are stunning because the incidence of record high temperatures is fast outpacing the incidence of record lows.

Recent poll data suggests that Americans are noticing these trends and that the general public’s concern about climate change is growing.

Of course concern is not action.

Polls also suggest that Americans want the US government to take the lead on climate change. Unfortunately, federal action seems unlikely since polarization is sharp in Washington and gridlock seems to be the norm. Besides, climate change is not just about the US; this issue involves all countries, which makes consensus even more difficult. The recent Rio+20 conference illustrated this point all too well.

So what is left to do?

If we do nothing we exacerbate the problem. Ignoring the risks means we are ill prepared to deal with extreme events each time they occur with increasing frequency. Maintaining business as usual also means we continue to emit greenhouse gases at a pace that will further jeopardize our communities.

The alternative—acting to reduce our emissions and preparing for extreme events—can seem hopeless. After all, I cannot solve this issue alone; I’m just one person.

Cool Choices believes that we can solve this issue together. We believe that every action matters because it is another step away from complacency. We know that your actions can inspire others to act—your friends, co-workers, other members of your church, etc. We believe your actions can be viral because we have watched actions spread.  We also believe that if people begin to act, to demonstrate their priorities, then our national political leaders will eventually follow, even if we cannot currently count on them to lead. At this moment, we encourage everyone to think about the words of Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Cool Choices invites you to join us—and to be part of the solution.

In case you did not notice, we are all trying to do our part.

Two recent surveys suggest that the vast majority of Americans are making an effort to save energy and reduce their emissions.

In a national survey by the Energy Center of Wisconsin, 73% of respondents said that they had done something in the last year to save energy with the average respondent reporting four specific actions. The most common actions reported were installing more efficient lighting and adjusting the thermostat. Similarly, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey found:

An overwhelming majority, 89 percent, of the public reports personally doing something to try to save energy in the past year, with day-to-day actions, such as turning off lights, turning down the heat, and driving less and walking or biking more reported most often.

These are, of course, self-reports but there is evidence—like the downward trend in vehicle miles traveled and the uptick in sales of fuel efficient vehicles—that suggests Americans are taking more steps towards environmentally sustainable choices.

This is great news and it merits a big pat on the back—some positive reinforcement for everyone.

One form of reinforcement is the dollar savings associated with these actions but we know that the financial impact of an individual’s actions can be hard to see.

People need other kinds of reinforcement and experts tell us recognition is the best encouragement of all. Put simply, people need someone to notice and praise their efforts to save energy so that they feel encouraged to do even more. But when I adjust the thermostat at home to save energy my neighbors and friends are oblivious. Heck, half the people living in my house do not notice the change.

Cool Choices generates positive reinforcement through our games.  Game participants report their environmentally sustainable actions (which makes those actions visible to others) and by doing so they earn points (a form of recognition) for the actions. We also use game mechanics to give people opportunities to show off their changes (via pictures, stories, etc.) and to recommend specific actions to other participants. Through the process, participants learn that others in their community share their commitment to sustainability and that, together, these individuals can achieve substantive results.

We hope others will follow our lead in celebrating change. If you are doing the right things, think about how you can make your actions more visible to those around you and, alternatively, when you see someone else doing the right thing take a moment to applaud their efforts.

It feels good to do your part but it feels even better when your community celebrates your efforts and you can see how those simple changes add up to big results.

The new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll on energy issues, funded by the Joyce Foundation, indicates Americans are skeptical about the impacts of small actions (like turning off lights) and, at the same time, the majority of respondents say it is too difficult to make the changes that they identify as more meaningful, like adding insulation or carpooling.

As the church lady would have said decades ago, “How convenient!”

Essentially, the US public is perfecting a rationale for doing nothing. The excuses remind me of an out-of-shape friend who believes using the stairs over the elevator this one time will not make that much difference while, at the same time, arguing that giving up his daily doughnut habit is too difficult to consider.

And the analogy does not end there. The AP-NORC survey also found that, of the 90% of Americans who believe the government needs to do more to address energy issues, 58% think the focus should be on providing better energy-saving options versus 38% who think the focus needs to be on getting people to make better choices.

My friend is also waiting for a magic pill that will make him healthy and fit without any effort on his part.

The likelihood that he can get fit without effort is about the same as the likelihood that US can eliminate wasted energy without engaging people and their behaviors.

The bottom line is that energy use is not just about technology; it is about the people using the technology. Refrigerators are a good example; the electric usage of a refrigerator today is less than half that of a comparable model in 1978. Unfortunately, a growing number of households have two or more refrigerators and the size of the typical refrigerator sold continues to grow.

Reducing energy usage is about people and the choices they make. People like you and me.

Cool Choices knows that, in reality, little actions matter and they add up, especially across communities. A single action like turning off game consoles when not in use can save $100/year with some models—which adds up to billions across the millions of households with these devices.  We have seen instances where hundreds of households can save more than $100,000 annually via small actions.  And we know that lots of people find other benefits in these small steps toward environmental sustainability—a saner commute to work, more time with family members, etc.

Still we do not expect to persuade people with fact sheets and fancy charts showing how the savings add up. Cool Choices implements behavior change programs that use gamification techniques to leverage social norms because we know that while humans like to use rational arguments to explain their actions, much of what humans do is influenced by their social setting—often to a greater extent than any of us realize. (Translation: In general, peer pressure is as real at 45 as it was at 15 except we are better at rationalizing our behaviors at 45.)

Social norms matter. When your friends start doing more to save energy then it becomes uncomfortable to be the one who is still wasting energy. You’ll want to keep-up. When people you like and respect rave about how fun and easy it was to change their habits, you think about your own habits. And when Cool Choices throws game mechanics into the mix—giving you kudos for the good stuff you do and creating a way for you to benchmark your achievements against your peers—well, then you might reconsider things you once thought were too hard to do.

It is the concept behind numerous fitness initiatives and it is the premise of our employee engagement game: creating a fun, social, and easy way to measure and celebrate progress makes difficult tasks less difficult and creates community around what was once solitary activities. We believe it will move people beyond the excuses to action and that, cumulatively, those actions will matter.