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Team “Seventhwave Wavemakers” of Seventhwave organized their own e-waste drive during their game of Cool Choices.

In a game of Cool Choices, new actions are released every day. Players compete as teams to see who can take the greatest number of sustainable actions such as biking to work, turning off the lights when leaving a room, choosing a meatless meal and recycling.

Over and over, we see teams and players get inspired during the game to take on a project that goes beyond the actions in the game.

For example, a Cool Choices team recently decided to organize their own e-waste drive. This was not something we suggested they do to earn points. The team had an idea while playing Cool Choices so they took on this larger project. Cool Choices, a game that takes minutes to play, brought this team together, got them talking and inspired a whole new initiative.

A culture that embraces sustainability is contagious. It feels good to see people around you who want to do their part, big or small. If we can make sustainability visible, we’ll inspire a ripple effect where your actions inspire mine and mine inspire someone else’s. The growing momentum creates and reinforces a sense of efficacy. The more of us the better; like the team of people pictured, let’s take sustainability beyond the game, into our homes, workplaces, consumer choices and communities.

Together, we CAN embrace (and enjoy) being more sustainable. Together, with some innovation and inspiration, we can address climate change.

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your organization save money and get sustainable? Contact us and we’ll get back to you with more information.

Can a game prompt change? Can people have fun while addressing serious issues like climate change?

Learn the benefits of a game-based approach in this free 30-minute webinar.

You’ll come away from the webinar with new tips you can begin using immediately in your own sustainability efforts!

March 18th | 12pm-12:30pm CST
(1pm-1:30pm EST)

Register Now

Outpost Natural Foods, a natural foods grocery co-op with six locations in Wisconsin, will kick off their game of Cool Choices in February 2016. Employees at Outpost will form teams and compete daily for 6 weeks in the Cool Choices online sustainability game. The game and engagement platform lets participants earn points and win prizes for reporting actions that reduce resource consumption and help the environment.

Outpost demonstrates a deep commitment to environment responsibility and this commitment shows up in both large and small endeavors. For example, Outpost uses ecofriendly packaging, composts 100% of the scrap food from all locations, including their production kitchen, and has solar panels, rainwater catchment, onsite food production and rain gardens at their Mequon, WI location. Additionally, Outpost is currently 25^th on the EPA’s Top 30 Retail list for their green power use within the Green Power Partnership program.

The Cool Choices team would like to welcome Outpost Natural Foods employees! We can’t wait to see the impact you’ll make during your game of Cool Choices.

“Outpost Natural Foods has had many successes in terms of environmental and social responsibility. The Cool Choices game-based approach offers us a new and fun way to engage our employees around sustainability. The game also tracks and measure financial savings, carbon reduction and engagement results, so we’re looking forward to sharing the impacts our employee teams will create,” said Jessy Servi Ortiz, Sustainability Manager, Outpost Natural Foods.

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your organization save money and get sustainable? Contact us and we’ll get back to you with more information.

Last Friday Cool Choices joined the rest of the Green Madison team and hundreds of guests at Madison’s Central Library. During this after-hours Night Light event we celebrated and connected with players who took part in the fall 2015 city-wide Cool Choices online sustainability game. The energy, water and financial savings these participants achieved was phenomenal and we’re looking forward to an even larger municipal game of Cool Choices in Madison this spring.

Check out the 40+ Madison businesses and organizations that took part in the fall 2015 Cool Choices online sustainability game.

Thanks to everyone who came out in support of Cool Choices and making Madison more sustainable! We hope you enjoyed browsing the art exhibits, experimenting with “infrared drawing,” and celebrating your participation in the game-based approach to building sustainable habits and reducing energy use city-wide.

Photo highlights from the celebration below!

Cool Choices recently co-hosted the Eighth Annual Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council (WSBC) Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. WSBC’s conference features businesses talking frankly about their efforts on the path to sustainability. The tales are insightful and inspiring—I always leave the event feeling a bit more optimistic about our ability to address the enormous climate challenges ahead of us.

Our event host, UW-Oshkosh, for example: the Sierra Club ranked UW-Oshkosh the third greenest university in the nation. It was terrific to hear how local officials had accomplished this, engaging the whole campus around sustainable practices, despite a tight budget. Their story was echoed in a variety of other presentations where business leaders talked about saving energy, reducing waste, measuring impacts and mobilizing employees.

Locally made coffee mugs at #WSBCC! Much more sustainable than disposable plastic cups!

And it is not just about the presentations. I also talked to a variety of attendees who were working on innovative projects to green facilities, operations and even supply chains.

The community also highlights the benefits of businesses leading on climate change mitigation. As policy leaders negotiated toward an agreement in Paris, business leaders in Wisconsin talked about their real-world efforts to reduce carbon emissions while increasing profits.

Part of the bliss of coming together each year as a community of business leaders working on sustainability is that it feels good to tell your story to someone who faces similar challenges. The congratulatory pats mean more when they come from someone who knows firsthand how hard it is to shift an organization’s orientation. WSBC has built a community of practitioners and the community is strong, supportive and inspiring.

Posted by Kathy Kuntz, Executive Director at Cool Choices

More about the WSBC Conference

One of the most compelling aspects of this event is the networking. As usual, I was able to build new relationships. I heard about some difficult challenges and about a few outstanding victories. I helped a few people make connections that will make their quests easier and I heard a story or two I will share in the coming months to inspire others. I encourage you to experience this conference in 2016 to reap the benefits of networking with other business leaders engaged in sustainability efforts.

The WSBC Conference is Designed for:

• C Suite Officers, Board Members, Senior Managers
• Small Business Owners, Plant Managers, Sustainability Coordinators
• Green Teams
• Students Interested in Sustainability

Residents and businesses in Madison, WI go green with the help of an online game.

Interested in mobilizing an entire city around sustainability? A game can help.

A Cool Choices player earns points for sustainable actions, such as biking instead of driving.

In 2015 the City of Madison (WI) asked Cool Choices to implement online community-wide games to inspire behavior change, reduce energy use and mobilize the city around sustainability initiatives. This is part of the City’s effort to win the $5 million Georgetown University Energy Prize. During the summer Cool Choices implemented a game with City employees and in September we launched our first community-wide game as part of Green Madison.

To date, Cool Choices has been implemented primarily in workplaces—we help our partners, whether private firms or public agencies, engage employees around sustainable practices. Our online employee engagement game makes it fun, social and easy for individuals to save money, reduce waste and become part of the solution.

Some have asked whether the Cool Choices game could work in other kinds of communities like churches or neighborhoods or even across multiple workplaces. Naturally we’ve had theories, but now we’ve got evidence.

A Municipal Sustainability Initiative & Real Results

Everyone’s actions add up!

The City of Madison community-wide game of Cool Choices involves almost 900 people on teams from more than 40 different businesses, neighborhood associations and community groups. These participants have reported more than 41,000 “cool choices” (sustainable actions), representing over $240,000 in annual savings.

More, Madison’s community-wide game is creating conversations about sustainability in multiple venues across the city. Participants who rent earned points for having conversations with their landlords about efficiency upgrades; homeowners are sharing their conservation strategies in the game’s social stream and, as always, players are posting photos that show off their new sustainable practices.

Teams from American Family Insurance taking part in the city-wide game of Cool Choices.

Implementing a game at the municipal level involves more challenges than a single-business game, to be sure, but there are also more rewards. By celebrating the sustainable actions various Madison participants are taking we’re shifting the conversation and building momentum at a community-wide level. After playing Cool Choices participants are empowered—they know their actions matter and they see themselves as part of a community that shares a commitment to reduce waste and preserve natural resources.

We’ll continue to implement additional rounds of the Cool Choices game in Madison in 2016. We are excited to see even more of what this impressive community will accomplish.

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your city or organization save money and get sustainable? Contact us and we’ll get back to you with more information.

In Madison, Wisconsin, Green Madison has launched a city-wide round of Cool Choices as part of the city’s effort to win the Georgetown University Energy Prize. We’re pleased to introduce you to the members of one of the top teams from this game, the MPD Civilians.

Read on to learn the secrets of their sustainability success & why they play Cool Choices.

The “MPD Civilians”

Cool Choices Green Madison Overall Game Update:

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your organization save money and get sustainable? Contact us and we’ll get back to you with more information.

The Cool Choices online sustainability game draws from a variety of social sciences to inspire and create behavior change, cut costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Choices staff are long-time presenters and participants at the Behavior, Energy and Climate Change (BECC) conference. This event brings together an eclectic group of researchers, practitioners and advocates focused on environmentally sustainable behaviors. We were excited to represent our approach to game-based behavior change at the conference this year.

The 2015 BECC conference provided some terrific insights. For example, a recurring theme at BECC is the power of local. This year several presenters shared research showing that people are more responsive to messages with a local slant—it turns out that a locally-recognizable skyline in a Facebook post will increase clicks.

At Cool Choices we’re acutely aware that local is relevant and that it motivates—it’s why we implement our game and engagement platform within specific communities (within a business, across a city, or as part of an energy efficiency program). The Cool Choices game builds upon on our players’ sense of community, showing them that others in their community are adopting sustainable practices and that, cumulatively, those practices add up to significant impacts. So, just how do we “show” local actions and values in terms of sustainability within an online game environment?

• Social stream: An active social stream within the game platform lets players post photos of their sustainable actions, share sustainability tips or projects, and leave comments on and “cool” the posts of others in their community.
• Teams and Leaderboard: Cool Choices is a team game. Players often tell us they play, and keep playing, because they don’t want to let their team down. Players can check their team or individual standings within their community on the leaderboard.
• Cumulative Data: Players can see the estimated cost savings generated from their community’s efforts. This number builds with each day of game play. At the end of a game each client also receives an impact report.

Learn more about how Cool Choices makes sustainability visible.

Changing behaviors is hard, so for practitioners like us, the annual BECC conference is also an opportunity to trade strategies—to share what’s working, to commiserate about the challenges, and to remember that we’re not alone in this quest. Being part of a community of people who are promoting sustainable practices is powerful. Just as the Cool Choices sustainability game shows that people’s small actions add up, BECC reminds us that our efforts are part of a growing international movement to address climate change. Being part of a community feels good.

In addition to attending conference sessions; Cool Choices led a post-conference workshop on using games as a behavior change strategy, “Want Change? Make it a Game!”, shared our efforts to grow our game into a movement in a conference session, and a presented a poster on how games allow colleagues to coach one another on sustainability.

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your organization save money and get sustainable? Contact us and we’ll get back to you with more information.

Did you know entire communities are playing Cool Choices to mobilize around sustainability initiatives?

Recently, Green Madi­son launched a city-wide game of Cool Choices in Madison, Wisconsin. Residents and employ­ees from more than 40 Madi­son busi­nesses and orga­ni­za­tions such as UW Health, Amer­i­can Fam­ily Insur­ance, MG&E, TDS Tele­com, and the Greater Madi­son Cham­ber of Com­merce are tak­ing part. The Cool Choices game cal­cu­lates car­bon and energy sav­ings as play­ers log their sus­tain­able actions on a daily basis.

Everyone’s efforts in the city-wide Cool Choices game count toward Madison’s entry in the George­town Uni­ver­sity Energy competition.

“Madi­son has a secret weapon in the nation-wide Energy Prize: A game-based-impact approach that inspires and unites every Madis­on­ian around sus­tain­abil­ity! Cool Choices has demon­strated results, and will let res­i­dents and employ­ees from busi­nesses large and small com­mu­ni­cate with each other on how to improve our city,” said Dan White, CEO at Fil­a­ment Games.

The “social stream” within the game plat­form pro­motes aware­ness of addi­tional Green Madi­son ini­tia­tives designed to help Madi­son res­i­dents save money.

“Employ­ees at Reynolds Trans­fer & Stor­age are tak­ing part in the city-wide game of Cool Choices because we see this as an easy and fun way to be more green and to help Madi­son reduce our energy use as we com­pete for the George­town Uni­ver­sity Energy Prize” said Ben­jamin Reynolds, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions at Reynolds Trans­fer & Stor­age. “We hope even more busi­nesses and Madi­son residents will join in and take part.”

A 2014 survey indicated that 83 percent of workers planned to look for a new job. These employees said that they were exploring their options because they wanted more pay, more opportunities for advancement and more recognition.

The same survey showed that worker unhappiness was down dramatically from the previous year.

Employees don’t feel unhappy, they feel undervalued. Pay, advancement and recognition are all measures of worth.

In thinking about how to respond to these findings I refer the reader to a few of my favorite sources: Daniel Pink’s Drive and Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational. We are not very good at understanding our own behaviors or at predicting what will make us happy—and money is not the motivator we tend to think it is. When it comes to conveying that we value someone, context is critically important. In short, it is likely that some employers will read about this survey and respond in a well-intentioned way that reinforces the employee’s urge to leave.

Here at Cool Choices we think a lot about employee engagement—about what makes people feel like a valued part of a workplace community. We see constant evidence that recognition—from peers as well as supervisors—matters a lot. Our partners often marvel at the impact little things—like an email from the boss or a photo on the company intranet—can have on employee morale.

What are you doing to ensure your employees are engaged and feel valued?