Written By Global Planner Delphine Digonnet & Junior Planner Sheena Vohra
from Saatchi & Saatchi Switzerland http://www.saatchi-ch.com/

It is true that many Facebook users have at some point become irritated by the incessant clutter in their news feeds and requests consisting of: Sandra has added a cow to her farm, or “Please play mafia wars with me.”

But the truth remains that there are many of us who are keen to be digitally involved. Statistics continue to indicate that it is not your usual teenage boy or web geek, so much as the experienced impressive lifeblood of our workforce. According to the 2010 PopCap Social Gaming study, 55% of all players are women in their mid 30s and 40s. And yes, they do have college degrees. A whopping 65% of these women play daily or more than once per day.
Gaming has gone a lot further than super Mario on the Gameboy or Nintendo 64. The games referred to here, reward the player with public recognition amongst their social network contacts, which indeed provides a strong incentive to play. Imagine the amount of time people spend in real life to stand out in a crowd – so why not do it virtually?

Derrick Mains, CEO of GreenNurture remarks on, in “How Social Gaming can advance Sustainability,” how people seem to find the time. He writes that he himself works a 16 hour day, six days a week. So where does this ample time come from? Games like Farmville and Mafia wars are designed for short bursts of play which Mains describes as “challenging players to complete small tasks that only take a few minutes, such as planting crops and then coming back later to harvest them.” It is due to structure like this, which allows social networks and gaming to permeate into our daily lives –whilst drinking our morning coffee or waiting for that delayed conference call.
Why so much time is spent gaming?

Experts claim that many feel like they can achieve and accomplish more in virtual worlds as opposed to real life. In reality, we don’t collect points or acquire any material gain. We don’t go to the next level upon completion of a work project. Jane McGonigal a game researcher and designer stated at the 2010 TED conference that, “we feel we are not as good in reality as in games.”

You might remember the famous RSA Animate – Drive: The Surprising Truth about what motivates us (hyperlink) which states that there are three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. Take Mastery or example. Playing online games is not economically rational, but it is socially satisfying. It’s fun, and over time you get better at it – another thing which motivates us. Purpose – we can’t help but feel glorified when we get onto the next level of a game. Lastly autonomy – we do prefer to be self-directed and knowing that what we achieve is with thanks to me, myself and I.
But what if we tie together the amount of time spent on gaming recognition to something which can make our world more sustainable?
For example: NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been mapping the moon, capturing terabytes worth of data about its rocks and craters. The challenge is that this data needs to be viewed, sorted and catalogued and that effort takes a lot of eyes (aka time and money). MoonZoo.org, a site created by Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott, harnesses the eyes and interest of amateur astronomers worldwide, empowering them to catalog and measure craters and rocks-even allowing them to flag oddities they see when exploring the moon’s surface. This project uses the collective intelligence of interested parties to save NASA millions and educate and amuse enthusiasts worldwide.
Environmental and social issues in our world are ever prevalent, and these need a large scale global effort to be addressed. The main excuse given is that one person doesn’t make a difference, but how about we use the five minutes that 61.6 million people use anyway (gaming) and convert that into something more constructive to better our world.
There is also the added argument that we are not work horses, and we too need moments to breathe in order to relax and distract ourselves away from work in order to sustain ourselves, achieve personal satisfaction and avoid burn out aka a stress buster.
We need to find ways to engage and involve people in those random periods of latency. The challenge of being more sustainable can indeed be transferred to their space, so why not the gaming space? Of course there is still the question of no one wanting to play a game where no one wins.
There is also the question of having the appropriate people to build the games, create the rules and measure the outputs. Most importantly design how one will be rewarded and recognized, which has still not been designed. Sustainability is still very much in its infant stages in today’s business, but thanks to Generation Y (tomorrow’s leaders -whose leadership strategies consist of a global approach to innovation and sustainability.) we can have a smarter planet vision of a world connected by smart measures and green technology.
Refereces
RSA Animate Drive: The Suprising truth about what motivates us

Asian Carp

Trend

The spread of exotic species is familiar by now to most people on the planet. Global commerce has only increased the speed of travel of invasive plants and animals that crowd out the native flora and fauna. The costs can be almost incalculable.

Some exotics function as nuisances, like the Kudzu vine that is taking over the American South. It’s hard to take a drive down any highway in Georgia without seeing trees drenched and drowning in the kudzu’s grasp. Other exotics threaten the entire way of life of the region. The Asian Carp poses that type of threat to the Great Lakes region of the United States. When the Asian Carp makes it into the Great Lakes it will likely decimate the thriving fishing industry, costing thousands of jobs and robbing residents of a valuable food source.

Five states have recently sued in federal court to close the great “carp highway” that they expect will bring the carp into Lake Michigan. But even installing barriers and closing shipping channels will only slow the march of the carp.

“Green For All and Adam Werbach have long advocated a new people-centered approach to the environmental crisis, and they’ve come together with the Print Shop to bring their ideas to life through graphic design. The night will feature post-punk pioneer Bob Mould (Husker Du, Sugar) in the DJ booth. Green For All and the Post Family, have been working for weeks to create a new campaign for GFA that reflects the hope of a burgeoning green economy. Working with the master printers, Adam Werbach and artists Andrew Schoultz + Kyle Knobel have created Extinction/Adaptation. The book chronicles the things in our lives that are going extinct + the ways we’re adapting to the very strange world where we live. Set in the format of an ABC primer book, there will only be one hundred limited edition copies printed.”
See Launch post at the Levi’s site

Jamming phone lines, fax machines or e-mail boxes with messages has been a key tactic ever since I first became an environmental activist. I remember one Senator telling me in 1994, before the internet existed as we know it today, before Facebook and  Twitter and mass e-mails, that his staff was literally weighing the letters on a scale that we were sending from Sierra Club members to gauge the interest of his constituents. It was back during the fight to save the California Desert. All of those letters did their part, and we eventually passed the California Desert Protection Act, creating Joshua Tree National Park and Death Valley National Park.

Organizations like MoveOn.org perfected this tactic in the wake of Clinton impeachment scandal and those of us who cared, started sending e-mails to our members of Congress and signing petitions that we hoped would do something.

But over the last few years it’s become something of a nasty little secret in the non-profit world that most petitions work more for getting members and donations than they do for achieving legislative goals. That’s why I was thrilled by the Twitter chain you’ll see below.

A Twitterer named  @NoBagLunch has started a campaign to get the fast-food burrito restaurant Chipotle to start asking customers whether they want a paper bag with their lunch. You don’t really need one, do you?

Chipotle already has a bit of a reputation for being a more sustainable fast-food option, with meats from Niman Ranch, a sustainable building program and recycled paperware. Anyway, @NoBagLunch was quickly picked up by  @TreeHugger, and then I ( @adamwerbach) retweeted it as well.

The conversation went something like this:

@TreeHugger: RT @NoBagLunch help me convince @chipotletweets that their associates should ASK before putting burritos in paper bags #green #sustainability@adamwerbach: Yes. RT @TreeHugger RT @NoBagLunch help me convince @chipotletweets that their associates should ASK before putting burritos in paper bags

@chipotletweets: @adamwerbach We will pass the suggestion along, and we currently are using recycled paper bags. Cc: @TreeHugger @NoBagLunch -Bob

@chipotletweets: @TreeHugger The power of SM . Cc: @adamwerbach @NoBagLunch -Bob

@adamwerbach: @ChipotleTweets Cool — let us know how it goes.

@ChipotleTweets: @adamwerbach Will do. -Bob

Within a few minutes we got a response from “Bob” ( @ChipotleTweets) saying that he’d run the idea upstairs. I asked him to get back to us, and he promised he would. Within the period of a few minutes, a potential audience of over 50,000 people saw the call to action from @NoBagLunch.

Will it work? Maybe. Social media has executives enormously scared about the fact that their brand is in the hands of the likes of you. A company that reacts positively to a demand from the Twitterverse will get a great deal of good publicity. The important element is having a great idea that they can implement.

You can help by sending a tweet to @ChipotleTweets saying you think that stopping the mandatory bag is a pretty good idea. And hey, if it works, let’s take this little TWITTERFORCE and see what else we can do.

See the glacier breaking away at the top of the photo slightly to the right of the center.

Posted by Adam

The recent news of the iceberg — or “ice island” as they’re calling it since it’s so enormous — breaking off from Greenland is just the latest sign that climate change is indeed here and affecting us.  While events like this are becoming almost routine, and barely inspire a yawn from the media, we should take a moment to recognize that this is a sign of the end of a certain period in human culture and activity.   While this is the largest iceberg break since 1962, I will happily accept a bet that we’ll see a larger break before the decade is out.  There is something incredibly sad about make this sort of wager, but then again, there’s something incredibly sad about watching the earth as we know it disappear.

From Environment360

“An ice island four times the size of Manhattan has broken off from the Petermann Glacier in Greenland, the largest calving of an iceberg in the Arctic since 1962. The iceberg covers at least 100 square miles and is roughly 700 feet thick — about half the height of the Empire State Building. University of Delaware ocean scientist Andreas Muenchow said that so much freshwater is stored in the massive iceberg that it could keep all U.S. public tap water flowing for four months and could sustain the flow of the Hudson and Delaware rivers for two years. Muenchow said it is unclear whether this massive calving event is related to rising air temperatures in Greenland and the Arctic, but another researcher said that the calving was probably hastened by rising sea and air temperatures in northern Greenland. The Petermann Glacier is one of the two largest remaining glaciers in Greenland that terminate in floating ice shelves. In 1962, a 230-square-miles iceberg broke off from the nearby Ward Hunt Ice Shelf.”

One of the major challenges facing cities around the world is public transportation. In China, they are thinking big and out of the box. With individual car growth out numbering the USA, China’s streets and highways are becoming increasingly crowded. Leaving little room for buses and other modes of public transportation.

The solution:

The Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment company is developing a “3D Express Coach” (also known as a “three-dimensional fast bus”). This bus as the picture shows will go right over traffic. I bet people will want to jump on the bus that jumps over traffic.

The first 115 miles of track is set for construction in Beijing’s Mentougou district starting in late 2010. The Chairman of the Huashi Future Parking Equipment company boasts it will take only a year and 500 million yuan (around $73 million) to build the futuristic transportation system.
Pictures compliments Huffingtonpost 8/3

Genomics has long stood as a field of limitless potential and challenging ethical issues.  A new article by one of the leading advocates of genomics is raising new questions about efficacy. Read here.

Why the Wind is Misunderstood

As Saatchi & Saatchi NY continues their sustainability journey we want to share some creative solutions to help the environment,save some money and look out for employees. This post is all about Saatchi NY’s Coffee program. Every employee was given a mug at the end of 2010. Here are some numbers on the savings that the new coffee mug program has resulted in for the agency. Just a simple switch away from paper cups and redirecting people to the 14th floor cafeteria will save the agency over $15,000 in 2010. From an environmental perspective we will reduce our “footprint” in both paper cups and plastic lids by 36,020 units each!

“We compiled the 1st quarter free coffee saving for 2010. From January – March we served 9,005 free cups of coffee in the cafeteria. At a cost of .17 per cup, the total cost was $1,531. Coffee service for guests at reception cost $743, for the period. Based on historical cost and operating days, the cost of the 16th floor coffee bistro would have been $6,511. for the 1st quarter 2010. We reduced the usage of paper cups and lids for the first quarter by 9,005.

We saved approximately $4,237.

If we annualized the usage we would save 36,000 paper cups and lids, at a cost savings of $16,950.

Erin Lyons-Blue Leader Saatchi NY

If you haven’t signed Jamie Oliver’s food revolution petition, take a moment to do it now. Jamie is providing the first opportunity for food system change at the scale we need in a decade.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution