We as individuals care deeply about the future of our planet. But as much as we hope to contribute to a sustainable world, there's only so much (little) that we can do:
Each year, a handful of corporations contribute to a large percentage of CO2 emissions 1, toxic waste release 2, and single use plastic production (from non-recycled material) 3.
While we initially wanted to create a habit tracker for sustainable living (that gamifies simple tasks such as biking to work), we felt it was not enough. Then we came up with an idea that might bring out the synergy of both individuals' and businesses' effort towards sustainability---enter plantey.
plantey provides a platform for both individuals and business partners to contribute to a common goal---sustainable living.
For business users, it is a community that deeply care about sustainable initiatives. Society expects businesses to take the lead in sustainable living, and consumers are increasingly aware of "green-washing" practices in the industry. plantey is a platform for businesses to show true devotion to sustainable causes, prove their good work, and find supporters for their initiatives.
- Businesses can propose community challenges, where users try to complete a number of tasks (e.g., biking to work for a month instead of driving every day). In return, an altruistic "reward" is pledged by the sponsor for the sum of plantey points devoted to the cause by the entire community, which can be increased depending on the level of engagement, e.g., number of participants.
- Businesses can share their current sustainable initiatives to gather feedback and boost their profiles.
- Businesses can become long-term partners of plantey by pledging support in the form of financial / material resources for a sustainable cause (e.g., plant trees) to match and amplify community members' engagement in individual sustainable action.
For individual users, it is first of all a habit tracker that keeps track of your daily effort to live more sustainably, whether you are already an experienced zero-waste guru or want to embark on a sustainable journey today.
- For each completed daily task ("quest"), users receive a fixed sum of plantey points.
- plantey points can be spent on a sustainability initiative---sponsored by our business partners---to show care and support for the cause.
- We (will) provide comprehensive statistics and record on habit building, task completion, challenge participation, and most importantly the "rewards" earned by every user, providing a sense of accomplishment that is directly linked to real-world impact.
An example: an individual user finishes the "Zero waste for a week" challenge by completing subtasks daily. They earned 1000 points for the challenge and 500 points for the daily tasks. In return, the challenge sponsor helps plant a tree for every 500 points.
An important step is to find business partners that like the idea :)
We still need to integrate the frontend with the backend. And then hopefully publishing the app on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
