First steps in fighting back against Climate Change
Every day there seems to be a new article about how our planet is in danger. How the polar ice caps are melting, how the the water levels are rising, the trees, lungs of our planet, being chopped down to make room for livestock who in turn consume a huge amount of resources.
It’s hard not to feel concerned and even more when you’re the dad to two beautiful little girls.
What kind of world do I want to leave them with. Do I play the ostrich and keep wildly consuming resources without a care in the world as surely it isn’t my problem or responsibility? Or do I act and try to reduce my own carbon footprint. I chose the latter but felt clueless at what to do. Do I add solar panels on my home? Do I trade my car for a pure electric car? Do I stop taking airplanes? All these, whilst commendable, felt like big steps to take to make an impact.
Then one day I decided to do something, something small, by challenging myself and my friends not to eat beef for one week. Why beef? I had read somewhere that a 300g steak uses as much water as 72 showers worth! That’s like not taking 2 months worth of shower to “pay” for the steak?!?
In any case I was typing on my Facebook status: “Who wants to join me in not eating beef for one week to help fight climate change???” As I was getting ready to press send I suddenly remembered the App: The 7-Minute Work Out. I loved the simplicity of this App and how it gave you very simple work outs that you can do on a daily basis to help you reach a better level of fitness.
That’s when it hit me! Wouldn’t it be great to have an app as simple and easy as the 7-Minute Work Out but with simple challenges to help you fight climate change… something like the 7-Day Climate Change Challenge. 7 day challenges such as not eating beef, walking/cycling instead of using your car, turning your tap off when brushing your teeth and many other challenges.
Whilst I’ve worked in tech for a while I never actually built an app from the ground up but having read Stuart Hall’s (founder of 7-Minute Work Out) “How I got 2.3 million app downloads (without spending a cent on marketing)” I felt empowered to give this a shot.
I quickly started sketching a few ideas together, making notes on how the app would look like, the challenges it would set and the mechanics of it. Also I would need a better name than the “7 day climate change challenge”.
For this startup I decided to take a complete different approach to the traditional one of launching a startup… ie. stealth and secrecy. For this one I will put up new posts, sharing everything from the wireframes, to the designs and approach to building this app. I want to make it as open and transparent as possible in the hope that this becomes a democratised process where everyone can contribute to the defining and building of the app.
This is my first step in this journey to hopefully make a difference for me, my girls and our planet. This isn’t my app as the issues it will be tackling are global. So I invite you to join me in this journey, make this your app and tell me what you think? What should we do? How we should do it? Lets make a difference all together.
