Sustain-APP-ility: An Eco-friendly Reward Program for Greener Cities
This is the final post in a four-part series on the winners of the Porsche ideas competition “Mobility for a Better World”. Our fourth-place winner is Liight, a start-up from Madrid, Spain, that has developed a sustainable reward program. Read part one (Breeze Technologies) here, part two (Phantasma Labs) here and part three (Ducktrain) here on our blog.
In this post, we’ll explore how apps can play a role in motivating people to engage in environmentally-friendly behaviour. Liight was co-founded by Carlos Rosety Alonso and Santiago Jimenez Cortes in 2017. The start-up aims to protect the environment by promoting sustainable day-to-day practices.
The challenge: creating a sustainable economy for the common good
Our daily choices and actions have a lasting impact on the environment. Although our individual day-to-day actions seem insignificant when viewed in isolation, the collective impact of these actions is profoundly altering the Earth’s systems. Global warming is the most obvious example, but there are many other areas where human activity is putting increased pressure on the environment. But what can we do, collectively and individually, to protect the health of our planet?
Collectively, we must strengthen sustainable development. Individually, sustainability begins with our day-to-day actions. We can start reducing our environmental footprint at any time. Each of us can make a difference if we choose to do so.
And yet, changing people’s habits and consumption practises is a difficult task. Many people tend to focus on the global political level and forget that small changes in their daily routines can make a big difference. Furthermore, people are often less likely to consider changing their habits if there is nothing in it for them personally. And this is where Liight comes in. The start-up encourages environmentally-friendly actions, such as the use of public transport, cycling or recycling.
The solution: Liights
Liight wants to drive sustainable day-to-day behaviour change with their eco-friendly app, which they also call Liight. The gamified app currently has more than 10,000 users. The rewards for sustainable actions are so-called Liights, a virtual currency that users can redeem for different products and services such as cinema tickets. In addition to gamification mechanics, the team uses smart city systems and artificial intelligence to incentivize people to shift towards a more sustainable and responsible behaviour.
Liight’s business model aligns the interests and needs of citizens, corporations and cities. For citizens, Liight is a platform where they can collect rewards for making use of public transport, car sharing, etc. The idea is to do all this in a gamified way and in a sustainable lifestyle and community environment. Businesses, on the other hand, can use the platform as an additional promotion and sales channel.
They can offer their products and services to customers in a highly specific way and improve their conversion ratios, while also strengthening their brand image in terms of sustainability and climate change action. Finally, cities also benefit from Liight’s solution as they try to become more sustainable.
Mobility for a better world
This post concludes our series on the winners of the Porsche ideas competition “Mobility for a Better World”. In total, there were more than 150 initial team entrants from all around the world.
Together with our partners, we were looking for innovative ideas for how technology could help shape the future of mobility, and we were certainly not disappointed. The finalists’ proposals were truly outstanding in their endeavour to advance the future of sustainable mobility and we would like to thank all participants for their great ideas as well as everyone who entered the competition.
About this publication: Where innovation meets tradition. There’s more to Porsche than sports cars — we’re tackling new challenges, develop digital products and think digital with focus on the customer. On our Medium blog, we tell these stories. It´s about our #nextvisions, smart technologies and the people that drive our digital journey. Please follow us on Twitter (Porsche Digital, Next Visions), Instagram (Porsche Digital, Next Visions, Porsche Newsroom) and LinkedIn (Porsche AG, Porsche Digital) for more.
