A mobile app platform to engage the public in collective climate action
City of Duluth residents completed thousands of measurable individual actions driving community climate-positive results
The Challenge - Community Climate Engagement
2018
The city of Duluth, Minnesota adopted a climate action plan goal of reducing City emissions by 80% by 2050 to combat climate change. City controlled municipal emissions account for only 4% of community-wide emissions though. 2020
The Duluth community, led by Ecolibrium3, drafted the Duluth Citizens’ Climate Action Plan to enable the city’s goal community-wide. The Plan contains actions for individual residents to lessen their eco-footprint, advocate for consumer choices, and states a goal of a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030.
The community had yet to learn about and implement steps from Duluth Citizens’ Climate Action Plan.
The challenge emerged: how can we easily engage our residents in their daily lives with climate actions from the plan?
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The Solution - GetGreen Duluth
2022 GetGreenDuluth was developed in collaboration between GetGreen, Ecolibrium3, and Grid Catalyst to meet the shared goal of engaging more Duluth residents in taking climate-positive actions - an inviting, easy and fun mobile application implementation.
For Duluth, this meant adapting actions from the Duluth Citizens' Climate Action Plan into the available catalog of actions in the GetGreen app before the launch, adding in customized goals and badges for Duluth residents, and creating social elements from leaderboards to contests to allow residents to see their progress.
GetGreenDuluth currently features more than 150 actions from the Duluth Citizens' Climate Action Plan, plus hundreds more from the standard GetGreen catalog, which continues to grow. Duluth residents download the app, take sustainable actions that directly benefit themselves and the community, and participate in a meaningful, measured way. The partnership developed communication plans to spread awareness of the app. This included working with local environmental and municipal and higher education partners, planning in-person events and leveraging local print, TV and social media.
Actions, leaderboards, goals and user progress from GetGreen Duluth
The Results - Over 3,000 actions completed
The six month program started quickly with strong early adoption, driven by community, municipal, and coordinated media events. In the first week, the program reached 25% of the six month user engagement, action and emissions reductions targets. The results below reflect the six-month usage and engagement:
November 2022-May 2023 Overall pilot results: 316 users engaged, and approximately 10 times (1000%) user increase in engagement from Duluth Citizens’ Climate Action Plan website-based platform.
Users completed over 3,600 actions, exceeding the project goal by 44%
Users earned over 9,000 leaves, exceeding the project goal by 80%
Users’ Greenhouse Gas emissions reduction of 90,000 lbs CO2E (1 leaf = 10 lbs of averted CO2E emissions) For six months of GetGreenDuluth use, 45 tons of GHG were avoided by 300+ people
Other results were realized beyond Energy Efficiency/greenhouse gas emissions reductions, actions from the Climate Action Plan put into practice! Ecolibrium3 saw an an overall community wide 200% increase in climate advocacy and engagement reach-outs from residents.
GetGreen and Ecolibrium3 ran multiple user contests during the program, rewarding users who earned the most leaves or completed targeted goals around local climate education and advocacy or completing specific actions (like signing up for a free home energy audit). The contests were particularly effective at driving high levels of user engagement.
Local merchants and businesses were a key part of the program, with GetGreen directing sustainability minded users to those businesses. Support from those businesses and others provided some contest rewards to users and help to fund the creation of the LNPK micro-mobility center, providing electrified and other transportation to local residents.
About GetGreen
GetGreen was founded on a simple idea - to empower people to preserve the planet for future generations. The GetGreen platform was launched in 2022 so that each of us can make a measurable impact on the climate crisis by making informed choices about the actions we take, the products and services we use and to live more sustainably..
GetGreen’s goals are to help everyone
Reduce GHG Emissions
Develop new sustainable habits and practices
Invite learning for new knowledge and behaviors
And engage communities to collectively address climate change and sustainability at the individual level.
The APPLICATION GetGreen is a mobile application designed to meet users where they are on their individual sustainability journey, helping users discover new sustainable actions, reduce their emissions, track their progress and reach sustainable goals. The app is fully customizable, with the ability to add goals and actions that incorporate the plans of organizations and municipalities.
Download the GetGreen Duluth application
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