New App promoting Eco-Actions - ECOMOGUL MAGAZINE

A few years ago, I asked myself the question: “Why is it so hard to take action against climate change?” A scientific response to this question would be that as human being, we generally tend to move away from situations that fear us, and frankly, this crisis is very overwhelming. Secondly, climate change is particular in this perspective, as there is not one simple-to-understand cause for this phenomenon, but many different.

In consequence, there is not one explicit solution, but rather millions of things that we could do better. These two aspects lead to many people simply not acting against climate change, even though the power and impact of everyone of us is so crucial. As studies show, our individual actions cause social ripple effects in the norms and values of people around us, leading to the bottom-up support needed for structural solutions.

So, how can this be changed? It really is about making climate-action as easy, effective, and convenient as possible to motivate many people to take as much action as possible. First, the actions need to be simple and easy to integrate in our everyday lives, otherwise there is too much friction hindering us from acting. Secondly, and this is the most important, every action taker should be able to visualize their impact to continuously stay motivated.

This is when OneSave/Day comes into play. It is a mobile app displaying one eco-action per day, and once the user has clicked on “I did it”, the app shows how many others have participated at this day’s challenge. Additionally, users can make short “Thank you videos” in which they thank each other for their efforts which is truly a social reward inciting users to continue every day. Imagine, you just picked up a piece of plastic from the street as it was today’s eco-action and you click on the “I did it” button, see that over 4.000 people worldwide have participated and additionally a person from Japan appears and thanks you for your effort. This human note, which we often miss on many social media platforms nowadays is very important for OneSave/Day, as we try to bring together people to join forces.

OneSave/Day is about bringing one’s individual action to a global scale and multiplying everyone’s impact through a community coming from all around the world. Climate change is a global problem, thus we need global solutions.

After a successful test phase including more than 10,000 users, we have just launched our full-scale app on iOS, and Android is going to be available in the beginning of September.

I am Maxime Leroux, 21 years old, half French and half Austrian, currently studying International Business & Administration as my Bachelor’s degree in Marseille, France. I have never been interested into climate change, but when I was overwhelmed with all its negative consequences, I started to take action and mobilize other people who felt like me.