The text below is the transcript from the SPEN Fuel Challenge video. An audio-described version of the video is also available.
The first one that we were interested in was the Alexander Dennis challenge. That one was focused on around electrifying bus services.
We were thinking we could change diesel buses over to electric ones, therefore reducing carbon emissions.
Slowly our idea developed how we would introduce that into the community.
We realised even if we come up with electric buses, we’re still not going to be able to get people to go onto these buses. Which is the stigma against buses.
The more we spoke to each other and bounced ideas off each other, we realised that it was a behavioural change that we had to inspire.
So, then we focused more on incentive, rather than the actual bus itself.
So how would we go about getting people out of their cars and onto their buses, which in turn would have a better impact on the environment.
So, we developed an app called Clean Commute which is basically every time you use the bus, you can earn rewards, which we like to call e-tokens or eco-tokens. The more you use public transport, that could get you free journeys in the future.
We also had an idea; you could open up to local businesses. So, if you use public transport a certain amount of times, that would get you a free coffee at a local coffee shop or a lunch or discounts off gym memberships.
We thought we could also encourage people to take up healthier lifestyle choices as well. So, we thought if you could take the data that they’ve used on their fitness apps and sync that up with the clean commute app itself. You could garner additional points through that, and the idea was that if you got enough of these e-tokens, it would just consistently encourage you to use public transport as opposed to taking your own car.
We had a mockup version of how the app would run. They were quite happy with how we changed it from just being the bus system.
I think they liked the fact that we’d almost done our own sort of thing. We started with one challenge, and we found a different issue and we decided to follow that issue instead.
One of the main things was it meant we kept in touch with the folk we were at the training centre with and continued to work as that team that we’d built up the years beforehand.
We had to really clunk together to figure out how we would do this. But it also brought us into the idea, how we need to look after our planet more.
It made us look a bit more introspective at how much just small changes in your life can impact that, and I suppose if enough people make small changes, then it can lead to a big change in the future.
Since doing the challenge, you sort of think about it a lot more because you’re learning about it everyday and it’s something that will impact our future.
I would definitely say that future groups and that, they should get involved in this and it is very fun, and you get to be a bit more creative than you usually do and you’re actually, you’re making a difference.