How can the individual reduction of greenhouse gases for a defined track be measured and reported and how can citizens be motivated to adapt their behaviour due to that collected information? The idea is to track and report the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of a person due to walking, using public transport or bicycle instead of using a motorised vehicle. Solutions should include measures to motivate people to reduce their carbon footprint.

Sometimes we are not actually aware what impact our everyday activities have to the environment; we take it for granted and we don’t care about the consequences of our actions. We use our car for convenience instead of public transportation and we are not willing to step out of our comfort zone. There are far too many daily commuters driving to their jobs in and around the City of Zurich who have access to other forms of transportation but are not using them. There are different reasons for this, but the main problem is lack of motivation and confidence that even one person can make a change that has an impact on the wellbeing of their community and the world.

• Describe your solution in 3-5 sentences.

Our objective is to motivate people to move out of their comfort zone in terms of transportation. The journey of our followers starts by downloading our app or visiting our website to take The Pledge to reduce their CO2 emissions which helps them feel they are part of a larger social movement. Our application shows travel options with different means of transportation, providing information about the distance and time of travel, CO2 emissions, calorie consumption, price difference, and the points they will be rewarded in the case their journey has reduced CO2 emissions. This provides the data they need to make better transportation choices. The users are able to track their progress in reducing their carbon footprint including in comparison to others. They will also be able to challenge friends or answer to “green challenges” and to post their success on different social media platforms as a way to inform and motivate others.

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

This project was started during the Climathon and was created in response to a challenge by the City of Zurich to find a solution that reduces the CO2 emissions per person based on their transportation choices.

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

The solution was specifically designed with the City of Zurich in mind but with an eye on expansion to other cities in the future. With the wealth of transport options available here in Zurich, we believe the automobile usage by weekday drivers is far higher than necessary. The people of Zurich care a great deal about air quality, the environment, and are concerned about the changing climate. Therefore, we think drivers in the Zurich area can be persuaded to modify their behavior given the proper information and incentives. We aim at the quality of life desired by the citizens of Zurich and at their responsibility in taking action.

Our daily mobility and eating habits have a huge negative impact on our global and local environment. Even though most citizens are aware of this problem, they have no incentive to change and sometimes even lack information on alternative behavior.

Our smartphone application combines doing good with fun, social interaction and competition. It can be used as a platform where everyone can upload sustainability related challenges and invite their friends to join. Next to the gamification aspect, users will get informative tips and trick along with events to increase a sense of community.

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

We had some code running, but the issue statement and our value proposition were not really clear. Now we improved the prototype and have a presentation that contains the latter two and additionally some thoughts on how to get users onboard to address the challenges mentioned.

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

Our platform is very flexible so the City of Zurich has the chance to create a customized challenge in order to engage with their citizens and motivate them to move towards low impact lifestyles that will reduce the environmental impact of their citizens.

• What challenge(s) apply to your project?

Inspire people (mix of challenges)

• Describe the problem and why we should care in 3-5 sentences.

More and more people nowadays face problems related to climate change, environmental pollution and so on. Some of them want to be active in solving this complex, global situation. But many don’t know from where to start to make a difference, how to meet like-minded people or how to realize their own project ideas.

• Describe your solution in 3-5 sentences.

Our solution is a collaboration platform that connects interested citizens with projects and companies. The application makes it easy for people to find and participate in or co-organize climate-related projects in their area. Further, it allows companies to support popular events. Not only will the environment be improved through team effort, but the users can share their achievements, inspire and have fun.

• Add any screenshots / demo links / photos of the results we should look at.

Google Drive

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

From scratch

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

Because it involves the local citizens

Problems

• Many old heating systems do exist in the swiss markets in private households today.
• Existing technology would allow more efficient consumption of heating energy and thus also lower CO2-Emissions and environmental impact.
• Swiss population lives by 80% in rented houses, 20% in private houses, so either private homeowners or landlords letting apartments to renters would need to invest into new heating systems - which is not happening today at the speed desired.
• One major reason is assumed to be the interest in investing this volume of money.

Solution

• Investing in new Heating systems demand upfront investments that are not always available for the owners of heating systems.
• By offering an interesting investment opportunity to a group of small scale investors, we aim to collect the money needed.
• By using this money to finance the heating system, the person profiting from the heating systems functions will be able to rent the system and will not need money upfront.
• Investors are able to participate in local energy projects and thus do local green investments in smaller scales they can afford (e.g. minimum 5’000CHF).

Where did this project stand before the Climathon?

• We started the project from scratch.

Why is your project relevant for the city of Zurich?

• Many old heating systems are not yet being replaced and thus use limited natural resources and produce higher CO2-Emissions than necessary
• It will boost the awareness of efficient heating system as “sexy” ecological solution.

• What challenge(s) apply to your project?

The running of the Climathon itself. I am one of the organisers, and this is not an official project submission - but still something that was mostly developed at the Climathon.

• Describe the problem and why we should care in 3-5 sentences.

We need to track the progress of many teams, and bots can do it better than humans. So, we made one.

• Describe your solution in 3-5 sentences.

This is a bot that connects to participants through Slack and bugs people to improve their conversation through good habits (like taking a walk and drinking water), and provides various tools, like a project and open data search, and a way to easily create documentation about all the teams.

• Add any screenshots / demo links / photos of the results we should look at.

See the #startnewteam channel, or talk to the @sodabot bot yourself on the Climathon Zurich Slack.

• Enter any links or datasets that were key to your progress.

Hubot was a basis for this project, data is from opendata.swiss. Biggest help of all were all the people that tried the bot and gave their feedback at the Climathon!

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

A new script was started at the Climathon within an existing framework for bots called Hubot.

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

Zurich should (also) be the center for A.I. innovation!

• Any other comments about your experience.

Loved every minute. Thanks everyone!

Read more about this project on our blog

Our food choices are responsible for 31% of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Making better choices about what we eat have the potential to cut these emissions by half. We have access to data and knowledge (zB. eaternity) on how to eat climate friendly, yet we lack time and discipline to make it part of our daily life; making cooking plans and buying groceries.

Max is a personal foodie bot that does the hard work for you. Feed it with data; take a picture of your reciept or meal, in seconds it analyses and provide you with facts or suggestions on how to eat more climate friendly. Through conversations and reminders, Max makes it easier to change behaviour, and you can save up to 100'000 kg CO2e. Amounting to the same amount of carbon as driving 15.5 times around the globe. Max can do more than help save the climate – as your friend, it learns what food you prefer, if you're on a diet or have allergies. You can ask it anything, anytime – ask it to send you seasonal reciepes every Monday or advice you on how to use your leftovers with a minimum of food waste.

The city of Zurich could partner up with a variety of grocery stores and use their distribution network and channels to promote Max. We would develop a rather unconventional campaign to introduce you to Max. We would aim for a concept thats fun and provocative, targeting people with interest in building healthy habits and do something for the climate. If it goes viral and create VOM it can become mainstream and motivate other people to sign up.

"Our why-statement: We analyse people’s food and change their behaviour, so Zurich becomes the #1 in consuming climate friendly food."

• What challenge(s) apply to your project?

Tackling urban heat islands and air pollution

• Describe the problem and why we should care in 3-5 sentences.

Climate change, along with increasing urbanization, is the cause of so called urban heat islands - areas within the city with a significantly higher temperatures than the surroundings. It also contributes to air pollution and stagnant air in urban areas, which leads to health problems, increasing death rates and discomfort.

• Describe your solution in 3-5 sentences.

Installation of flexible moss fabrics will decrease the average temperature within urban heat islands through so called evaporative cooling. Additionally, moss is an incredible natural air filter that can improve air quality in the cities by absorbing CO2, particulate matters and noxious nitrous oxides. Finally, it also absorbs urban noise and looks great. As we can integrate our moss fabrics with the existing infrastructure (e.g. wrapping them around lamp poles), no additional space is required in the heavy constructed area in the city centre of Zurich. The moss fabrics can be produced modular, are easy to set up and can be easily removed when not needed. An aesthetic, trendy and green solution the moss walls will raise awareness of climate change, promote sustainability, while transforming urban spaces into green oases.

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

Inspired by an article about moss in the city, and an idea of a more practical approach, team was set up at the Climathon

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

Zurich is affected by urban heat islands with local temperatures at some locations being over 5 oC higher than the surroundings. Our solution can be easily used in both open spaces and the narrow and busy streets in the city. Our project can be developed and tested in a partnership with the city of Zurich and later implemented in other cities as a symbol of Swiss ingenuity against climate change.

• Any other comments about your experience:

We have built a cool prototype, come and see it at our table!

The Moss Cape demonstrating its prototype to green and cool down the city of Zurich - Meret Brotbek (@MeretBrotbek) October 29, 2016

Almost half of the food waste here in Switzerland is caused by private households. This is around 500kg of food which could have been eaten instead. The impact on our environment needs to be reduced and that’s where our solution comes into place.

Foodshelf provides a solution to people who would like to reduce their food waste with minimal effort. Take a picture of an item you don't plan to eat before it's expiry date. It's that simple. Instead of throwing it away you'll post it on Foodshelf, making it available for people around you. And on the other hand if you are in need, you can just check out your neighborhood.

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

Nowhere, we started with a blank file

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

Zurich has a high population density, which is the foundation of a great community for Foodshelf. With this in mind be believe that a big amount of wasted food can be reduced by having an active neighborhood.

Swiss households are responsible for around half of the food waste. People buy too much food and are afraid of food which has passed it’s expiration date, but a lot of this food is still edible.

An app that brings back the lost knowledge of our grandmothers. It teaches you how to make soup out of almost anything and connects people to collaborate on a delicious bowl of soup! It also teaches you about seasonal food products and the basics on how to prepare it.

• Add any screenshots / demo links / photos of the results we should look at.

• Enter any links or datasets that were key to your progress.

thekitchn.com

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

Did not exist.

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

For a lot of Zurich's Citizens the problem of food waste is in the back of their head when they throw away food. Yet many of them don't have the knowdlege or a creative approach to counter that. We give them a tool to educate themselves about reusing food they would otherwise throw away and what food is seasonal and available in the region.

• Lack of ways of tracking and reporting individual greenhouse emissions and lack of motivation of people to change their behavior to reduce their individual emissions. • CO2 and other greenhouse gases are a major cause of global warming and climate change. • Transportation alone accounts to about 31% of Zurich’s direct CO2 emissions (2014). • Reducing individual carbon footprint can not only have a significant impact on overall reduction in carbon footprint, but will also enable an individual to contribute towards the global movement for tackling climate change sustainably.

-Describe your solution in 3-5 sentences

• Make citizens of Zurich aware, through a program, of the emissions they are generating with transportation • Rewarding their good performance on the benefit of themselves and the community enhancements • We also show people how they can reduce their emissions, providing alternatives for their transportation choices. • Tool of Solution: Get to know your “trip” CO2 emissions ¬ Tracking: A mobile application to track individual data, connected to actual consumption of CO2 reported by vehicle data and comparison with alternatives by calculation. ¬ Motivation Mechanism: Reward Program, with reinvestments in the city and communities as well as public communication and information

• Any screen shots / demo / pictures of the results we could look at?

• Where did this project stand before the Climathon?

No prior work, we started from scratch

• Why is your project relevant for the city of Zurich?

¬ Zurich is a major Swiss city with a major share of private vehicle owners (~650,000 cars!). ¬ Zurich is also one of the cities with highest rate of population increase, hence higher potential of worsening the carbon footprint. ¬ Zurich is the city with worst traffic in Switzerland. ¬ This is aligned with the goals of the city on environment and quality of life.

Zurichange

Team 13 – Energy Now

More than 40% of CO2 comes from buildings, to which space heating is the biggest contributor. To tackle the problem, the city of Zurich provides homeowners with several incentives which they can benefit from when they make the leap to cleaner solutions. However, the slow adoption rate suggests that they are neither well-informed nor motivated enough to make the move.

Be the #zurichange: An online energy portal that connects people that invest in renewable technologies. Homeowners or tenants get personalized recommendations according to their energy consumption, and they can become members of the network and connect with others right away. They can then start investing in small projects to reduce their energy consumption, and as they do so they accumulate points and reach new investment tiers, unlocking perks from the state and gaining access to larger community projects. Their properties and investment experiences are highlighted on the interactive city map for other users to see, acting as motivation for the community and for people that are initially hesitant to make the jump to cleaner technologies.

Demo page

The project was initiated during the Climathon.

There are several energy calculators out there, and several incentives being offered by the city, but there is no one-roof solution. The portal works both as an information tool for the citizens of Zurich, and as motivation for people that are hesitant to invest in less energy consuming technologies. Plus, with the citizens’ permission the city gets legit access to energy data from households, which can be used to better assess the cleantech adoption rates and to define financial trends.

In swiss media topics like meat consumption, factory farming and alternative lifestyles such as vegatarism or veganism receive a high attention and media coverage. This leads to a very controverse and emotional discussion on e.g. news plattforms, families, friends - resulting in strong pro/contra opinions. This makes it more and more difficult to bring the facts and the reality across - the loss of ressources, environemental pollution, animal welfare and personal health. In fact, it has such a devastating effect on all aspects of our environment that the Union of Concerned Scientists lists meat-eating as the second-biggest environmental hazard facing the Earth.

Our target audience are "i love meat" kind of people. This is the difference between us and the other climate information websites you already find. The solution is not to tell them “stop eating meat". We just want to make them understand the impact and come up with alternatives. We want to achieve that by make people understand the situation by using simple metaphors (e.g. one burger equals 90 showers) and bring them nice recipees for incredible, easy to cook and cheap vegetarian food or showing tipps how to reduce the overall consumption.

• Demo:

Presentation

51kg.org -> User: 51kg Password: 51kg

Some Links for Content:

secret-wiki.de beobachter.ch

About the technical background:

silex.sensiolabs.org angularjs.org

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

We already had the Idea, the Team of 2 people, a Concept, a small prototype and a lot of motivation. However, we now came up with a complete new approach during the hackaton which questions the current prototype.

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

This message is relevant for the world - and as Zurich is on this earth as well, it has relevance :wink:

• Any other comments about your experience:

24h is short. Remote work (50% of the team is in Mexico) over 8800km and -7 time zones a cool story to tell, but sitting at a table and enjoying the atmosphere together would be way cooler! We are readier, but not close to ready to release.

The number of extremely hot days and heat waves have dramatically increased over the last 20 years; climate science tells us this trend will continue. Like much of central Europe, Zurich’s public planning is intended to provide warmth in winter but frequently does not offer much shade during hot days. Zurich’s public spaces are less used during heat waves, which negatively impacts retail businesses (one study found between 5-18% reduction in foot traffic in shopping areas during a recent hot period). Additionally, heat waves increase cooling costs for stores and result in potential health problems (7% increase in mortality found during a heat spell in 2003) for the especially young and old.

• Describe your solution in 3-5 sentences.

We suggest creating shade in key public areas around Zurich by installing ‘Zurishade’ above streets. The retractable ‘Zurishade’ will be deployed during the day of the three hottest months from June to August, and would decrease ambient temperature and return pleasure to summer days in downtown Zurich. This is an easy, cost effective, and proven solution already used in other Mediterranean cities (e.g. Malaga).
Bahnhofstrasse is the perfect location to install ‘Zurishade’ because we can exploit extant infrastructure for the Lucy Christmas lights, and since Bahnhofstrasse is one of the most visited streets in Zurich, this installation would ignite a debate about local climate adaptation measures. Businesses are potentially highly affected by temperature changes and have already showed interest to participate in financing and implementing ‘Zurishade’.

• Add any screenshots / demo links / photos of the results we should look at.

See Tweet

• Enter any links or datasets that were key to your progress.

8zurishade.pdf box_model.pdf

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

We just started it here.

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

It’s very likely to be implemented, it has direct positive effects on the environment and the economy. Many people will profit from it. It can be connected with a marketing campaign on climate change.

• Any other comments about your experience:

This morning we talked with various store owners on Bahnhofstrasse, all of them showed high interest in our project and would like to support it.

• What challenge(s) apply to your project?

Reduce Agricultural Foodwaste in Switzerland.

• Describe the problem and why we should care in 3-5 sentences.

Imperfect vegetables and fruits can not be sold in the typical supermarkets. Most of these imperfect yet perfectly edible products will end on a pile of compost or in a biogas-plant. It’s a complete waste of food and of energy that was invested in producing the food.

• Describe your solution in 3-5 sentences.

Happy Farmer is an online shop that sell such imperfect vegetables and fruits. It has two main advantages to the current agricultural e-commerce shops: 1.environmental benefits 2.Economic incentive for the customers.

• Add any screenshots / demo links / photos of the results we should look at.

Pitch

• Enter any links or datasets that were key to your progress.

srf.ch/news/schweiz/kartoffeln-vor-die-saeue

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

Concept stage.

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

The demand for e-shopping for agricultural products is increasing in Zürich. People of Zürich value convenience and are willing to pay for it. Happy Farmer kills two flies in one:

1. it reduces the foodwaste in Zürich and close-by areas and with it the consumption of energy and the production of CO2 emissions.

2. It offers an extremely convenient shopping service

By summing the reported emissions of all companies operating in a single country and comparing that value to the reported emissions of that country, one can see that companies seriously underreport their emissions. To be able to spend in a more environmentally-friendly way, the true emissions data for companies should be available to consumers and investors. In order to generate this data without reporting from the companies themselves (which would retain the underreporting and biases), we need location and operations information for all businesses.

• Describe your solution in 3-5 sentences.

We have created a database of all companies, their operating locations, and the emissions that each location is responsible for by compiling data from many sources freely available on the web. We compile several sources, including LinkedIn and Google Maps data, and arrange everything in a single database. This has the potential to influence the flow of capital away from environmentally unfriendly enterprises and toward greener companies.

• Enter any links or datasets that were key to your progress.

cemnet.com linkedin.com google.com

• Where did this project stand prior to the Climathon?

Before Climathon this was just a very rough idea and nothing concrete.

• Why do you think your project is relevant for the City of Zurich?

Zurich is a major financial hub and together its residents and industries are responsible for the management of a large amount of capital. Creating a tool to help these individuals and asset managers make greener choices in their investments could not only improve the outcomes of their portfolios as climate change progresses, but also establish the city as a driving force in the fight against climate change.

• Any other comments about your experience:

This has been a great experience overall. The collaborative and supportive environment have really allowed creativity and productivity to flow and brought our team to a concrete final result. And the yoga was wonderful!