“Global Challenge, Global Solutions” is a series hosted on Climasphere highlighting inspiring, innovative, and creative global solutions to the challenge of climate change in the lead up to the next major climate conference, COP22. These solutions have been provided by members of the Earth To Marrakech coalition, a group of more than 50 media organizations, civil society groups, and businesses from around the world who are raising their voices in a collective call to move from words to action on climate change. Let’s send a message, from Earth To Marrakech: The solutions to climate change are out there, and they’re inspiring. 

Smart Home Teaches Sustainable Living

The New Joneses is a pop-up smart home on dis­play in Mel­bourne’s city cen­ter three weeks a year. Aside from show­cas­ing eco-friendly fur­niture and ap­pli­ances, The New Joneses edu­cates vis­it­ors about how life­style choices, such as choice of bank or en­ergy pro­vider, af­fect the en­vir­on­ment. The pop-up also of­fers fun en­gage­ment activ­it­ies, like teach­ing vis­it­ors how to make their own worm farm in or­der to re­duce waste and grow ve­get­ables.
The New Joneses en­gages a wide audi­ence, from school kids to cor­por­a­tions and the me­dia. Since its launch, 60,000 people have visited the home, and it has been fea­tured on pop­u­lar Aus­tralian tele­vi­sion shows, ex­pos­ing its sus­tain­able solu­tions to a po­ten­tial view­er­ship of more than 500,000 people.

RELEVANCE OF SOLUTION
Con­sumers of­ten feel dis­con­nec­ted from cli­mate change ac­tion, as nar­rat­ives are typ­ic­ally framed around fear and un­avoid­able dis­asters. Yet, re­search shows that mes­sages are more ef­fect­ive when com­bined with in­form­a­tion about solu­tions.1 The New Joneses presents these pos­it­ive and tan­gible mes­sages for vis­it­ors, of­fer­ing con­crete solu­tions for middle-class con­sumers in Aus­tralia.

TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE:

ENVIRONMENTAL
The solu­tion pro­motes res­id­en­tial solar en­ergy use in an ef­fort to re­duce the com­bus­tion of fuel for light­ing, which res­ults in 190 mil­lion met­ric tons of CO2 emis­sions a year.2

SOCIAL
Since edu­ca­tion is key to be­ha­vior change,3 The New Joneses aims to make eas­ily ap­plic­able sus­tain­able solu­tions avail­able to a wide audi­ence.

ECONOMIC
The New Joneses en­cour­ages people to switch to LED bulbs, which con­sume up to 80% less elec­tri­city than in­can­des­cent bulbs.