"Viralizing" Social Responsibility

A solution by The Conscious Trolley submitted to Nicosia Old City Challenge

Our solution addresses the fundamental need of cultivating a culture of social responsibility and providing people and organizations the necessary incentives to change their habits to include activities such as recycling, composting, waste reduction, bicycle use etc. An online mechanism will assist in reporting, honoring and rewarding best practices and responsible behavior.

(Pitched: 21/12/2017)

One Page Summary

We believe that the problem with the types of challenges addressed by the Nicosia Municipality (i.e. waste management and noise pollution in cities) has less to do with the absence of technological (or other kinds of) solutions but with the lack of effective mechanisms for their implementation. One crucial missing component is the lack of a culture of awareness and collective social responsibility necessary to provide the foundation upon which currently available or future solutions can have maximum social impact.

The specific type of challenges would be drastically improved if people were given more incentives to do, for example, more home composting or proper recycling, use the bicycle more often or consider buying noise-free electric cars and practive more conscious and wasteless consuming practices.

The solution we propose involves the development of an Online Hub for Social Responsibility, where responsible actions and best practices (by people and organizations/businesses) are spotlighted and rewarded in different tangible or intangible ways. Recognizing the importance of “Leading by Example” as well as honoring and valuing social contribution, our approach will seek to incentivize people to adopt practices that create value both for themselves and for the communities they live in.

The platform will provide various interactive tools that will allow participating-partner organizations, as well as community people, to acknowledge, honor or reward other people or organizations for specific conscious actions they engage in. Organizations such as “Tiganokinisi” or “Recyward”, for example, would be able to report in a measurable way each school’s, student’s or business’s contribution in recycled oil, paper or other material on their public profile page. Municipalities will also be able to report which citizens engage in home composting or engage in other similar activities. Similarly, other approved organizations will be able to report and publically acknowledge a variety of other conscious acts such as volunteering hours, donations, social contribution/responsibility awards and other exceptional social acts.

The proposed tools will be integrated in the already existing (close to launching) platform “The Conscious Trolley” (www.controlley.com), where the accumulated social contribution of each person or organization will be publically reported on their personal profile page, what we call “Conscious Folios”, or “Confolios”. The overall mission of the Controlley platform is to make social responsibility and contribution “contagious”, while demonstrating in a measurable way its direct and indirect benefits for people and organizations personally and for their communities.