The toll that is being exacted on the Earth through energy, water, and food waste, as well as product manufacturing isn’t specific to any region, in fact it’s a global problem. Every second, a garbage truckload of items are either being burned or put into a landfill. Single-use plastics are polluting our oceans, and more and more water is being wasted down the drain. By bringing these issues to light, in a digestible and engaging way, we’re hoping to shift the mindset of people around the world. The solutions to climate change and waste can seem daunting, and at times, impossible to make an impact, but through Your Plan, Your Planet, we’re able to help citizens around the planet make small changes to their lifestyle, which ultimately add up in a major way for the world.

It started with the question of “what habits will people actively change?”. It seems like too much to ask people to live a completely environmentally sustainable life in this day and age, so we focused on daily actions that add up to real impact. From that idea, Your Plan, Your Planet was born. A platform that identifies how we can extend the life cycle of products, as well as reduce food, water, and energy waste. Focusing on these four areas, we decided to first surface the environmental impact on the planet that small actions can have, then after demonstrating the problem, we provided simple solutions and tips to make a positive impact. To inspire real-world change, we asked each user to make a pledge to change their habits. The platform would be easy to understand, engaging, and focus on empowering users with knowledge on how they can make a difference.

Your Plan, Your Planet was built to empower individuals to take action by surfacing useful environmental tips and tricks. First, we conducted user testing and research to understand how people felt about their planetary impact and then identified what type of information would be most beneficial to them. Our goal was to create an interactive tool to demonstrate a user's environmental footprint and then teach simple, science-based ways to improve it. And while this tool is helpful to any environmentally-minded human, we know that the #1 area that Gen Zs (7-22-year-olds) think society should better understand through technology and innovation is the environment and the Earth (Innovation Outlook, 2018), so we also focused on that group by creating classroom materials and lesson plans.

From the start, we felt the need to root YPYP in science, so we teamed up with scientific non-profits to ensure all of the information in the tool was accurate and trustworthy. We kicked off the strategic development in early 2018 and toyed with hundreds of things we could include. We pared it down to the most effective, low lift tips and tricks that had the potential to level up to a big impact. We had a soft launch of the tool in the Fall of 2018 ahead of the Global Climate Action Summit. From there, we did further user testing and reiterated the tool and re-launched it Earth Day 2019 along with accompanying classroom materials that were shared with over 100,000 teachers.

The impact of this tool has surpassed our expectations! We've had 34 million page views on the site, millions of unique visitors, and over 220,000 total pledges made through the tool (and growing every day!). This means that hundreds of thousands of people are taking shorter showers, washing their laundry on cold, wasting less food, and thinking more critically about what they buy. To inspire the generations of the future, we’ve put custom lesson plans into the hands of 100,000 teachers. And to cap it all off, news outlets online and off wrote articles and featured YPYP on over 20 TV and radio segments on Earth Day 2019, with total viewership and listenership of 4.5 million people!