AllThings.bioPRO has now released a game and an application designed to help people of all ages to improve their sustainable behaviours and become ambassadors for change. The project is now looking for testers.
The term bioeconomy may sound detached and unfamiliar to most, a term for professionals rather than for citizens. However, the bioeconomy is increasingly a part of everyday life. The EU-funded project AllThings.bioPRO has detected this gap and designed a gamification ecosystem to bring people closer to this sector and help them learn in a fun and interactive way. Starting from the inputs collected through the numerous co-creation workshops with children and citizens of all ages, the project has developed a serious game and a smartphone app which should help people get familiar with the bioeconomy.
A game and an application to become bio-heroes
“Allthings.bioPRO focuses on four key themes that are part of our daily lives: food packaging, fashion & textiles, kids & schools and jobs & careers,” explains the project coordinator, Valerie Sartorius. “The game, the app and an accompanying public communication campaign explain the bioeconomy and its connection to these four topics to citizens in a playful and engaging way”.
The serious game and the smartphone app will not only engage people but can also be used as tools to aggregate their ideas related to the four themes and allow everyone to make a difference in the political agenda of the coming years. The data generated by the game and the app will be useful to policymakers, brand owners and organisations, and the biobased industry.
The game in short
The game is called Mission BioHero because it’s made of eight campaigns, each focusing on a specific theme that the player must achieve to save the Earth. The campaigns feature activities such as quizzes; real-life tasks to be solved; so-called city-builders, which are mini-games with the goal to turn a city with a non-sustainable value chain into a clean and sustainable city; special skills that award specific abilities and in-game points; and a lexicon summarising important definitions.
Everyone with a mobile phone and over the age of 12 can play Mission BioHero. Players typically include teachers, students, career centres and bioeconomy stakeholders.
The app in short
The mobile app will be linked to the serious game and can be used in the long term. It’s called Label BioHero because the user can scan (eco-)logos, labels and EU certification schemes and the app provides information on the sustainable performance of the scanned bio-based/bio-degradable product. Specifically, it focuses on non-food, non-energy bio-based products, such as packaging made from bio-based plastics and textiles made from organic cotton.
The (eco-)labels can be scanned or entered manually into the search field. The user then receives information about what the (eco-)label stands for, on which products and product categories it can be found, which aspects it covers, what it guarantees and who owns or operates the label. Labels in the app will be split into six different categories:
- Biobased content
- Sustainability of forestry biomass
- Textiles products
- End-of-life (what happens at the end of the product lifetime, such as biodegradability)
- Multi-issue (labels that cover more than one environmental aspect, e.g. Blue Angel)
- Others (labels that are not directly related to bio-based or biodegradable products, as they deal with topics such as fair trade or recycling)
Take part in the change
The project is now looking for people to test the user experience and they can contact Maria Khrapunenko: [email protected]
