All Blog Posts
Tech For Good Talks: Future Gazing
It has been nearly a year since our inaugural “Tech For Good Talks” and we can’t believe it! In our last webinar of 2020, we look ahead at the new year and how to build back better.
4 min read
Event
It has been nearly a year since our inaugural “Tech For Good Talks” and we can’t believe it! What started as a quick pivot to be able to engage with you all when the pandemic hit, quickly became a mainstay in our routines. We have absolutely LOVED being able to kick around the topics near and dear to our hearts, all with THE BEST and most supportive audience. Thank you so much for joining us on this ride, and cheers to all the webinars we have executed this year… and to the face-to-face opportunities 2021 will hopefully bring!
It goes without saying, but, it has been a YEAR! We all know it. We all lived it. So we’ll leave this one in our dust and look ahead.
It’s a toss-up on what the most overused quote of the last year has been, but “unprecedented” and “build back better” are the forerunners for sure! They do both perfectly encapsulate what went on in 2020, and where we need to go.
We need to do better. Be better. And know better. It’s all there, the technology, innovation and desperate need to really impact the world and make a difference, so let’s do it! This mentality is absolutely vital going forward, but how we harness that momentum and drive the necessary change is quite the challenge.
Luckily, we have our dynamic duo, Rich and Gabby at the ready with their crystal ball, to take a peek and tell us what building a better tomorrow will entail….
Igniting change in 2021 and beyond
Something we are so extraordinarily proud of is the Ignite initiative we have just launched at 3 Sided Cube! It was through our work with Polytag, that we really became interested in the circular economy, and trying to work out how we could wrestle that huge undertaking and bring about change.
What we were looking at doing is changing the way an entire economic system works…easier said than done!
We quickly realised that wasn’t something that was going to happen with one or two organisations is going to be able to do on their own, it’s a massive collaborative effort in order to be able to affect that necessary change. Thus Ignite was born.
Essentially, Ignite is a movement that brings organisations together, So, development agencies, marketing agencies, brands, retailers, government, and facilitate them being able to collaborate and solve these glaring problems with the waste crisis and sustainability.
In the early start of this initiative, we commissioned a consumer report to get the temperature on consumer’s attitudes towards sustainable living. The results were pretty telling and revealed how their attitudes are now vastly in favour of more sustainable living and how people are ready to embrace technology as a tool to help them play their part in combatting the climate crisis.
We decided to have some fun with those report findings and put Gabby in the hot seat. For every question she got right, we would plant 250 trees. But, because we are 3 Sided Cube, we wanted every opportunity to plant more trees, so we gave her an out if she missed a question. We would still plant the trees, BUT she had to choke down her lifelong nemesis, THE BRUSSEL SPROUT!
Here are the questions she was ambushed with. How well do you think you would do?!
(Q) What is the % of people who feel they currently live very sustainably? (A) 8%
(Q) What is the % of people who want to live more sustainably? (A) 89%
(Q) What is the % of people who always wash waste items before putting into their recycle bin? (A) 40%
(Q) What is the % of the plastic waste we put into our recycle bin that actually gets recycled? (A) 8%
Check out the findings from our ‘Sustainable Living in 2021” report!
Thanks to her breadth of recycling knowledge, and dedication to the planet, we are so excited to report that Cube has now planted 1,000 trees in the Amazon via One Tree Planted (an excellent organisation, and makes for the perfect gift this holiday season if you haven’t finished your shopping!)
Building back better = building back greener
We were so excited to get Phil Sutton, the Chief Technology Officer for Polytag to get in on the action of the webinar and share his expertise with all of us! Phil is the very one that got us so interested in the circular economy and inspired the concept of Ignite. He works tirelessly to champion recycling, reducing our carbon footprint, and educating consumers on behaviour changes and new habits to digitise the waste sector.
They are heavily involved with brand owners needs and wants to move into a circular economy and what exactly that would take to make it happen. Currently, the waste and recycling infrastructure is very linear. It is vital to understand behavioural habits, how products are recycled, and how we can increase the recycling rates has been the main drive at Polytag.
They have integrated unique PAC codes (Product Assigned Code) into over 120 different plastic packaging and products, at the point of their production, that allows them to track this plastic from the manufacturer to the consumer to the recycling plant. The technology has the potential to create a circular plastic economy, but only if consumers are willing to adopt the technology and process.
Because of their awesome work, consumers now have the opportunity to better separate different types of plastics and have them collected by PolyTag; allowing the waste to be more efficiently recycled. The momentum is gaining on this initiative, the future is bright for them as they are becoming more involved with government legislation for circular recovery from the producer, retailer, consumer and recycler.
Our work with the World Resources Institute is another great example of how collaboration can lend itself quite nicely to green recovery. Terramatch, is a web platform, as well as a, react native app, backed by WRI research. TerraMatch is the “Match.com” for restoration, connecting project managers that wanted to complete restoration projects with organisations that wanted to fund these types of projects.
To get a project funded, project developers create a pitch on the platform, outlining their goals for the project and providing a range of details about the type of restoration they are working on. Organisations can then browse project pitches and identify those that meet their funding objectives to reach out to and connect with.
Once both parties had either found a project they wanted to fund or a funder they wanted to help with their project, they could then match and connect via the platform. Once they each have one another’s contact details, this can then be taken offline and managed.
And we are so excited to report, that we have had our first “match”!
Future of charity
We see this sector having a big impact in 2021. This last year has had a marked impact on charities and fundraising efforts, but there was an overwhelmingly positive approach to wanting to try new ways to engage with donors and revolution fundraising for the future. The pandemic has certainly driven a long-needed change in the sector.
We were lucky enough to speak with Aimée Bryan, Partnerships and Marketing Director at Crisis, all about the amazing work she does! She is working to push ways to end homelessness. The pandemic has really showcased how large of a scale this problem is and cannot be ignored. People are now more aware than ever and want to engage and help. That’s where they come in to scout for really exciting start-ups to invest in and incubate and really change the way homelessness is viewed, and ultimately do Crisis out of business!
They think about their charity in the way of making it extinct by building a sustainable arm of their own business. The number of start-ups that are looking for work in the ‘for good’ space is just incredible, so it’s looking like Aimée’s goal for Crisis might just become a reality!
Last event of 2020
Our last event of 2020 was hands down the best yet! We have loved reaching you all through your laptops this year, and will see you loads more in the new year!
Our next event is the 26th of January, about ‘Innovation For Good” – Make sure you don’t miss it!
Published on December 11, 2020, last updated on March 31, 2021
