How Bad Are Bananas – The Big Carbon Footprint Game

All of our games are for those who wish to find a different way to educate about the climate crisis and carbon footprints. You could be a primary or secondary teacher, a trainer, facilitator or environmental educator at a charity.

You don’t need to have any prior knowledge of carbon footprints to play the game with others. All you need is a willingness to learn and read the ‘How Bad are Bananas?’ book as well as some facilitation experience or confidence (if you’re low on experience or confidence, our games have been shown to help facilitators develop both).

Delivering messages, teaching new things and trying to change behaviours is a continuous battle.

But, what if it didn’t need to be…

The Small Carbon Footprint game brings the ‘wow’ back into learning and excitement into engaging with people. The game encourages and creates a connection with your learners that far too often other learning methods ignore.

By having cards in the game that represent everyday items that everyone has consumed (food, shoes, clothes, tech, cars) learners can identify and are able to resonate with the messages the game teaches. The critical thinking learners can develop has the ability (in some of them) to provide the first gateway into the world of sustainability and climate action. Everybody leaves having learnt something new and most people are shocked by the things the game can show them and many wish to go on to act on what they’ve learnt.

The game is straightforward and easy to use and the Carbon Academy provides the facilitation training and learning necessary to play with your users straight away and we feel there is no better way for you to perfect your facilitation skills than play with learners straight away.

Unique
There is no other game like this on the market.

Sector leading research
Mike’s book ‘How Bad are Bananas?’ underpins all data used in the game and is the most up-to-date compendium of carbon footprint research in the UK.

Expert facilitators
We have our 6 years of game facilitation experience to share with you and when your facilitation is right, the game will ‘wow’ your audiences into engaging with your sustainability or climate action initiatives.

Accessible learning style
Our games are unique because they help the user to personally identify with the issues rather than coming to the learning out of context. This style of learning makes for a more accessible and fun approach which has a lasting effect on the learner.

Research has shown that children can recall far better details of games they have played than most formal learning they receive. Using games as a way of learning works very effectively as they engage players in multiple different ways simultaneously.

As Kolb (1984) outlined in his theory of experiential learning, we all learn in multiple different ways (active learning, planning, theorising, reflection) and games are very good at engaging multiple learning capacities simultaneously. Marketeers know that we love receiving prizes, recognition, badges and rewards for doing (or not doing!) stuff. This trend for gamification has taken off and is now all around us!

The only way our game is different is that it’s a game NOT JUST gamified learning. By building on societies love of games, we aim to create even more intrinsic motivation for people to engage with the game than just the extrinsic motivation to collect rewards.

Anyone and everyone! Your pupils, students, staff, suppliers, customers, C-suite, managers, general public, small and large businesses.
Show that you understand climate change and show how important engagement and learning is to all of your stakeholders.

The BIG carbon footprint game is perfect for events, outreach work and your everyday carbon literacy education. Unlike the smaller games, the original game is difficult to miss when it pops up in different places! Its time for us to educate everyone on the climate crisis and this is the perfect tool for doing just that!

Yes you can, but not via the shop – please talk to us about your needs and we can work out shipping costs first and quote you with something more accurate.

Yes! Although we will need you to cover appropriate travel and time expenses if we have to travel a long way to get to you and just for the record we travel VERY slowly (i.e. we avoid flying)!

If you rent the BIG game for a day, you get a trained and experienced facilitator as part of the price and we can work together on the best way of using the time for the greatest impact with your learners or for your event.

Our original and highly eye-catching BIG carbon footprint game is the best way to start carbon conversations with anybody! It’s a carbon conversation tool, a critical thinking developer, and a fun game all delivered in an easily digestible format. The 4m wide by 3m high game wall is supported by infographics that magnetise your audience towards you for engagement! There is no escape! LOL! The large print ‘How Bad are Bananas?’ side caps intrigue some players to come and find out the answer to the question (Loughborough University students were gutted bananas might be ‘bad’! But are they?! That’d be telling!).

From the selected pack of cards, players are invited to compare 5 paired items, and in each pair guess which item has the higher carbon footprint. Sometimes it’s easy (an eco-child vs an average child) sometimes it’s pretty tricky (the papertowel vs. the hand-dryer) and sometimes it can be a very random pairing (a pair of jeans vs. 1 kg of organic, vine-grown cherry tomatoes from the UK).

The comparisons are designed to get players thinking about where items come from, what makes up their carbon footprint and encourages them to use their own experiences of the world to reach an answer. The skill is in the delivery of the facilitator, and we have ALL the support you might need (the Carbon Academy AND Carbon Literacy courses) to become a GREAT facilitator of the game.

With every game you buy you will receive 1x user licence to access ‘The Carbon Academy’ which helps you to learn at your own pace how to confidently and effectively facilitate the game with your own players. You will need 3 hours+ to work through The Carbon Academy although we signpost you to lots of further reading and learning to help you be an even better game facilitator.

Whilst the Carbon Academy, helps to set the scene on the climate crisis, the main focus is on helping you to become a confident and skilled facilitator of the BIG Carbon Footprint Game.

With every copy of the BIG Carbon Footprint game purchased, you receive:

• 80 durable playing cards printed on 100% recycled and recyclable board and provided in a snug-fitting box.
• The full 3m x 4m game playing wall (full colour) in cardboard carry cases and the connecting parts to put it all together (including instructions for putting it up).
• 1x ‘How Bad are Bananas?’ The Carbon Footprint of Everything book (2020 edition) by Prof Mike Berners-Lee.
• 1x user licences for ‘The Carbon Academy’ to give you online training to teach you how to play with others for best effect.
• A recommended optional day of face-to-face or online facilitation training to support you in delivering the game.

Fun, eye-catching, unforgettable! This is the only behaviour changing tool that puts ‘fun’ as its main objective. Other climate learning can often create a disconnect between learning and individuals and their actions but the BIG Carbon Footprint game firmly connects actions, choices and behaviours together to empower individuals to want to make impactful choices and take action.

A giant eye-catching design, you’re not going to miss an enormous yellow game shouting ‘How Bad are Bananas?’ from the other side of the room and therefore won’t forget it or its lessons in a hurry!

We have a sliding scale of costs for rentals of the big game for different clients. Our work with corporates helps us to give back to the schools and charities sector with our variable pricing. So you know you’re giving something back as a business rental of the game.

Please contact us for more information

Maybe! We don’t currently offer a list price for physical rental of the game outside of England, Scotland or Wales. You would have to pay for travel time and the costs to travel without flying if you’d like us to be at your event. Just drop us a query to our main info@ address and we’ll provide a quote. It is possible to deliver virtual rentals of the game but we still recommend this is done face-to-face for best effect.

Unfortunately, yes it is possible to play the game badly and that’s why we put the Carbon Academy together to help you learn the best techniques for playing the game with others. We do find that there is no other learning like having a go at playing with others.

We have a sliding scale of costs of the big game for different clients. Our work with corporates helps us to give back to the schools and charities sector with our variable pricing. So you know you’re giving something back as a corporate buyer of the game.

Approach us to get a quote, which is tailored to your needs.

Don’t forget you can rent our BIG game too (with a facilitator) if you’d like us to show up with a copy of the game and play with your different audiences for just a day or two. Just get in touch and we’ll work a price out for you.

EVENTS
We rent our BIG game to clients who have green/ environment/ climate days or events they are celebrating or promoting. We can adapt what we do to train up some of your stakeholders in a workshop in the morning and then get them to play with other people later in the day to maximise the impact of the game.

LEARNING & COMPETITIONS
We can set-up a series of workshops so you can have your staff or stakeholders trained up in groups for an hour for in-depth carbon learning. Feedback on this format so far is “we want more!”. Add in a competitive element and have a play-off of your top two teams at the end of the day. Throw in some copies of the How Bad are Bananas? books and you have ethical prizes to give away to the winners!

LAUNCHES
Launch your policies, strategies and plans or engagement programmes with a fun and engaging activity

STAFF GATHERINGS
We cover staff training days, Christmas parties and away days – ask us for more details dependent on your own specific needs and numbers of participants

GREATER ACCESSIBILITY
If you like our BIG carbon footprint game for your outreach and engagement activities, you might like to add in a set of our small games. This means you can take a copy with you wherever you go, just sling a copy in a bag and play in meetings (face-to-face and online!).

MORE CONFIDENCE OR LEARNING
If you want to learn more about climate change to support your facilitation of the game then throw in a voucher for a 1 day face-to-face or an online Carbon Literacy course to help develop your confidence.