Our Story
Our story began in 2014...
Emma, our FutureWeWant founder had worked in the sustainability sector for many years and was frustrated at the lack of impactful climate learning tools on the market.
She had always loved the book ‘How Bad Are Bananas?’ by Professor Mike Berners-Lees and had even put some of the book’s facts on a giant ‘carbon cube’ as part of University of Leicester’s Go Green Week 2010.
But even though you couldn’t miss the giant cube, it wasn’t having the right impact- she was in a carbon footprint rut!
Something was missing…
The stars aligned
Then in 2014, the banana stars aligned, and Emma met Anja at London Southbank University.
Emma gave Anja a copy of the ‘How Bad Are Bananas?’ book and mentioned her carbon footprint frustrations.
She wanted to find a way of using the facts in the book to engage people in their own footprint impacts and learn and understand how to make positive changes towards the climate. She wanted a way of engaging people that wasn’t just a tick-box exercise but that would encourage them to think and act differently.
AND the Carbon Footprint Game was born!
The time must have been just ripe as Anja came up with a solution!
A very bananas solution
And just like that, Anja came up with a solution! It was simple; throw out everything we thought we knew about how to teach and engage people in climate science and instead focus on clear evidence, fun and of course bananas. Through gamified learning and the trusty ‘How Bad Are Bananas?’ book we had found the learning tool we wanted- our banana adventure had begun.
Accidental Entrepreneur
Overnight, Anja became an accidental entrepreneur. She won an enterprise competition at London Southbank University and was also highly commended at the Green Gown awards in 2015.
Our banana impact
Since then, we have continued to expand our banana impact. We have recruited new bananas to our team, developed a small carbon footprint game as a portable version to the original and even launched a digital version!
From Emma and Anja
‘Our favourite part of the game is that as a game facilitator you can see the instant impact you have on people. You can play with people who know very little or don’t really care but they leave excited as you have opened up this complex topic in a simple and non-preachy way’
