29.01.21 | Steps towards Zero Waste

Each year up to 130,000 tonnes of plastic waste will find its way into our waterways. It even ends up in the food chain and back on our plates!

A recent Australian study suggests that people are eating about 2000 tiny pieces of plastic every week. Becoming aware of your consumption habits, and reducing your waste is an important step in addressing this issue.

Whilst the term ‘zero’ in ‘zero waste’ suggests that sending nothing to landfill is the ultimate goal, most people in the zero waste movement acknowledge that generating absolutely no waste is unrealistic, and that a ‘low-waste’ lifestyle is much more achievable.

---

What are the principles of Zero Waste Living?

On average only 9% of plastic waste is recycled in Australia, so the best way to reduce the amount that ends up in landfill and waterways is to consume less whenever possible. The principles of leading a zero waste lifestyle extend far beyond just plastic though.

In the book Zero Waste Living, author Bea Johnson shares 5 principles for living a zero waste lifestyle:

1. Refuse what you don’t need

2. Reduce what you already use & can’t refuse

3. Reuse and repair

4. Recycle

5. Rot (or compost)

Remember: it’s not about being perfect. Everyone’s situation and lifestyle is different, so just do the best that you can with the resources that you have.

---

Like to learn more?

Try out our free Zero Waste 101 program for a detailed breakdown of these principles,

as well as:

📝 Tips on how to do a waste audit at home 📝

🥤 Practical alternatives to common single use items 🥤

🛒 Going plastic-free, bulk food shopping 🛒

💡 Our recommended online communities for inspiration and ideas 💡

Check it out here

---

Don't have One Small Step yet? Download it for free today!

---

Thanks so much for your support! If you have any questions, feel free to email us at info@onesmallstepapp.com.

Pass it on 👉

If you liked this update, and found it valuable, forward it on to a friend!

We've got big news 🌏

In a few short months, we’ve had 8000 downloads, been featured by Apple as their App of the Day and helped thousands of Australians reduce their carbon footprints. One Small Step users have saved 620,000 kilos of greenhouse gases, about the same as planting 10,000 trees. But this is a drop in the bucket compared to what’s coming. 

Our purpose is to support you and millions of others to get their personal carbon emissions down to the United Nations’ 2050 goal of 2 tonnes of CO2e per year. 

To achieve this, we've set ourselves the ultimate goal of growing our community to the same number of active users as FitBit. For reference, that's about 28 million users. Even if these users only get part-way through our programs, reducing their annual footprints by 6 tonnes on average, we'd be able to achieve the same carbon impact as closing down 40 coal-fired power stations[1].

It's ambitious. But, we think we can do it.

That's why today, we're introducing a One Small Step Premium Membership. Getting in early as a Premium member means you’ll help rapidly scale our environmental impact and unlock features to help you, and millions of others, become a Sustainability Pro.

What are the new features?

Green habits, impact forecasts & Pro programs

Introducing 'Habits'

‘Habits’ makes it easy and achievable for you to build positive environmental behaviours into your daily life, like riding your bike instead of driving, and eating a vegan meal. We know that it can be tricky to make certain habits stick, so this tool helps you to:

🏆 set your own weekly goals or go with our recommended defaults

📈 see your forecast impact for each of your habits; and 

🔔 customise your own reminders to prompt yourself to take action during the week.

The app also provides a bit of coaching along the way, helping you adjust your weekly targets to build momentum until you’ve mastered a habit. 

Track 1 for Free, Track All on Pro

Users of the free app can access ‘Habits’ too, but Premium members get unlimited access to all habits and can track multiple habits simultaneously.

Unlimited access to Pro programs

As a Premium member, you get unlimited access to the full library of sustainability programs. All the current programs will still be available in the free version of the app though, with many more free programs to come.  Currently, there are two brand new Pro programs: 🏠  A worm farm for any space - Helps you to set up an award-winning worm farm you can keep indoors. 👕  Green your laundry - A super quick, high impact program that helps you to reduce energy consumption from washing and drying your laundry. 

---

The roadmap ahead

This is just the start! Soon, we’ll be adding:

💰 Special deals and discounts from ethical green businesses that give Pro users discounts on energy, waste, and carbon reduction tools. 

📈 An improved progression system for all users that allows you to do multiple programs at once, with much clearer displays to help you understand your progress, your carbon footprint breakdown, and your personal sustainability roadmap.

👑 Premium gamified features like streaks, badges, and mini-competitions so that you can harness your motivation and get your friends involved too.

---

What your Premium Membership will help us do

Getting in early as a Premium member means you can provide material support to help ensure we achieve our goal.

Specifically, subscription income will contribute to:

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Reaching more people - Through marketing, we’ll be able to get more users on board (we can sign up roughly 2 additional users a month for every $5 payment).

🌏 Adding better programs - We’ll get more resources in the team to grow our library of sustainability programs more quickly. 

🌟 Improving and adding better features - Using data-driven insights, we’ll be able to build the most effective tools to support users to make pro-environmental changes.

---

Want to support us by becoming a Premium Member?

Monthly

$4.99/month. First 7 days free. Enjoy unlimited access to the 'Habits' tool, and our Pro programs.

Recurring monthly payment. Cancel any time.

Open this link on your phone:

Try for free and subscribe

---

Annual

$59.99/year. First 7 days free. Enjoy unlimited access to the 'Habits' tool, and our Pro programs.

Recurring monthly payment. Cancel any time.

Open this link on your phone:

Try free and subscribe

---

Lifetime Membership

$229.99 A one-off, set and forget payment to get full access to all the app’s current & future Pro Features and programs, forever. We think this is great value and will be the highest impact option if you’re keen to support our work.

Open this link on your phone:

Become a Lifetime Member today

---

Want to try it out first?

You get a 7-day free trial when you sign up for a Monthly or Annual subscription. And don't worry, you can cancel anytime! You can also check out the habit tool in the free app before deciding to subscribe. Open these links on your phone:

Check out the 7-day free trial or Take me to the Habits tool

---

Finally, a huge thank you to all of you who have already shown your support by downloading the app, sharing it with your friends, and sending us your feedback. Not everyone can afford a subscription at the moment and that’s completely understandable and okay. Just by being a part of this, and working hard to reduce your impact on the environment, you are making a difference.

P.S. Our Terms of Service have now been updated! We have added new terms relating to Premium Subscriptions. You can check these changes out by heading to our Terms & Conditions page here. P.P.S. If you open any of the links above on your phone and can't see the subscriptions screen or the new Habits tool, make sure you've updated to the latest version of the app.

---

Reference: This '40 coal fired power stations' indicative figure takes the average per capita carbon emissions footprint of 18 tonnes as a baseline, and assumes that 28 million users (the same number of active users as FitBit in Dec 2018) are able to reduce their personal annual carbon footprints by 6 tonnes each on average. This emissions saving, multiplied by the number of active users, equals 168 million tonnes of CO2e. Based on the US Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, this is equivalent to the emissions produced by 43.2 U.S. coal-fired power stations annually. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator

---

21.08.20 | CO2 Savings & App Updates

Welcome to our first monthly update! Since our launch in May, our team has made some major design updates to the app, and our community is projected to save more than 350 tonnes of emissions this year! We're excited to see the progress that we've made so far, but we need your help to improve the app so we can support people — just like you — to make an even greater environmental impact.  Read on to find out more about our new app features, our community impact and how you can help us out. If you'd like to know more about our purpose and future plans, we've rounded up some interesting resources for you to check out too. We hope you enjoy! 🌏

Check out our new app features

⭐️ Less text-heavy content, more rewarding experience- We’ve streamlined the content in the steps to make it more enjoyable for you to read through our programs and make progress in the app.

👆 To scroll or to swipe? Steps are now waaay easier to navigate! Choose between swiping through the steps to read it Instagram Stories-style or switch to Scroll View to read it like a blog post.

📄 Links, all in one place- Easily find the resources provided in the steps of each challenge by heading to the new Links tab.

📹 Videos- we’ve added video functionality to the app. We have a few programs with embedded videos to make them more engaging and will be adding more if people like this feature.

✅ Quickly assess your actions- You can now mark all steps in a challenge as complete, not relevant or ‘I already do this’ 

Ready to test it out? 

If you haven't already, you can download and sign up to the app by heading to the links below.

Once you've downloaded

• Go to the ‘Browse’ tab and choose a program

• Press on the ‘Challenge’ icon.

• Press on the ‘Step’ cards to see the new designs and go through the content. 

• Let us know your thoughts by filling out our Typeform survey below.

Send us your feedback

📢 Calling all City of Sydney council residents

We need your help!

We’re applying for an Innovation Project grant with the City of Sydney, to run an impact evaluation of the effectiveness of the One Small Step app, targeting residents of the City of Sydney council. The project will start in January 2021 if we’re successful in our application. We’re aiming to reach 20,000 City of Sydney residents in that time. 

Send us your support 

If you love what we’re doing with One Small Step, want to see this project happen and live in the City of Sydney area, please email us a quick letter of support with your full name and your home address in City of Sydney (you can remove your street number if you like — we won’t share this with anyone apart from the grant administrators). 

Email us now

🌳 Our community impact

So far, our community is expected to save an estimated 335,000kg of carbon emissions this year. Just over 15,000 trees absorb the same amount of CO2 annually 🌎 This is a great early result, but it’s just the starting point. If you want to get a breakdown of our impact figures, head to our community impact page.

Go to community impact page

Check out One Small Step in the news

Let's #ParkItForThePlanet next Wednesday 26 August Next week, we're swapping our cars for a local bike ride around town! We've collaborated with Bicycle Network on our 'On yer bike!' program to help you get rolling if you haven't ridden your bike in a while. Get more info

Listen to One Small Step CEO, Lily, on the Shape The System podcast In this podcast episode, Lily goes in-depth about how our app uses behavioural science to make it easy for people to adopt green habits and reduce their carbon footprints. Listen to the episode

Learn about our purpose & future plans in this Bank Australia article “It’s so important that we can actually connect people’s behaviour with their real-time impact, and the more we do that, the more compelling it is for people to use One Small Step.” Check out the full article below. Read more

Thanks so much for your support, and we hope you enjoyed this monthly update! If you have any questions, feel free to email us at info@onesmallstepapp.com. Catch you next month!

P.S. We’re currently building a habit tracking tool and we can’t wait to show it to you! Keep your eyes peeled for next month's newsletter to stay updated.

Pass it on 👉

If you liked this update, and found it valuable, forward it on to a friend!