05 Grove: connectivity, redefined

Tags: Sustainability; Green Tech

Contributors: Fatimah El-Rashid; Matteo Guerrato; Pierre Muletier; Thomas Gossner
Date: IDE 2021
Theme: Low-Impact Living
Links: Website; E-mail

Social media platforms are under scrutiny over their impact on our planet’s climate and society’s digital wellbeing. 2020’s surge in online usage has scientists concerned about the climate impact of using the internet. Often overlooked because of its intangible nature, the internet has a larger carbon footprint - also known as digital carbon footprint - than the aviation industry.By 2030, internet traffic alone will account for 10% of global energy demand (equivalent to the United States’ net annual energy consumption). Today, 81% of internet traffic stems from video streaming and social networking platforms, whose services rely on ‘attention-hacking’ strategies to increase consumers’ time spent on their platforms to drive targeted ads. Not only are they destroying society’s digital wellbeing, but they are also fuelling climate change by encouraging unhealthy and unsustainable online habits.This begs the question: ‘How might we revamp social media to reduce carbon emissions and enhance digital wellbeing?’. Our final project, grove, is the answer. Click on our profile pages to find out more!

Grove is our answer

We want to reduce the climate impact of using the internet. grove is a green tech social media service that targets video streaming & social networking. It is designed to cut carbon emissions and form sustainable online habits.

Who are we?

We are a team of four future-oriented innovators studying MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering, jointly offered by the RCA and Imperial College London. Our mission is to help our world achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. That’s why our goal is to reduce the internet’s carbon footprint. Typically what we hear in the ‘carbon footprint’ discourse is an emphasis on it being the consumer’s responsibility rather than that of industries, despite being the major CO2 contributors.

As life-long friends, we will continue taking grove forward. We pride ourselves on being interdisciplinary, applying our backgrounds in environmental science to material engineering through to industrial design and business strategy. Our skills are complimentary ranging from research and analysis to storytelling, branding and marketing. Most importantly, we made sure to design a social media platform that we would proudly stand behind and use. Our decision-making and final design were informed by our cultural experiences - together, we are from 8 nationalities and lived in 16 countries - as well as our personal digital experiences - some of us have huge digital presence whereas others are completely off the digital grid.

Be part of our mission

We’d love for you to join us on our mission to regain control of our social media, of our wellbeing, and of our planet! Sign up at www.grove-social.com or contact us on [email protected].

Problem

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Journey

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Solution

Unlike existing platforms, you can access all forms of content on a single platform. Our ML-powered recommendation engine unlocks the entire internet to search for personalised content in the form of text, audio and video. We give less energy-intensive content like text and audio a visual advantage on the homepage in the form of larger thumbnails. By doing so, we subtly shift users away from video streaming.

You can consciously consume content by keeping track of your activities. Our AI is designed to seamlessly automate interest lists, giving users transparency on the themes being recommended to them. As such users are in full control of what they want to focus on and can engage in mindful consumption, limited excessive video streaming.

Potential impact

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