Gamifying sustainable garment usage: #30 wears
Insight & innovation.
I’m loving the innovative use of gamification linked to promoting greater garment usage and wear which was discussed by Alessandra Turra in her WWD.com column. The initiative links to Livia Firth’s #30wears campaign. The QR code enabled initiative connects brands with wearers and quantifies and rewards their reaching the goal of getting more than 30 wears out of new garments (the average is, depressingly c.10 wears). The QR code enables the wearer to share a Selfie of their first wear (to share on social media, announce intent and broadcast the initiative) and then subsequent wears’ selfies are logged in a digital Wear Me 30 Times account archive until the 30 wears mark is reached. At this point the sustainable wearer receives vouchers or free items to reward their behaviour, and their milestone is again celebrated in a social media share.
It’s a great, and very current way to deliver the all important ‘what’s in it for me’ that so many sustainable initiatives forget to include (a necessity for all but the most sustainable evangelists, still). Previous gamification of the likes of the Nissan Leaf’s ‘competitive’ gamification of Leaf owners’ driving behaviours, geared to achieving the best battery life amongst a Leaf-owning competing community, showed that putting the fun, challenge and reward into sustainable behaviours makes them so much more likely to be both complied with, and advocated for.
But it feels like this initiative should have some additional tiering challenges built in. Maybe version 2.0 might also gamify and reward the wearer for any of these complementary sustainable garment owning behaviours. For instance:
Incentivising upping the number of wears between washes?
Rewarding sharing wears with friends in the growing clothes sharing/leasing market/model
Rewarding switching to cold washes, choosing eco-detergents, and ditching the tumble dry
Celebrating mending or upcycling later in the garment’s life?
More wears goes a long way to mitigate the environmental cost of garment ownership but there’s a world of ancillary less world-kind behaviours that go hand-in-hand with wardrobe management. This is undoubtedly a great new initiative for the fashion industry and it will be brilliant to see it being taken up, shared and loved. But I hope it grows and takes on an even bigger meaning. I look forward hugely to hearing how it will evolve and grow and help to turn us all into ‘slow fashion keepers’ rather than ‘fast fashion hoarders and chuckers’.
Learn more: https://wwd.com/sustainability/innovation/gamification-boost-sustainable-consumption-new-app-1234642433/