The ECO coin: The future currency of sustainable action?

In the Netherlands there’s an idea that’s starting to take shape, an idea with the hope to fuel the next generation of sustainability.

Based in Amsterdam, Next Nature Network is an organisation that, in their own words “is the international network for anyone interested to join the debate on our future – in which nature and technology are fusing”.

They run multiple projects worldwide in an effort to usher in the next age of technology, nature and sustainability. One of these projects is just beginning to take shape and promises to revolutionise the way in which we connect with conservation and sustainability. This is the ECO coin.

The idea is to reward people for their sustainable actions, essentially changing the basic premise of sustainability from a moral choice, to both a moral and economic one. In theory, the way it would work is that for every sustainable action a person performs they are rewarded with a certain amount of ECO coins, depending on the action.

These can then be spent in a variety of ways, economically incentivising those to choose to engage with the currency. I recently spoke to Lewis Just, the project lead, about the ECO coin, what stage they are at and the potential it holds; here’s what he had to say.

“The ECO coin is a sustainable currency for planet earth. This can work in many different ways and in different contexts, so if we look at a forest it has only economic value when you cut it down.

“People are incentivised to go and cut it down, but no one is paying another to go out there and grow the forests. We think that’s wrong and we want to flip that on its head.”

It’s unrealistic to pay people with cash or bank transfers, therefore the ECO coin functions as a digital currency that can then be spent on, what they’ve termed, ‘green’ products.

“You spend them on sustainable things, usually it’s not actually things but it’s experiences, or access or kind of a reputational thing, because they are more sustainable.”

Lewis’s team have been working on partnerships with various organisations they believe hold similar values to themselves and try to work deals between them in mutually beneficial ways.

“We’re currently in that stage of really building bridges and building this larger network. We do want to be quite careful of who we partner with because we want them to really align with our mission, [but] it needs to work on an economic basis for them also.

“Whether that’s driving new business to their shops, a way to promote, whether it’s a way to network, whether it’s a way to really connect with their customers on a deeper level. We are still quite early on in our process, but I think we’re building a solid proposition for companies to really get involved with this.”

The project has already been trialled in two ‘living-labs’ at festivals this summer, Digital Festival and Welcome to The Village, both based in the Netherlands. At these festivals the team successfully created a system where by people can both earn and spend ECO coins. So far over 50,000 people have been able to engage with the currency.

“We see these festivals as a great kind of testing point, because they are kind of micro economies in a way.

“We started experimenting there, looking at how festivals can actually engage their audiences because many of them want to become one hundred percent circular and sustainable [in the near future].”

These trials highlight the creativity that goes into a project like this, from the sort of sustainable actions that can earn ECO coins, to the rewards available to those who do.

“[These actions] can vary wildly, we had a really nice example at Welcome to The Village where when they were building one of the new stages they had a lot of wood cut-offs, we collected that waste and we let festival goers build birdhouses from them so that we could also leave them on the train after we left.

“We had a secret club on the festival where you could only get into the club if you had so many ECO coins. We also had exclusive music tracks, then we had products [such as] water bottles, that’s more sustainable than having lots and lots of plastic cups to use.”

There are still problems facing the team that are hindering their progress. They aren’t sure exactly how they will be able to fund these systems in multiple countries. But steps are being made in the right direction and it may just be a case of trial and error until they have a system they are happy with.

Verification of each action was a issue that Lewis and his team were debating, but the trials seem to have highlighted several efficient methods. Firstly, smart integration, this involves using IOTs to track behaviour, for example an office recycling bin recording when it is used and that record being used to verify an individuals actions. They have also been looking at ECO inspectors, who essentially 'mine' sustainable actions by verifying them in real life.

There are more trials coming up throughout Europe, looking at different environments, including office spaces and hotels, with the intention of both ironing out these problems and understanding the way in which the ECO coin can translate to all areas of life.

Once the solutions to these issues have been found, the plan is to role out ECO coin systems all over the world and build the communities behind them in an effort to embed the culture across society. When the communities have built up strong enough in each individual system and engagement has peaked, the plan is to then link all the systems to form one worldwide network.

“It becomes really powerful when you can farm an Eco Coin at your office by biking there and then you can spend it at the festival on something that you want to do.

“So that’s the next stage, to link these initiatives up and then launch it as a crypto currency so that it becomes this peer-to-peer open source platform where anyone, anywhere in the world can start earning and spending Eco Coin’s.

“We always have this idea that in 40 years a kid will turn to his parents and say, ‘what was the world like without the Eco Coin?’. It might happen in the next five years, 10 years. The speed is partly down to how quickly we can move and partly down to how willing people are to really engage and accept with this, and so far from the tests we’ve had very positive reviews. That gives us a lot of motivation to say ‘Okay, let’s bring this to the next level’.”

For more information about the development of the ECO coin and any trials that may be happening near you, you can visit their website at www.ecocoin.com or keep up with this website. New World Man, at the forefront of environmental conservation and sustainability.