Eco Rewards’ unique scheme offers rewards and incentives to promote greener travel, healthier lifestyle choices, and reduce carbon footprint, driving long-term behaviour change and making it easier to choose sustainable travel options. The technology platform supports green and active journey reporting, carbon savings calculator, league tables, access to journey planners, ability to buy tickets and access different transport services.
The Challenge:
Green and active travel choices necessitate more preparation and sometimes an earlier start compared to driving. To help people change their travel behaviour for their health and environment, it needs to be easier to plan a journey and pay for transport services.
Regular exercise provides significant benefits to physical and mental health. In adults, physical activity contributes to prevention and management of noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety. In children and adolescents, physical activity promotes bone health, encourages healthy growth and improved motor and cognitive development (WHO, 2024). Wider benefits include improved learning and attainment, increased productivity in the workplace / school, better resilience, improved sleep, and improved social skills (PHE, 2020).
Active travel, that is walking or cycling to work or the shops and using public transport, can offer a convenient, accessible, and more affordable way for individuals and groups to increase their physical activity levels.
Participating in active travel also brings about a multitude of environmental benefits, supporting a reduction in climate change, congestion, traffic, and pollution.
The Impact:
Bracknell Forest Council chose MaaStran and Eco Rewards to develop, implement, operate and maintain an incentive scheme to encourage green and active travel choices by Bracknell residents and people working or studying in the borough. Eco Rewards worked with Public Health to encourage communities to be more active and physically healthy, as well as including strong messages on the environment and climate change.
Eco Rewards have developed marketing and reward incentives, and successfully rolled out for schools, residents, and businesses across the borough. This unique scheme is helping educate and encourage residents to make less car journeys and use healthier greener modes of travel. Eco Rewards have achieved significant take up, demonstrating behavioural shift from car use to walking, cycling, wheeling and public transport, and secured ongoing rewards with over 2000 major online retailers.
Eco Rewards is engaging with a range of communities including over 20 schools in the borough, BID businesses, employers, health centres and community groups to help tackle rising levels of inactivity and obesity, and to improve physical and mental health by encouraging people to get out walking and cycling more.
With Bracknell Forest Council, Eco Rewards have exceeded targets to reach, uptake and change behaviour. A recent report to Bracknell Forest Council showed the growth in members and the number of active and green journeys reported. The scheme demonstrated an average 49% behavioural switch away from driving, over 183 tonnes aggregated carbon saving compared to driving and over 606,000 green miles reported so far.
This innovative, proven green and active travel scheme which has demonstrated sustainable behavioural shift, motivates students, residents and visitors of all generations, and abilities to get out and enjoy the parks and attractions that Bracknell Forest has to offer. This scheme offers a long-term legacy and longer-term opportunities for public engagement and encourages a demonstrable increase in cycling/walking activity around the area into the future. In addition, the technology will provide a useful source of data and information on activity habits around Bracknell Forest.
The Eco Rewards App is transforming the way to plan, book, and record eco-friendly travels, with promising applications for Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in both urban and rural settings. The Eco Rewards App already has local journey planners built in, with maps and GPS locations, and links to bus and train services with real time information, where tickets can be purchased in advance.
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