Empowering people for the ecological transition / leisure
Photo by Alena Koval
A few months ago, following a conference on the prospects and challenges of the tourism and cultural sectors - before COVID-19 -, I asked myself the question about what would be an ideal world for me today: a world without problems of food, energy, transport, with an abundance of biodiversity and without pollution. That would be beautiful and perfect! It was a dream!
I woke up and saw around me that people, for the most part, shared this ideal, but they also found -like I did-, that there was a big gap between this ideal universe and reality, and this despite the announcements and promises made by the authorities, governments, businesses, political parties, international organizations, ....
Most people are dissatisfied with the current situation and want to act in favor of environmental protection. It is ultimately the citizens of this world that will really make the difference. It is indeed for each individual to fight his/her own battle against climate change.
This is how and why ZeroCC was born: to get into action by giving people the ability to offset his/her carbon footprint related to the leisure activities he/she has decided to engage in. It could be a visit to the museum, an exhibition in a National Monument, or a sporting event in his/her hometown.
Everyday established and new companies are providing services to governments and corporations in the area of energy efficiency and carbon footprint calculation and offsets. Methodologies exist and they are deployed at large. At the level of the individual smartphone, apps are flooding the digital space providing carbon compensation services.
In ZeroCC we believe a third way could prove complementary to those mentioned above and result in larger and faster benefits in the fight against climate change. Our focus is on leisure activities, namely those involving culture, arts, and sports.
Our vision calls for a society in which every person will manage its own environmental footprint, be it carbon, biodiversity or waste.
“Give us the tools and we will do the job” said Sir Winston Churchill. ZeroCC sees it as its mission to provide digital and collaborative tools that will make the ecological transition a reality for each person.
Our first service concerns climate change.
ZeroCC stands for “zero-carbon, certified” how does it work?
All leisure activity institutions are aware that the sustainability of the business needs to be aligned with the sustainability efforts made all around them. They are increasingly aware of their energy consumption, they make energy efficiency efforts a “must do” in their priorities and will inevitably translate the result of the above into a carbon footprint. At some point, all of them will have carbon targets.
By calculating the carbon footprint generated by an average visitor, we can propose to all visitors the possibility to fund the compensation of such a carbon footprint equivalent at the time of booking or purchasing a ticket online, in a seamless transaction and as part of the ordinary e-ticketing process.
In this way the customer is empowered to manage his/her own carbon footprint; he/she becomes effectively engaged in the fight against climate change and the leisure activity institutions to pursue their zero-carbon trajectories.
Events, culture, sport, and leisure activities create positive emotions for visitors or spectators that we can engage in the fight against climate change. This is a market of 300 million visits per year in France and more than 3 billion visits per year worldwide.
We created ZeroCC in early 2020, we have established key partnerships and are starting our commercial campaign in July.
Stay tuned for more news on ZeroCC!
Cesar Ortiz Sotelo, MBA INSEAD 85D Founding Partner, HALLCROSS PARTNERS