It's coming home

Mother and child at table in garden making objects out of recycled materials. The father is walking towards them intrigued
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It's coming home

By Alex Robinson, 27th June 2024

What support do households need to help the UK meet its net zero targets – and how can businesses and government help to provide it? A major new collaborative campaign called Home Advantage is here to find out.

Most people are concerned about climate change and want to do something about it. They're taking action in hundreds of different ways, from marching on Westminster to changing what they put in their shopping baskets.

But when it comes to our home lives, it can be hard to know what makes the most difference and, in some areas, how to get started.

In a nutshell

I’ve struggled to figure out some things myself. How do you make family finances as green as possible? How do you cut down on the packaging that seems to mount up every week in a family of five? What next for our aging boiler?

Through Home Advantage, we'll work with 150 households to understand the opportunities and barriers to making sustainable choices, from food to finance.

Our participating households will give things a go and spark new ideas too.

And we’ll take our insights and turn them our insights into action: we’re going to test behaviour change interventions, messaging, and possible policy change scenarios too.

At the end of our 11-week trial we’ll have:

  • A guide to support households to live more sustainably and save money
  • A set of insights that we can use to engage policymakers and businesses to offer people effective support.

We’re bringing together a coalition of companies to back the initiative, starting with B&Q, Barratt Developments, Starbucks, TSB and Unilever.

The businesses involved will share insights to inform the project, and test ideas to help customers save money and live more sustainably.

We hope to welcome more over the coming weeks, so do get in touch if you’re interested in taking part.

Mother and child smiling sat opposite two adults at a dining room table

The big idea

While government and business have the lion’s share of responsibility in reducing carbon emissions and waste, households have a crucial part to play.

Around one-third of the emissions reductions needed before 2035 to meet the UK’s net zero goal are down to the choices made by individuals and households (UK Climate Change Committee, 2022). We know that most people care about climate change and want to do their bit to tackle it.

But it’s not always easy to do the right thing: from the stubbornness of food waste to the costs and confusion surrounding heat pumps, it’s clear that people need more support.

At Hubbub, we’ve built up deep expertise in engaging with the public to inspire sustainable choices, from our long-term behaviour change project with IKEA, Live LAGOM, to our annual Halloween food waste campaign, Eat Your Pumpkin – and much, much more.

Home Advantage is going to bring much of our work together, looking at a wide range of relevant topics, including energy, food, consumption of goods and energy, and green finance.

We’ll provide solutions aimed at helping people to save money, helping to demonstrate that sustainability isn’t an expensive luxury. And we’ll identify the systemic barriers that business and government can remove through legislation and incentives.

We’re about to begin our research phase, working with our partners to understand what insight they have and what the biggest gaps are.

Through Home Advantage, we aim to create a blueprint for how we can harness the collective potential of household influence. For the businesses involved, it’s a chance to be part of a pioneering campaign that will offer practical support to the public and to every organisation seeking to work with UK households to make greener choices.

If that sounds like something you’d like to be part of, please get in touch.

Are you a business that wants to collaborate?

If you have a challenge to share, or want to get involved with our work, we'd love to hear from you.

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