More join support for Lord’s clean air phone app
King’s College London, GlaxoSmithKline, BMW and British Lung Foundation among organisations to support CleanSpace behaviour change app
A House of Lords member’s smartphone app aimed at changing consumer behaviour to reduce air pollution and exposure has gained support from a number of high profile businesses, institutions and charities.
Lord Paul Drayson’s CleanSpace phone app launched this week
Launched this week by former Labour Party minister Lord Paul Drayson, the CleanSpace app enables users to view pollution levels around them in order to monitor their exposure and plan cleaner routes of travel.
The app, developed by Lord Drayson’s start-up company Drayson Technologies, also records the amount of ‘clean’ journeys users take — such as walking, cycling or running — and issues them rewards from a number of partner firms and retailers.
The likes of King’s College London, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, car manufacturer BMW and charity the British Lung Foundation have all joined support for the app and the “social movement to clean up UK air”, Lord Drayson announced today (Septemeber 11).
Available for download on both Apple iOS and Android smartphones today, the apps shows high pollution zones in red, moderate in amber and low in green making the “true extent of air pollution levels” visible.
Then, according to Drayson Technologies, AI technology in the app recognises automatically when a CleanSpace user is making a journey without causing any pollution and records the journey as CleanMiles.
Every CleanMile journeyed is measured and used as social and commercial currency to redeem rewards with app partners such as retailer Halfords, gas and electricity firm First Utility, fashion retailer Boohoo, budget gym firm PayasUgym, publication subscription firm Readly.com, sport nutrition provider MaxiNutrition and others.
Support
Lord Drayson said:
“Our vision is to show that in this age of hyper-connectivity, armed with the right technology, we can all work together to tackle global problems like air pollution. We’ve created CleanSpace to connect people and organisations to help make the air cleaner, now we need people to run, walk and cycle with it.”
Carl Sanderson, BMW i said: “BMW i is recognised as the industry leader when it comes to sustainable mobility. The BMW range of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are the most advanced on the market but furthermore, they are produced through a sustainable production chain making it a virtuous circle. We are partnering with CleanSpace because we firmly believe that technology and the people using it can ultimately drive change, and deliver the answer to air quality in the UK.”
Charities
The British Lung Foundation, Sustrans and Earathwatch have all joined as charity partners of CleanSpace.
Dr Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation said: “Road traffic pollution is a major cause of ill-health in this country, impairing child lung development, worsening symptoms for people living with conditions like asthma and COPD, and even known as a cause of lung cancer. The CleanSpace app helps fight these health hazards on three fronts: by raising awareness of pollution as a problem, by helping people avoid polluted areas, and by encouraging active travel to keep people fit and reduce harmful vehicle emissions. By using innovative thinking to encourage mass action, CleanSpace could prove a real game-changer in the fight to clean up the air we breathe”.