Roaring idea to cut energy wastage in Singapore

Student campaign has 'Mother Earth' scaring people caught in the act
Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 27 Feb 10;

SURPRISED by the amount of energy wasted in Singapore, a group of five business school students have launched an online campaign to raise awareness about the issue.

The campaign, run by MBA students at the Nanyang Technological University, directs members of the public to a website (www.energyoffences.com) which features video clips of unsuspecting people caught in the act of wasting energy.

In each clip, a mystery Mother Earth character appears and roars at the culprit, who is usually in the midst of wasting energy. This results in sometimes amusing reactions.

'The principle behind the campaign is that Mother Earth is scared by the global energy consumption, so now she's come to scare you,' said Miss Jenny Costelloe, 34, who is from Britain.

'We are all international students and we are struck by how efficient Singapore is. Yet, it blasts out air-conditioning from malls and leaves the doors open, and its energy consumption is inefficient. We are hoping to get people to think about that.'

The group said the website was a 'social experiment to see if confronting people in a (hopefully) funny way will make them think twice about what they're doing. By sharing the clips of people's reactions, we aim to make people laugh, to make people think and, most importantly, to get people to change their behaviour'.

The students are hoping that people will start posting their own videos of energy being wasted.

So far, the website, which went live last month, has had more than 600 visitors and the Facebook group has more than 230 members.

Another student, Mr Noah Gunzinger from Switzerland, said: 'What we've found is that most people know that they're wasting energy in some simple way, but they always feel that they have an excuse. This is what we're trying to change; we can't always have an excuse!'

All 'victims' of the Mother Earth scare tactics received a thank you gift for allowing their video to be used on the website.