Buy Nothing Project

The Buy Nothing Project is a global network of hyper-local gift economies, founded in 2013. It uses a digital platform and mobile app to enable people to give away for free unwanted items and skills within local communities, fostering connections, circulating value, and reducing waste. The network transacts around 2.5 million gifts per month over 230,000 communities, 10 million neighbors with 13,000 volunteers.

• circular economy
• community
• localization
• mutual aid

Solutions, the game

Solutions, the game, is a collaborative online and physical board game focused on addressing climate change. Faced by the threat of rising temperatures, teams must collaborate and work together to deploy unique and surprising climate solutions to avoid climate catastrophe. Game events are based on cutting-edge research developed by Project Drawdown, and focused on real life climate issues, providing fun and team building while learning all about the world's leading climate solutions. Solutions sells to organizations, community and political groups and supports educators in teaching skills associated with collaboration, strategy, and prioritization, while keeping it fun and informative.

• collaboration
• community
• digital platforms
• edtech
• education
• strategy

Hylo

Hylo is a community-led, prosocial coordination platform for purpose-driven groups. It is open-source, non-profit, and driven by participatory design with real-world groups at the forefront of regenerative agriculture, community resilience, peer learning, equity, inclusive capital, and place-based organizing. Hylo features a resilient constellation of relationships marked by trust and accountability, with clear agreements including protocols for decision making, distributing resources, and handling conflict. The platform has many unique aspects such as nested groups and cross-group posting, which lead to emergent cooperation between groups, generating broader coalitions with more power to address common goals. Hylo's community leaders and facilitators help guide member groups on best practices in community stewardship. Hylo is built through relationship-driven development, involving collaboration with the community to co-design tools to amplify their work.

• cloud
• community
• data
• digital platforms

Plastic Bank

Plastic Bank is a for-profit social enterprise whose model is designed to reduce plastic pollution and alleviate poverty in developing countries. It does this by establishing plastic collection centers where communities exchange plastic waste as currency for income and life-improving benefits such as income, zero-interest loans, education, or other social benefits. Exchanges are recorded through their proprietary blockchain-secured platform, enabling traceable collection, secured income, and verified reporting. The collected material is processed into Social Plastic® feedstock for reuse in products and packaging. The company re-invests the majority of its profits into collection benefits, development and maintenance of recycling infrastructure, and technology development for material traceability for a greater social, environmental, and economic impact.

• blockchain
• community
• credits
• digital platforms
• digital wallets
• fintech
• plastics
• pollution