A smart home pop-up in Australia, The New Joneses teaches visitors how lifestyle choices can have positive environmental and social impacts.
The New Joneses is a pop-up smart home on display for three weeks a year in Melbourne’s city center. Aside from showcasing eco-friendly furniture and appliances, The New Joneses educates visitors about how lifestyle choices, such as choice of bank or energy provider, affect the environment. The pop-up also offers fun engagement activities, like teaching visitors how to make their own worm farm in order to reduce waste and grow vegetables. The New Joneses engages a wide audience, from school kids to corporations and the media. Since its launch, 60,000 people have visited the home, and it has been featured on popular Australian television shows, exposing its sustainable solutions to a potential viewership of more than 500,000 people.
Consumers often feel disconnected from climate change action, as narratives are typically framed around fear and unavoidable disasters. Yet, research shows that messages are more effective when combined with information about solutions. The New Joneses presents these positive and tangible messages for visitors, offering actionable solutions for middle-class consumers in Australia.
Why you should care
Much of the textile industry produces waste at the manufacturing stage, primarily from off-cuts of fabric that can’t be used elsewhere. Estimates of total waste from off-cuts range from 40 to 120 billion square meters of fabric. Seljak is one small example of a company actively thinking about how to unlock this potential value source. So far the company estimates to have diverted 2,000kg of textile waste from ending up in landfill.
How the Global Goals are addressed
Global Health and Well-Being
Sustainable everyday choices are usually healthy choices too. Eating less meat and cycling to work are two of the New Joneses recommendations that form part of a healthy lifestyle and promote well-being for all ages.
Affordable and Clean Energy
The New Joneses recommends installing solar power and domestic battery solutions in order to secure affordable and clean energy.
Sustainable Cities and Communities
The New Joneses embraces the fact that individual choices can lead to collective change, which has the power to create sustainable communities.
Responsible Consumption and Production
Responsible consumption lies at the heart of all of the choices in the New Joneses Home, from sustainable toilet paper to electric cars.
Climate Action
Renewable energy production, emissions-free transport choices and divestment from organisations with ties to carbon-intensive industries are all actionable individual choices that lead to collective reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The New Joneses
The New Joneses think where stuff comes from & where it goes; maximize resources & minimise waste.
Global Goals addressed
