Making Christmas Waste Sorting fun “Where does this cracker go..?”
How KPMG Ireland doubled their staff’s waste knowledge
About KPMG Ireland and their Sustainability Programme
KPMG Ireland’s purpose is to inspire confidence and empower change. In 2021, it followed KPMG International in sharing their first Impact Report outlining its environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance and commitments against the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics. On the ground, recent accomplishments include:
Adopted 2GoCup’s deposit and return scheme and in just 4 days saved nearly 30,000 single use cups from landfill
Won the “Excellence in Sustainability Award” at theFacilities Management Awards in both 2023 and 2024
Launching the Leaders 2050 professional network for future leaders across sectors
In December 2023, KPMG Ireland decided to work with Bold Donut as a new and fun way to engage colleagues on the topic of waste-management in the office, drive competition and add to the festive cheer as part of the Sustainability Department’s “Conscious Christmas” theme
What the KPMG Sustainability Team said
“We’re already seeing lasting impacts. Waste segregation across the business has noticeably improved — and importantly, that change has stuck.”
Familiar Challenges with waste contamination in a busy office
Engagement: how to get people engaged with a “boring” topic like waste?
Education: How to measurably educate people at scale about “what goes in what bin?”
Behaviour: How do you reduce the perception of effort regarding correct waste sorting?
The challenge: Key issues highlighted when we speak to sustainability managers about waste include the difficulties of educating their audiences on organisational policies relating to ‘what goes in what bin’ and contamination of the bins. For example, organic waste mistakenly placed in the general or recycling bin, recyclable materials in the General Waste Bin.
“Waste plays a disproportionately important role in the people side of sustainability. Why? Because it’s visible. It’s tangible. Everyone sees the bins. And if those bins are poorly segregated — if there’s rubbish overflowing in the recycling — that doesn’t just affect our waste data. It affects how people perceive sustainability in the workplace.”
The solution: Make it fun. Bold Donut’s Waste Management Game, customised to include KPMG’s updated waste guidelines, was a fun way to introduce its employees to the new guidelines around “what goes in what bin,” and engage people in more sustainable practices in a way that was fun and competitive.
KPMG trialled Bold Donut’s Office Waste Game for one month in December 2023 as part of their “Conscious Christmas” campaign. The plan was to use the game to introduce the KPMG employees to their newly implemented waste guidelines and bins while bringing a festive cheer to the endeavour!
KPMG Christmas Waste Game
Home page: Players were able to track their progress, leaderboard position, and contribution to KPMG’s goal.
Gameplay: Fun and familiar “Candy Crush” style waste sorting gameplay that also reinforces knowledge through feedback.
Baseline Quiz: Drag and drop quiz to establish baseline knowledge, highlight organisational knowledge gaps and measure learning.
“Bold Donut took the time to understand not just our goals, but the values behind them. And they came back with a creative, purpose-driven solution that aligned beautifully with our Conscious Christmas theme.”
Key Results
Conclusion
The aim of the project was to make a topic like waste segregation, which is (let’s be honest) quite boring and laborious, more fun and engaging through scalable digital games while also providing sustainability managers with much-needed impact data.
Over the course of KPMG’s Conscious Christmas campaign staff members played over a thousand levels of the waste game, doubled their waste segregation knowledge, and the feedback to the sustainability team was very positive. People had not only had fun and measurably increased their knowledge, but behaviour changed too. People were striking up conversations around the office bins - asking how their colleagues got on with the game.
About Bold Donut’s games
Our games are built using a behaviour change framework (Octalysis) and are modelled on highly successful mobile games (that’s the fun factor). Players get instant and satisfying feedback on key behaviours, see their peers also taking action, and repeat climate positive actions — all while they are having fun and learning something practical!
If you want to see one of our games in action why not start with our waste game demo.
Happy sorting!