| Story | 10,000 Londoners die prematurely every year due to toxic air. But this is an invisible killer. Unseen, ignored, and all the more deadly as a result. How could COPI, a small citizen campaigning group, get Londoners to see the problem? And how could they get them to care enough to do something about it? We made Londoners care by linking air pollution to something they do care about – property prices. addresspollution.org gives everyone in London an Air Quality Report for their address, showing its health and financial costs. Shocked homeowners could then demand action at a local and national level. The service launched with a multi-channel guerrilla campaign targeting the property industry. Using data from King’s College London, addresspollution.org took 6 million annualised data points covering NO² levels and simplified them into a five band Air Quality rating. To launch, ratings were projected onto buildings, OOH and property classifieds targeted wealthy areas with high ratings, responsive DOOH ran, and DM warned London estate agents of their obligation to disclose our information. 315,000 London households have generated an Air Quality Report. For perspective, this is more than twice as many as the number of properties changing hands in London in any given year. The campaign overall reached over 30 million people, far beyond London. It was discussed on the BBC, Good Morning Britain, Channel 4, Sky News, ITV and TalkRadio, made front page news of The Times and appeared in 90 other national news publications. The campaign changed the law. The National Association of Estate Agents have said estate and letting agents have a legal obligation to disclose the information on addresspollution.org. And following this campaign, the National Trading Standards have said agents could now be prosecuted for giving false information about air quality to property buyers and renters. This is lasting change, recruiting an army of homeowners and renters as a powerful lobbying force in the fight against air pollution. Zoopla have made the Air Quality rating system available as a tool on their website. Other property portals are using our API to produce Air Quality Ratings for every listing. Many local councils have adopted the anti-pollution measures homeowners petitioned through addresspollution.org, and the government has brought forward the single national policy change we lobbied for. |