The Institute of Biodiversity and Environment of the University of Navarra (BIOMA) is going to launch a pilot project that, through the application The Good Goalapplication, aims to collect data to analyze and measure sustainability actions on campus. The initiative is part of the activities planned by the Campus Home Chair. 

This pilot test will show, for example, the savings obtained in kilograms of waste, liters of water and the amount of savings in kg of greenhouse gases in the form of CO2. University employees and students can now download the application to their cell phones and register with their University of Navarra e-mail account and enter the code UNAV23. The application has a verification system, through images, to ensure that these data are reliable.

The director of the Institute, Professor Jesús Miguel Santamaría, explains the main keys to this initiative.

- What does the project consist of and what advantages will it bring to the University?

BIOMA is directly involved in the University of Navarra's 2025 strategy on sustainability and the fact of being involved in this initiative will be very useful to get a picture of how the university community is regarding sustainability issues. In this first phase, we are going to develop a pilot study with the help of The Good Goal application, and, if it is positive, we will expand the experience by incorporating a larger number of participants, which will allow us to know perfectly what are the weaknesses and strengths of the university in relation to environmental sustainability, information that will be very useful to improve the environmental management of the campus. To begin with, we need 250 people to download the application.

- What is The Good Goal application?

This is a platform that aims to develop various sustainability activities in our Campus through a series of challenges that will be posed to the university community, evaluating their effects on the care of the planet. This is one of the initial activities that will soon be developed within the framework of the Campus Home Chair, which last year signed a collaboration agreement with the BIOMA Institute to promote activities related to sustainability.

The Good Goal is a technology platform for companies and organizations aligned with the SDGs that need to reduce their environmental impact and improve their metrics towards the European Union's 2030 target, thus driving a cultural transformation within organizations. The App includes a series of gamified challenges, habit acquisition competitions and calculation of CO2, water and waste savings.

On the other hand, all user data is collected in a real-time dashboard to measure and report on impact metrics and business intelligence data.

- How does it work and what information can we obtain? 

First of all, it should be noted that this App is very intuitive and visual, fun and easy to use. In addition, the fact that it allows organizing team competitions between different groups of users, helps to "hook" the participants to win the sustainability challenges, contributing at the same time to define a common goal to achieve as an organization and in a collaborative way.

Once the user registers through their cell phone, the application launches an initial questionnaire to find out the environmental commitment of each participant. Subsequently, the application proposes a series of challenges related to topics of great interest such as waste, consumption and transportation.

The responses obtained are used to determine parameters such as savings in kilograms of waste, savings in liters of water and the amount of savings in kg of greenhouse gases in the form of CO2.

- What will be done with the data that is recorded? 

The Good Goal has a positive impact calculator that measures CO2, water and waste savings in real time based on a measurement methodology backed by global meta-studies from the scientific community.

The calculator directly provides impact metrics, especially to measure and quantify the impact of users. All these data are used for the preparation of sustainability reports, as well as for internal analysis for decision-making and compliance with the SDGs.

Individually, all users will be able to see in real time the results obtained after completing the challenges. However, the collective information obtained will be used to quantify at campus scale the environmental parameters mentioned above, which are very useful to know the amount of waste generated, water consumption, and CO2 emissions.

This information, which will be displayed in the different campus buildings, will be very useful to raise awareness among the entire university community on how to improve the results obtained by modifying our habits to make them more sustainable.

- Who is the target audience? 

Since all of us who use the Campus are also responsible for the environmental impacts generated by our activities, this application is aimed at the entire university community, including students, employees and professors.

If we are able to create a collective environmental awareness on campus, we will be taking giant steps towards achieving one of the main objectives of the 2025 strategy: to make our campus environmentally sustainable.