Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor’s Director of Environment & Digital London on the new ‘nice save’ game from Recycle for London... 

Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor’s Director of Environment & Digital London on the new ‘nice save’ game from Recycle for London.

One of the things I enjoy most about my job is merging my digital remit with my environmental role. The new ‘nice save’ game is a great illustration of this.

Managing London's waste is an expensive activity, but recycling actually saves money. Last year Londoners saved £30 million by recycling and that is what 'nice save' campaign is all about.

The game features 20 levels of dangerously addictive recycling action, complete with bouncing bottles, swooping paper aeroplanes and a competition to find the borough with the best ‘Super Savers’ in London.

This is gamification – using game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences - at its best in my view. From first click, this addictive game grabs your attention and feeds your imagination.  

‘Nice save’ is just one example of City Hall’s relentless battle against waste.  There was another last Friday, when the Mayor helped to serve some of the 5,000 portions of free vegetable curry made from vegetables deemed too ‘ugly’ for supermarket shelves (such as wonky carrots) at the
Feed the 5000 event in Trafalgar Square. 

The event was extremely successful in highlighting the issue of food waste, showing how easy it is to make a tasty free hot meal from food that would otherwise have been wasted. 

If you want to know more about what we are doing from City Hall to tackle both the big and the small challenges about waste than please visit the environment pages on this website.

In the meantime, keep recycling (and playing the ‘nice save’ game) and also support businesses that dare to sell you those wonky carrots!

Kulveer Ranger