The WWF Deutschland and Savespecies have teamed up to launch “SaveYour.World” metaverse, run on Journee and powered by the Polygon network.
Soft-launched on World Cleanup Day, this beautiful, immersive experience has a dual aim. First, through project #OceanDetox, to educate users about the crisis of plastic and trash flooding into the seas.
And secondly, to empower people to actually do something about it, with an approach they’ve dubbed “play to donate.”
By creating a hybrid metaverse, where online interactions result in real world consequences, players can remove real trash from the real ocean by buying trash NFTs. And with plans to expand the digital realm to other environments – forests and the arctic – SaveYour.World is only just beginning.
SaveYour.World provides a setting that democratizes experience and access, while turning environmental problems into representable pieces of digital art.
Save.YourWorld’s trash whale is composed of 366 discrete NFTs of 50 different types, each of which can be bought as a donation to make a quantifiable impact on cleaning up the beaches and seas on Phu Quoc Island in Vietnam.
The traits of each NFT also serve as a commentary on the kind of devastation humans have wrought on the world: this NFT, for instance, is immortal, reflecting the indecently long half-life of human-made plastics. And the problem of plastics and trash is only increasing.
As one sign in SaveYour.World points out, if nothing is done, by 2050 “there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean.” Another informs users, “100% of baby sea turtles have plastic in their stomachs.”
Gamifying the relationship to impossibly difficult environmental problems invites a new generation of users to collaborate with NGOs that are working hard to make the planet a more liveable, healthy place.
Already, the results are encouraging: 2,453 kg of plastic have been removed from the ocean due to this digital experience, even as project leaders aim to increase that number.
It’s a big first step in what WWF Deutschland is calling “Play to Donate,” tapping into the massive economic sphere of gaming and digital experiences possible in the metaverse.
