10,000 Londoners die prematurely every year due to toxic air. The Mayor of London has declared it a public health emergency.

Air pollution has recently been linked to infertility, premature mortality and Covid-19 fatalities - to name but a few of the harmful consequences.

But air pollution is an invisible killer. Unseen, ignored, and all the more deadly as a result. The data is there if you bother to look, but it wasn’t easy to understand and seemingly irrelevant to people’s daily lives. How could we get Londoners to see the problem, and care enough to do something about it?

And as a small crowdfunded campaign group with a limited budget, how could we turn public apathy and political inertia into systematic change to make the city safer for everyone?

The U.K. had broken air pollution limits for a decade. But by 2018 the Government still hadn’t coughed up any meaningful plan, so the EU took them to court over their long-standing failure to meet legal limits.

A high court judge said delays posed a “significant threat to public health”.

And, it was costing £54 billion per annum to the UK economy.

Then why were they failing to act?

To put it bluntly, because the most important thing they could do was bring forward the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles; restrictions that would be unpopular with motorists, the freight industry and sections of the popular press.

And until we launched, no-one was putting the pressure on to change this.

To make Londoners open their eyes to the perils of air pollution and demand action, we tied it to something they care and talk about a lot: property and rent prices.

Working with King’s College London, we took raw data, accurate to 20msq and used it to build a 5 tier air quality rating system. The system linked the levels of the deadly pollutant, nitrogen dioxide, to any London address. To get it out there we built a website, addresspollution.org. The site revealed the health impacts of the property, but also the costs to their pocket, thanks to a study we commissioned asking people if they would consider buying or renting a property with illegal levels of air pollution. This free service meant Londoners could finally see the problem and its impact on them and importantly - gave them the ability to pressure the government to fix it.

Our strategy took an intangible environmental issue, made it digestible, and related it to a capitalist model of self-interest; thereby weaponising homeowners’ fears and recruiting them as a lobbying force in the fight against air pollution.

Using financial, property and air pollution data, the plan was as follows:

1Drive talkability through our guerilla campaign and PR coverage of our key message: air pollution could impact property prices by up to a fifth.

2Incite action by getting homeowners to demand policy changes from local councils and the government.

3Create systemic change by embedding air pollution in the economics of the property market and informing agents of their legal obligation to disclose air pollution information.

We launched in London it has the highest pollution levels and is home to some of the country’s most well connected landowners with a direct line to the Government. We subsequently received funding to roll out nationwide.

The London pilot was launched with a multi-channel guerrilla campaign that infiltrated the property industry.

By crunching the data we noticed that the most expensive areas were also the most polluted. These areas were the homes of some of the most influential landowners, with a direct line to Westminster. In areas like Chelsea we ran spiky billboards that warned well-connected locals of the pollution at their home.

We got even more targeted and projected ratings onto London’s most polluted residential buildings: including ‘Park Modern’, the most expensive development in the city.

We ran 650 real-time responsive DOOH at times of air pollution spikes, to make the dangers feel more immediate.

And we ran a direct mail campaign to warn estate agents of their legal obligations to disclose our information, since it materially impacts health.

WE MADE HEADLINES

We reached over 36 million people and were discussed on the likes of BBC, Good Morning Britain, Channel 4, Sky News, and made the front page of The Times twice.

WE DROVE ACTION

Over 465,467 London households have generated an Air Quality Report. Far more than double the number of properties changing hands in London in any year.

WE GOT FUNDING TO EXPAND THE SYSTEM

The European Climate Coalition awarded us funding to launch nationwide including two more pollutants.

WE CREATED SYSTEMIC CHANGE

Estate agents now have a legal obligation to disclose our information. Zoopla has made our system available. Another portal, Search Smartly, now use our API to produce Air Quality Ratings for every listing.

Local councils have adopted the measures homeowners petitioned. Most importantly, we achieved the policy change we lobbied for: to bring forward the ban on petrol and diesel cars from 2040.