Clients

Enbridge Gas

OPPORTUNITY

Enbridge Gas wanted a program that encouraged tenants, in low-income multi-unit apartment buildings, to wash laundry in cold water, rather than warm or hot water. The goal was to reduce the natural gas consumption needed for heating water. A secondary goal of the program was to collect data to expand Enbridge’s understanding of what factors would help motivator motivate tenants to switch to cold water.

STRATEGY

Summerhill executed every step of the program, including:

  • Partnering with Coinamatic who helped with the selection of the pilot buildings to participate and provided data on the number of laundry loads done in hot, warm and cold water.
  • Working with property managers and superintendents to schedule engagement events (both pre- and post-pilot) to educate tenants on the benefits of cold-water washing.
  • Hiring brand ambassadors for engagement events.
  • Developing a survey in partnership with Enbridge Gas.
  • Rolling out the survey to tenants in participating buildings.
  • Summarizing the findings in a final report.

Summerhill also partnered with Tide, who donated detergent pods for Phase 1 of the program and samples of their liquid laundry detergent for Phase 2.

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

  • Enbridge aimed to encourage apartment residents to wash laundry in cold water to conserve energy
  • Approx. 20% increase in cold-water laundry loads
  • Phase 2 underway to collect valuable data on cold-water motivators.

IMPACT

Phase 1 of the program, which ran in the summer of 2016 at seven buildings in Thorncliffe Park, Toronto, was a huge success. Its biggest achievements were raising awareness of the benefits of cold-water washing to help conserve energy and generating an approximate 20% increase in the number of laundry loads done in cold water

Looking to expand on the success of Phase 1, Phase 2 is currently underway at four buildings in the Jane and Finch area of Toronto. Its goal is to gather valuable data to understand the impact of specific motivators for switching to cold-water washing. These motivators include:

  • Free detergent samples
  • Engagement events
  • Changing machine defaults to the cold setting
  • Marketing materials in laundry rooms

Each pilot building has a different set of variables offered.

A key priority of Phase 2 is data collection. Coinamatic is collecting baseline, pilot and post-pilot data for analysis, and Summerhill is also conducting pre- and post-pilot surveys to gather further data.