Green retrofitting: It's in the cards

British/Venezuelan designer Julia King's latest project, the Big Deal, is a card game that teaches players how to conquer climate change through home improvements.

Tue, Jan 26 2010 at 2:07 PM EST

I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for Milton Bradley to officially release a green version of Monopoly that swaps out electric utilities for wind power and hotels for prefab vacation homes (there is, however, an interesting eco-variation of the game called Earthopoly). For those who prefer shuffling to rolling the dice, here’s an ingenious new activity where green homekeeping intersects with a rousing game of cards. Never thought those two things would intersect, eh?

London-based designer Julia King (in collaboration with Neil Thomas, Aran Chadwick, Patrick Bellew, and Ajay Shah) has created the Big Deal, a game consisting of 33 playing cards that each touch down on specific ways to green your home and combat climate change. There’s likely to be a fair amount lost in translation for non-Brit players but that’s not to say important info cannot still be gleaned from the cards.

Here’s a bit about the Big Deal in the words of the designer:

The idea is based on the classic British card game Top Trumps. The Big Deal takes the successful Top Trump model of a game but addresses issues of sustainability centred around the home. Like Top Trumps each card contains a feature for which to make your home more environmentally responsible; each feature is compared against 5 key ‘ratings’: saving per annum, installation cost, installation pay back, CO2 saving and ease (of installation). The rating is based on an overall assessment of how good that feature is within each category, for example for Loft Insulation saving per annum ‘high’, installation cost ‘low’ etc. These are based on a star system between 1 and 10. At the heart of the project is the desire to create a product that makes environmental sustainability in your homes accessible and fun. The product specifically deals with things you can do in and around your home to save money and reduce CO2 emissions.

If you're a skilled Top Trumps player and think you can handle metric and monetary conversions or if you just want to learn more about the Big Deal and King's other projects, head on over to her website where packs of the cards are for sale.