Frequently Asked Questions
Team & History
How was Ma Petite Planète born?
The idea emerged in June 2019 during the heat wave in Paris in the mind of one of the co-founders (Clément Debosque). With hindsight, we can say that Ma Petite Planète was born:
From a desire to act to help fight global warming. (the "greatest challenge in human history", I hear!)
From a frustration of not being able to raise awareness and get people around them, (friends-e-s and family in particular) to do the right eco-actions to preserve the planet as best as possible.
From a triple intuition:
- Use the leverage of play and competition to get messages across. Being "sanctimonious" and "dull" with your loved ones doesn't work!
- Based on the codes that made the famous football game on app @Mon Petit Gazon successful, especially the league system! (1.3 million players in France, including 650,000 active players every week). The name MPP is a nod to MPG 😉
- Proposer des actions concrètes sous la forme de défis pour les MPP Players, à l’image de ce que propose le mouvement “Ça Commence Par Moi”. Le fondateur, Julien Vidal, est d’ailleurs “le parrain” du lancement du challenge Ma Petite Planète.
In August 2019, launch of the first 2 MPP leagues in the form of a big green summer game with friends-s de lycée d’une durée de 1 mois. Les gens se prennent au jeu, la conversation Messenger s’emballe, les défis BONUS fusent. Depuis cette première expérimentation (qui s’est révélée prometteuse !), le projet s’est structuré en association en Mars 2020 avec 2 autres co-fondateur-rice-s (Mathilde Hébert et Christian Nallatamby), la mécanique de jeu s’est affinée, de nouvelles éditions ont été lancées et SURTOUT de nombreux contributeurs et contributrices ont rejoint l’aventure 🙂
What is your mission?
The mission of the association is twofold:
- To offer a fun, turnkey game for anyone who wants to raise awareness about ecology. (#MPP Ambassador-rice-s)
- Raise awareness and get as many people as possible to take concrete action on the subject of ecology through everyday challenges (#MPP Players)
We want to make ecology positive, dynamic and accessible to as many people as possible because the Planet is everybody's business-TE-S !
How does the association work?
Ma Petite Planète is an association under the French Law of 1901, recognised as being of general interest. The purpose of the association is to seek environmental impact through awareness and action of MPP Players for the protection of the environment.
In financial terms :
This associative status does not prevent the association from developing an economic model in order to sustain its impact. This is based on two main pillars:
- Setting up and running MPP leagues within companies We propose to companies and organisations to launch a dynamic around ecology and to accompany them in setting up and running the challenge as well as monitoring the impact of the challenges taken up by the employees.
- Donations to the association from MPP Players or others!
At the human resources level :
The association is conceived as an initiative open to all. We organise ourselves on a "Slack" (a tool similar to Teams) internally, with many channels that each motivated person can join in order to contribute, according to their desires and the time they have available! On this Slack, you can find volunteers, co-founders-rice-s and the MPP Team full time!
There are different paths of engagement and different levels of involvement possible for volunteers:
- Team Graine supports the association through its circle of friends and on social networks.
- Team Pousse contributes to existing projects.
- Team Bamboo is committed to new projects!
If you are interested, you will find more explanations here !
At the governance level :
The co-founders-rice-The association's Board of Directors validates the strategic direction to be taken in order to maximise the environmental impact while aiming at the long-term sustainability of the association. Operational decisions are taken in agreement and good understanding with the full-time MPP team. The opinion of volunteers is often solicited to have a better overview of certain issues.
General meetings are organisedes every year, these are in principle open to any contributor-rice.
Who is behind Team MPP? Who are the co-founders?
To find out, check out " The MPP Team" We'll explain it all to you!
For your information, we are constantly recruiting new volunteers (we have plenty of missions available) but also people on internships and work experience! See the end of the Team MPP page 🙂
How to support MPP?
Good news, there are many ways to support us!
1/ Financially via a donation to the Ma Petite Planète association. https://www.helloasso.com/associations/ma-petite-planete/formulaires/1
As an association of general interest, any donation will be deductible from your taxes up to 66%.
2/ By becoming an MPP Ambassador-MPPand by starting a league with your friends and family.-e-s, your colleagues, or your family)! The environmental impact of the association is directly correlated to the number of MPP Ambassadors-MPP-s. Go for it!
3/ Joining the MPP Team as a volunteer (or in the team full-time) - see question "How to join the MPP Team"?
In any case, a huge THANK YOU!
How to join the MPP Team?
On serait ravi•e•s que la Team MPP grandisse ! Deux possibilités :
1/ Become a volunteer! If possible with one of the following skills:
- Ambassadeur•rice auprès des MPP Players qui jouent en ligue ouverte à tou•te•s
- Étudiant•e prêt•e à devenir Ambassadeur•rice dans son école/université
- Créateur•rice de contenus écolo pour nos réseaux sociaux
- Passionate about ecology to contribute to the MPP Blog
- Designer
- Motion Designer
- Graphic designer
- Unconditional fan of databases
- Developer to help us keep our website (WordPress) up to date
- Developer-euse front-back for the mobile app
Nothing speaks to you? Send us a message, there are bound to be things you can help us with!
2/ Joining the team full-time
We are recruiting for these different profiles, on a sandwich course or internship basis:
- Communication officer
- Corporate MPP Development Officer
- Right arm Developer
What is your long-term ambition?
- Have several million MPP Players in Europe in action by the end of 2024.
- To become the benchmark challenge in France and then in Europe on the transition to ecological action.
- To be in partnership with the National Education (MPP, offered as a module in several courses from kindergarten to high school).
- To become an essential team building challenge with an ecological impact for companies.
How can I contact you?
Simply send an email to clement@mapetiteplanete.org. We'll be happy to answer you 🙂
Registration and principles of the challenge
Where to find the rules of the game?
You can find the rules of the My Little Planet game in the MPP Player Bible !
Everything there is to know and remember about the game is included 😉
Enjoy your reading!
How do you play MPP?
It is very simple! A diagram is worth a thousand words, so here's how the classic MPP works:
Get it?! 🙂
Important: The validation of the challenges is now done on the MPP mobile app which has replaced the good old Google Sheets! The game mechanics remain the same though 🙂
For schools it's a bit different... we'll let you just go and see here!
If you have any other questions, write to us via the contact form on the website or send us a message via the FB or Instagram page, we'll be happy to answer you!
Who can play MPP?
It's up to you to choose who you want to start your league with:
- Your mates
- Your family
- Your colleagues
- The whole neighbourhood
- Your student association
- .... A melting pot of all these beautiful people!
If you represent a company and are considering launching MPP in your company, please go to here!
Si tu es prof ou directeur•rice d’école et que tu envisages de lancer MPP avec tes élèves, merci d’aller ici !
Why go for it?
Between individuals there are different motivational levers:
- The environment: helping to preserve the planet by reducing its carbon footprint;
- Themeetings and group cohesion: strengthen the links with friends, family, other MPP Players in the league and why not meet other leagues and make new acquaintances;
- A jfun and motivating: a light and lively tone and a competition mode that motivates everyone to take action;
- Learning: about the environment but also about oneself, one's own relationship to ecology and the lifestyle habits one can change.
For a companyMPP will allow you to :
- Accelerate change towards more eco-responsible practices
- Develop emulation and team cohesion thanks to the game mechanics
- Create links between colleagues around a common denominator: the Planet!
- Evaluate the impact of your green commitment to strengthen your internal and external employer brand
Finally, MPP schoolchildren is :
- Pupils made aware-e-s to good eco-gestures
- A better understanding of the link between Nature & Humanity
- A class united around a common goal
- In short: a real educational project!
How do I join MPP? (How do I start my league and become an MPP Ambassador?)
A drawing is always better than a long speech! (We would like to thank Fanny, our volunteer, who has a passion for computer graphics, for producing these drawings!)
The registration form to start your league or join a league open to all is on the homepage of the website!
Then all you have to do is download the application a week before the launch of the edition (between two editions the application is not always available because we are improving it a little more each day!
How do we train the teams?
📲 On the app, once the league is created, each person can randomly join one of the two Teams,
The MPP Ambassador may decide "arbitrarily" on the distribution of players in order to balance the teams according to the level of the MPP Players on the ecology scale. 🤘
The principle is that there should be the same number of Players in each team. If the number is odd, then the League Ambassador can add a Ghost Player in the league settings 👻 (or convinces another person to play 👀)!
How are the challenges chosen? What is the game philosophy?
Au fur et à mesure du développement du jeu, nous avons été amené•e•s à tester plusieurs centaines de défis ! (On ne saurait même pas te dire combien ! 🙂 )
Nos défis respectent les critères suivants :
- Have a demonstrated environmental impact (either in terms of CO2 avoided, impact on biodiversity (water, air), pollution in the broadest sense) and allow for an increase in skills on various subjects related to ecology. Other challenges such as " Hugging a tree" does not have a direct impact in itself but indirectly reconnects MPP Players to nature!
- Allow all MPP Players, regardless of age, location, job, level on the ecology scale, etc., to participate in the challenge by having access to a variety of challenges.
- Are easily understandable and have a well-defined scope, allowing each MPP Player to know whether the challenge has been achieved.
The challenges are then classified by category: Food, Waste, Mobility, Energy, Biodiversity, Technology, Do It Yourself, Second Life, Unmissable but unclassifiable, Audience Choice, Education/skill building, Solidarity, Mythical.
These are the "3 commandments" of a MPP Player worthy of the name:
- The GOOD SPIRIT ... you shall keep
- OVERCOMING YOURSELF ... you will achieve
- HUMOUR ...thou shalt favour
The philosophy of the game is to encourage MPP Players to adopt / reinforce / good behaviours (BONUS), and to limit / reduce to zero the bad ones (MALUS).
However, in an MPP edition, there will always be more BONUS challenges than BAD challenges, both in number and weighting, as we want to highlight and reward virtuous behaviour!
NB: In reality, some of the MALUS should have a much higher weighting. Example: SkyIsTheRealLimit - flying would have a weighting closer to -50 than -7. BUT, we want to encourage people. If the MPP Player who flies is taking -50 straight away, it's not very motivating. The idea is to raise awareness & make the person want to act!
How do you measure the impact of MPP?
We highlight 3 key indicators (KPI's). Here they are:
- Number of BONUS Challenges completed for the Planet. This is the number of challenges completed by MPP Players over the years that have a beneficial effect on the environment.
- Number of MPP Players sensitised: we hope (and we know!) that through the game a majority of MPP Players will adopt a more responsible behaviour.
- Nombre de MPP Ambassadeur•rice•s “empowered” (comprendre : à qui on a donné les clés pour agir !). Cela fait également partie de l’impact et de la mission de MPP. Il y a des millions de personnes sur Terre qui se bougent pour préserver la planète et veulent sensibiliser leur entourage. A nous de les aider dans leur quête à travers ce jeu ! Tu trouveras ces chiffres à jour, disponibles sur la page d’accueil ici : https://mapetiteplanete.org/
NB: We are not scientists and do not wish to give a short term global carbon equivalent saved through the game. We only do this for certain challenges because we think it is relevant.
Why?
- Not all the challenges focus on the carbon impact (e.g. Clean up, sweep up, clean up challenge, where the aim is to collect waste in a street, forest, beach). The impact is mainly on plastic pollution. There will still be as much CO2 in the air after this action.
- To avoid making very large approximations based on very little, because for some challenges the "range" can be huge and situations can vary. If it were simple it would be known 🙂
Example:
- clean your e-mail box, if it's been 7 years since your e-mail box was cleaned, the result will not be the same as if it's been 3 months 🙂 )
- make a bulk purchase: to take into account the carbon impact of one food over another, the whole supply chain should be compared. See this infographic to understand: https://trello.com/c/3No00M9j/64-alimentation-impact-par-type-daliments
In short, we know that the game has impact (and a lot of it). How MPP changed my life"!), but to venture into its precise measurement would be perilous! (Moreover, it is very likely that our MPP Players influence their entourage, their company, their elected representatives-e-s as a result of the game. There is a huge potential for impact :)
Why did you choose these personalities for the team names?
We wanted to highlight personalities whose commitment to the planet is - in our opinion - remarkable!
Until the end of 2021, only two personalities could be selected by the Ambassador to represent the Teams: Greta Thunberg and Nicolas Hulot.
Au vu des accusations portées envers Nicolas Hulot, l’association a naturellement retiré cette personnalité du choix des équipes.
In addition, our community has suggested over the years that they should be given more freedom to choose the personality. A poll was organised and our MPP Players were able to vote for the personalities they would like to see in the game.
Following this survey, we have done our best to find a balance between :
- French and international
- as many men as women
- Westerners and non-Westerners
... and avoid anyone who might be controversial because we do not want to divide!
Here is the list of the ten selected personalities!
- Vandana Shiva (Team 1 by default)
- Cyril Dion (Team 2 by default)
- Paul Watson
- Yann Arthus Bertrand
- Camille Etienne
- Raoni Metuktire
- Bea Johnson
- Jane Goodall
- Greta Thunberg
- Xiuhtezcatl Martinez
Des personnalités ont été progressivement ajoutées :
– Adélaïde Charlier
– Luisa de Neubauer– Thomas Brail
If you don't know them all yet, go and discover them!
NB1: Your ambassador can have his league vote to change the default personalities!
NB2: Others will join the ranks as the editions progress 🙂
NB3 : we kept Greta ! 🙂 Why ? answer in 2 videos :
– Greta Thunberg at the UN in September 2019
– Greta Thunberg recalling the inseparable link between Humans and Nature
When will the next editions take place?
It is quite simple:
There are 3 MPP editions open to Adults (General Public + Companies) per year:
- end of January
- end of May
- end of September
There are 2 school MPP editions per year:
- mid March
- mid November
To find out the exact dates of the next editions, just go to the homepage.
The spirit of the challenges and the main principles of the game
How long does it take to play MPP each day?
A majority of the challenges are "everyday" challenges and aim to get the MPP Players to adopt new, more eco-responsible habits, without necessarily spending more time on them but simply organising themselves differently (e.g. doing a vegetarian week).
The amount of time spent on these challenges will depend on how involved you are in the game and the challenges you complete: it can range from 5 minutes or less to several hours for the more engaging challenges. ⏱
There is something for everyone & every level of involvement ! 😊
Does the ambassador also play a role?
Yes, the person who launches the game within his entourage (MPP Ambassador) plays with the people of his league! By joining a team, we invite him/her to play, and who knows, to show the "good example" to his/her Players to boost his/her league! 😋
What is the difference between a league and a team?
Une ligue (20 MPP Players max) est composée de deux équipes (Ex : Team Vandana Shiva et Team Cyril Dion, de 10 MPP Players max chacune)., sauf dans le cadre de clients accompagnés où une ligue = 1 équipe.
The league is usually carried by the ambassador and the Team Leaders of both teams help him/her to animate the league. 💪
Can each person validate all the challenges?
In principle, the challenges are designed so that every player can achieve any challenge: everyone in the league CAN validate all the challenges, but is not absolutely obliged to do so.
Everyone can choose some challenges, challenge themselves to achieve as many as possible, but MPP is still a game and we prefer good humour among our MPP Players 💚
However, do not forget to bring proof of the challenge in your league conversation when requested!
Does it count if you have already done a challenge before the edition?
Except in exceptional cases, the challenge must be completed again during the challenge period!
However, in some specific cases, where this would not have an additional positive impact, we accept that the challenges have been completed before the challenge begins.
For example, switching banks, joining an AMAP or creating a compost bin do not need to be absolutely completed during the challenge. MPP Players who have already completed these steps can validate the challenges in the application and get the corresponding points 😉
If foodstuffs liable to a MALUS are purchased before the date of the challenge, there is no penalty if they are consumed during the challenge, because what counts is the act of purchase (which favours production and therefore pollution ... !)
What is a BONUS and a MALUS challenge?
✅. A BONUS challenge is considered good for the environment, it allows the MPP Player (and his team) to earn points.
❌ A MALUS challenge, considered harmful to the environment, and causes the MPP Player (and his team) to lose points.
On the application, the points of the BONUS challenges are indicated in green, while those of the MALUS challenges are in red!
How can I play in several leagues at the same time?
First of all, it is possible!
The idea is that you need as many MPP accounts as there are leagues you want to play in!
How to do it?
1/ Concretely, you will have to create accounts with different email addresses (maybe the same password, it's up to you!)
Then there are 2 options:
A/ Either you play only on your phone: For that, disconnect you from your existing league in order to create another account (manipulation: Profile > parameters, disconnect) Be careful NOT to "Leave the league", otherwise you will lose your data!
Then join the other league via the code you transferred to the ambassador.drice (or create another league if you're an ambassador).
You will have to do this every time you want to go to your other space.
B/ Either you play on your phone AND on the web-app (option to be favoured in our opinion): The advantage is that you won't have to disconnect each time from your phone since you can manage a league on the app and a league on the web-app (with an account and thus a dedicated email address!) which is an equivalent of the MPP application available on the web.
Here is the link: https://web-app.mapetiteplanete.org/#/
And now you can challenge your entourage in several leagues at the same time! 🙂
MPP challenges in detail!
What if I have a question about a particular challenge?
Here is a Frequently Asked Questions which will allow you to find (almost) all the answers to the questions you have about the challenges!
How the application works
How do I download the application to my mobile?
You can download it by searching for "Ma Petite planète" on the Stores:
Here are the two links on :
- the Play Store
- l'Apple Store
Don't hesitate to leave us a review or an opinion to help us progress! 🙂
Is it possible to play MPP on a computer?
If for some reason you can't download the application from your smartphone, you can download it (and play!) from your computer.
Just go to this link: https://web-app.mapetiteplanete.org/
This is called a "web-app". It's the equivalent of the app on a computer! So the navigation looks like it would on your smartphone, but it does the job (we hope 😉 )!
How do I report an error in the application?
You can fill in the online form available here!
A big THANK YOU in advance! It's thanks to this feedback that we're getting better 🙂
NB: if your bug prevents you from playing, we will do our best to contact you as soon as possible!
Does playing MPP pollute a lot?
Indeed, we regularly hear from MPP Players about this potential contradiction.
This is our approach to answering them:
In our experience, in order to mobilise participants, it is very important to give them the opportunity to exchange in a league conversation to encourage them to take action and thus protect the planet. (The idea is to give the MPP Players a sufficiently strong experience so that they integrate good practices over the long term and thus reduce their ecological footprint (and that of society in passing) over the long term. In our opinion, this is achieved by sharing evidence / pride / successes linked to the game!
We think the slight environmental cost of the digital 'playing MPP' is well worth it 🙂
Good practice:
In the type of evidence to be shared, there are almost never videos, but only photos/screenshots or text as the footprint is indeed less heavy.
As a reminder, the carbon footprint of "digital" is 2/3 on the manufacturing of the different terminals: (https://www.greenly.earth/blog/empreinte-carbone-numerique). We invite all participants at the end of the challenge to delete unnecessary photos from their league conversation.
Dedicated section on the app for "Technologies":
As a reminder, we have a section dedicated to digital sobriety where thousands of participants lighten their cloud, reduce their use of social networks, use wifi instead of mobile data, spend an evening without a screen, reduce their consumption of streaming video, stop buying gadgets etc...!
Carbon footprint simulation exercise and order of magnitude :
Yes, MPP is played on a phone, but that doesn't mean it has a huge impact on our planet. Counting the consumption due to the phone (charging, sending photos, wifi and/or 4G), playing MPP is about 18g of CO2 emitted for an "average" MPP Player.
Our assumptions :
- Phone use produces an average of 0.21 kWh for the entire challenge,
- Sending a photo (with 1 MB per photo) costs about 0.1 GB sent via WhatsApp,
- For 4G or 3G, the consumption is 0.09 kWh for the challenge (Wifi consumes 5 to 6 times less though)
- Charging the phone would consume about 0.018kg of CO2.
By way of comparison:
- Putting your appliances on standby for a week saves 500g of CO2,
- Going 48 hours without mobile data means 31g of CO2 saved,
- One vegeta week means 16,200g of CO2 savedPlaying (actively or not) MPP will always consume less energy and therefore emit less carbon footprint than not completing any game-related challenges.However, if a phone was purchased specifically to play MPP, the carbon footprint is 2.28kg of CO2.
Autres questions ?
FAQ encore + complète ici !
https://mapetiteplanete.notion.site/FAQ-Challenges-f1097e00b2934269aa208d6c05c162cf
Cette Foire Aux Questions te permettra de trouver (presque) toutes les réponses aux questions que tu te poses à propos du jeu & des défis MPP 🙂 Bonne lecture !