"Breakage" was a word I used to associate with my kids dropping dishes on the kitchen floor until I was getting Green Rewards set up.  With a lot of help from Tony Clarke, a wonderful man very experienced in the loyalty sector who successfully built ICLP up into one of the leading loyalty consulting businesses, I now understand that "breakage" has a particular meaning for loyalty programmes; it's the amount of reward points issued that are never likely to be redeemed. 

A recent investigation by Money Mail claims that in the UK there is an estimated £4bn worth of unredeemed rewards which around 4 million of us are sitting on.  This strikes me as a shocking statistic - imagine what good could be achieved with all those unspent points if they were converted into charitable giving.  £4bn is around 10% of total charitable income each year in the UK and this kind of money could make a huge difference for needy communities.  At Green Rewards we are aiming to operate a reward programme with minimal breakage.  We want our members who earn our Green Points to spend them - either on something green and ethical for themselves or their friends and family, or to donate them to a charity project, or even (shortly) to their local school.  That's why we've made it very easy when you get to check-out on our site to spend any amount of points with any amount of cash - and that's also why we're continuing to expand the number and range of charities in our programme, and will shortly be introducing our Green Rewards for Schools functionality. 

As someone who has spent 17 years of my working life in the charitable sector, I know what a constant struggle it is for charities to raise the funds they need, and I hope that in my role at Green Rewards I can help to unlock some of that £4bn of unspent rewards for needy projects around the world.