Exeposé Features Online’s newest columnist, Charley Allen, shares a bizarre campaign to raise environmental awareness for her ‘Weird and Wonderful World’ column.
Think you’ve seen a weird campaign to raise awareness? Think again. It doesn’t get much more bizarre than the latest campaign launched in China. The “hairy nose” campaign was launched in December last year by NGO Clean Air Asia as a humorous way to make people aware of the worsening levels of pollution in Asian cities.
The idea is that nasal hair is actually pretty important in filtering out the harmful things that we breathe in. Last year Popular Science reported that “nose hairs trap dirt, viruses, bacteria and toxins until we blow them out, sneeze, or swallow.” From this idea Clean Air Asia have made an interactive hairy nose map showing the levels of pollution in cities not by boring air quality graphs but instead by showing how long your nose hair needs to be in order to deal with it. It ranges from excellent where your nose hairs can remain nice and trimmed to critical where your nose hairs need to sweep the floor!It is eye catching that’s for sure and has certainly got people talking. One person who can profit from this is famous hair artist Fan Qi who yes, you guessed it, styles nose hairs in weird and wonderful ways. You have to watch the video.
This is one way of adapting yourself to pollution but as Sophie Punte, Executive Director of Clean Air Asia pointed out in an article by Campaign Brief Asia, “People look at air pollution like the weather. You complain about it but you cannot solve it”. Some people have started wearing masks, fitting in air filters in their homes and even moving from heavily polluted areas if they can afford it. But as we all well know, it is better to actually do something about pollution rather than just avoiding the problems.
This funny campaign acts as great bait and then the NGO goes on to provide all sorts of information and advice on fighting pollution like using public transport or not leaving your car engine running unnecessarily.
A great idea for a campaign in my opinion and I’m thinking I’d like to see where Movember activists could go with this!
exeposedev 