COPI got estate agents to treat air pollution like flood risk

By the late 2010s nearly one in four UK addresses — almost 8 million homes — sat in air exceeding WHO pollution limits, yet air quality was invisible in the one transaction where it mattered most: buying or renting a home. Health campaigns about pollution had circulated for years with little behavioural effect; people don't check air quality before viewing a flat the way they check a boiler certificate or a flood risk report.

COPI, working with agency AMV BBDO, piloted addresspollution.org in London in 2019 and expanded it nationally in March 2021 using data commissioned from Imperial College London's Environmental Research Group. The tool let anyone enter a UK address and receive a free report rating pollution levels — styled deliberately like an Energy Performance Certificate — pushing estate agents and property portals to disclose air quality data.

COPI reframed air pollution from a public-health message into a property-disclosure problem: a free, EPC-styled report for any UK address showing its exact pollution rating and associated health/financial costs, paired with a campaign pressuring estate agents, portals and mortgage lenders to treat air quality as a disclosable fact about a home, not just a public-health statistic.

Reframed pollution as a property-disclosure issue via EPC-styled reports, riding on existing trust and pressuring agents and lenders to treat it like flood risk.

EPC format made pollution data feel familiar and authoritative to buyers.

Targeting estate agents and lenders leveraged professional duty, not just consumer awareness.

Legal opinion on disclosure duty gave the reframe teeth, paralleling asbestos and flood risk.

Commercial licensing of data proved the reframe created a market, not just awareness.

When a health message is ignored, reframe the same data as a financial metric in a format your audience already trusts.

The London pilot drew roughly one million visits; the national rollout in 2021 covered every UK address and was backed by outdoor and digital activity targeting wealthy postcodes and estate agents directly. COPI later commercialised the underlying dataset for lenders and insurers doing ESG and risk assessment. Some trade coverage credits the campaign with award recognition, though that could not be independently re-verified via a live primary source here and should be treated as reported, not confirmed.