Eco-Bee: A Personalised Multi-Modal Agent for Advancing Student Climate Awareness and Sustainable Behaviour in Campus Ecosystems

TL;DR

Eco-Bee is an AI-powered, multi-modal conversational agent designed to enhance student awareness and promote sustainable behaviors on university campuses by connecting individual actions to planetary boundaries.

Contribution

It introduces Eco-Bee, integrating large language models and planetary science to deliver personalized, engaging sustainability feedback tailored for students.

Findings

96% of students supported campus-wide Eco-Bee deployment

Participants reported a clearer understanding of environmental impacts

Eco-Bee effectively combines science, AI, and gamification for sustainability education

Abstract

Universities are microcosms of urban ecosystems, with concentrated consumption patterns in food, transport, energy, and product usage. These environments not only contribute substantially to sustainability pressures but also provide a unique opportunity to advance sustainability education and behavioural change at scale. As in most sectors, digital sustainability initiatives within universities remain narrowly focused on carbon calculations, typically providing static feedback that limits opportunities for sustained behavioural change. To address this gap, we propose Eco-Bee, integrating large language models, a translation of the Planetary Boundaries framework (as Eco-Score), and a conversational agent that connects individual choices to environmental limits. Tailored for students at the cusp of lifelong habits, Eco-Bee delivers actionable insights, peer benchmarking, and gamified challenges to sustain engagement and drive measurable progress toward boundary-aligned living. In a pilot tested across multiple campus networks (n=52), 96% of the student participants supported a campus-wide rollout and reported a clearer understanding of how daily behaviours collectively impact the planet's limits. By embedding planetary science, behavioural reinforcement, and AI-driven personalisation into a single platform, Eco-Bee establishes a scalable foundation for climate-conscious universities and future AI-mediated sustainability infrastructures.