“Desirability is somethingthat advocates ofsustainable developmentare not very good at”- Jonathon Porrit, Forum for the Future
But designers are different
Experience and knowledge from different areas
Imagining new scenarios and visualising them
Quick and easy trying things out
Thinking of people
Building connections between things and people
Can designers use their skills to earn a living out of tackling social or environmental problems?
What is Design?
Problem-solving,
people focused discipline tackling material problems and facilitating connections.
Does design have to only support traditional business?
What about social business?
Profit making businesses that trade in goods and services for social or environmental benefit.
HOW CAN DESIGN SUPPORT SOCIAL BUSINESSES?
By transforming products and services and making them
more visible
more desirable
more easy to use
Ways to intervene in a system
1. Re-thinking objects
• add value by reducing waste
• design to recycle and re-manufacture
• design products to last
• design out toxicity
2. Re-thinking the way people do things
• improve feedback from infrastructure
• redesign interaction with infrastructure
• redesign the infrastructure itself
3. Re-thinking the links between people
• public sector
• private sector
• people / third sector
No-one want to act alone. People need to act together to solve some of the key environmental and social issues of our day
Design - Food Cycle
One Man’s Waste is another’s resource?
In your school?
Young people, older people?
In your community?
People? Places? Recycling?
Upcycling?
"The time has come for us all to think about our waste and what we do about it."
Experience and knowledge from different areas
Imagining new scenarios and visualising them
Quick and easy trying things out
Thinking of people
Building connections between things and people
Case Study / Example - food loop:
An experiment in linking people, business and government to tackle the urban food-‐waste problem.
The food‐waste problem:
• Food waste one of largest fractions of waste stream (18 – 40%)
• UK households produce 6.7m tonnes FW / year
• Food waste in landfill generates methane
• 3% UK G.G. Emissions from landfill sites (aviaBon 6%)
The pain / opportunity
• European legislation making f/w very expensive
• Food waste collection difficult in inner city flats
• Under‐used public spaces in these environments
• Strong link between food waste and food growing, that could happen in those spaces
• Current value of food waste £135/te and growing
But we found another issue…
• homeless people struggle to return to work
• 79% want to work. 7% actually manage
• many housed in government housing
• high numbers of unemployment
So there is a ready labour supply exactly where it it most difficult to manage food waste
Mission:
To get every housing estate in Britain composting food-‐waste on site and using the compost to grow fruit and vegetables.
We set out to:
• Design a service in response to this environmental challenge
• And the business case to make it financially sustainable, and repeatable
the artifact
How it works:
As a result:
* Resident taking ownership of their recycling
* Re-framing food waste as a resource
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