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Quick Guide to the New ISO Circular Economy Standards

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Quick Guide to ISO Circular Economy Standards
 

The new ISO Circular Economy 59000 series of standards is a game-changer for businesses transitioning from a linear to a circular economy. These standards provide the framework, tools and business procedures necessary to enact and measure the circular economy.

On May 22, 2024, The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released the hotly anticipated set of three new standards for implementing and measuring the Circular Economy (CE). There will be more to come, but these first three are the foundational tools for enacting business circularity.

I don’t think I’m the only one who got very excited to see the contents of this first set of global circular economy standards. I was particularly inspired by the focus on systems thinking and design as key aspects of enacting CE, as these have been two features of sustainability that I have been promoting and teaching through the UnSchool for over a decade.

For those of us working to advance a circular and sustainable future, it’s been a very busy time, with lots of new regulations, especially in the European Union (EU), such as the new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, and a massive increase in engagement and uptake by companies. So I dedicated the last couple of months to diving deep into the standards, synthesizing the key features and processes outlined within them in order to develop new graphics and put together this article as a detailed quick guide of the circular economy ISO standards.

We need companies to start activating these and for sustainability professionals to be well-versed in their features to support the transition. So, alongside this summary article, we have included more detailed content in our new Level 3 Circular Futures online training program, and I will be running a 2-week live online training in November.

About the new ISO Circular Economy Standards

The three new ISO Circular Economy standards are:

 
 

These new standards are a critical part of the maturation of the Circular Economy, as we now have universal frameworks for defining, measuring, reporting and enacting circular economy principles in business. Before these, businesses had to muddle their way through different options for validating CE initiatives. There have been significant contributions to this in the past, such as the Circular Transition Indicators (CTI) from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards, Circulytics by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). Still, many have also resorted to developing their own assessments and reporting methods, which came with a lack of rigor and transparency and often resulted in a non-science-based approach to CE.

 
 

What’s critical with any sustainability initiative is that it’s based on solid impact assessment methods and that data is collected throughout the transformation process in order to make measurable and quantifiable improvements. Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) are the best-practice method for products and services (mentioned throughout the new CE standards), and companies’ operations and supply chains can be assessed through reputable impact assessment approaches. However, there has generally been a scarcity of clarity on what approaches for enacting CE best fit a business, making it hard to determine if what a company has done is achieving measurable circularity and ensuring that claims made are indeed beneficial for the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability (this is also one of the key requirements of the standards).

Now, thanks to these new CE ISO standards (and the several additional ones in development), a uniform approach can be replicated. The guidance laid out in them also enables businesses to truly expand their circular ambitions, adopt a systems thinking foundation and ensure that they measure their impacts whilst aiming for high-level CE solutions.

Like anything that has to be universal, there will be some sacrifices and watering down to allow for widespread adoption. But the fact that we now have these in hand means that we can get to work on expanding the circular economy with clarity over which terms, approaches and methods best advance circularity.

 
“The ISO 59000 family of standards is intended to harmonize the understanding of the circular economy and to support its implementation and measurement.”
— ISO

This article provides a detailed summary, but there is a lot more to share. So, I have designed a 2-week live online training program to fully unpack what each entails. I’ve done a lot of the hard work in deciphering and synthesizing these so I can seamlessly share them with interested parties and help advance the knowledge set of sustainability practitioners and business leaders who want to ensure they are at the forefront of the CE standards adoption.

Sign up for the program here >

What Makes the Circular Economy So Critical?

Circular solutions are integral to transforming how we produce goods and services, eliminating waste, stopping excess resource use, regenerating nature and ensuring a sustainable future.

Indeed, the key goals of the circular economy are to eliminate waste, make things last longer, and ensure that all extraction and production processes are regenerative. We can achieve this by designing products and services that prioritize reuse, are intentionally designed to last longer, have multiple lives, and can be easily repaired/recaptured for remanufacturing so as not to pollute nature or negatively impact the systems we need to sustain us all.

In short, the circular economy ensures that we are working within the boundaries of the planet. It is a remedy to the current extractive and exploitative linear economy, which ignores consumption’s negative impacts on the environment. There is a progressive global movement to transition economies from linear to circular, with businesses pioneering new models that adopt this and governments mandating new initiatives and goals that enable CE at scale.

The circular economy is designed to be a positive force on the planet, where all players along a value chain take responsibility for their actions (known as product stewardship or extended producer responsibility). Indeed, through good design and leveraging the many different CE approaches, we can meet human needs in more sustainable ways and shift our relationship with nature so that we value the materials and resources that come from it all whilst removing waste and pollution at scale.

With that in mind, let’s unpack the new ISO circular economy standards and how they’ll be instrumental in organizational sustainability.

A quick note on this guide: I have synthesized the standards to create a reference for those wanting to know more about how they can advance CE in their business. We offer more extensive training on CE via a 3-part program, from introductory to advanced, and strongly advise that anyone who wants to significantly improve their capacity in this space based on a scientific approach consider upskilling through training and purchase a copy of the standards to review the internal details that we can’t share due to copyright.

 

Overview of the Three ISO Circular Economy Standards

 
 

While each standard offers unique standalone guidance, all three essentially work together.

The first one (59004) details six CE principles that form the basis for the other standards; it also creates a universal lexicon by defining key terms and offers a stepped approach to implementing CE. The other two main standards refer back to the concepts and terms defined in 59004.

The second standard (59010) shares how to transition organizations to circular models through guidance on value and network transitions, and the third (59020) details and enables measurable outcomes by providing information on impact assessment methods related to CE.

There are also several connected standards and technical papers that are in development:

 

ISO 59040: Circular Economy: Product Circularity Data Sheet (provides a framework for organizations to measure and assess circularity)

Together, the suite of ISO 59000 standards provides a framework for assessing, implementing and reporting on CE at different scales and enables companies to employ robust, measurable and transparent CE initiatives. Companies in the European Union will also need to comply with the new Ecodesign Regulation and follow the guidance in the ESRS5 when reporting under the CSRD requirements. Thankfully, there is a lot of crossover between these standards and the new ISO standards.

Let’s take a look at each of the three main standards in more detail.

ISO 59004: Circular economy — Vocabulary, principles and guidance for implementation

This overarching standard introduces six fundamental circular economy principles that are the foundations for all other aspects of the standards:

 

Additionally, the old R levels are expanded to include more R’s (plus a couple of C’s!): refuse, rethink, circular sourcing, reduce, repair, reuse, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose, cascade, recycle, recover energy, and re-mine. These are referred to as “resource management actions” and enable the foundational application of CE.

The list provided in ISO 59004 on resource management forms the foundation for all of the standards. We have summarized the list provided into this graphic with our interpretations of the actions on the left.

 
 

This standard provides several key recommendations on how to enact CE, including:

  • Ensuring that considerations are made at the early stages of the design and development of a solution/product so that the designs create the highest CE outcomes for minimizing resource use and waste production, referred to as losses and releases (Check out our Sustainable Design course)

  • Applying a life cycle approach throughout the design process (We also have a course on life cycle thinking and assessment that you can take here)

  • Embedding systems thinking as a crucial foundation to CE (in fact, it is listed first in the 6 key CE principles!) I’ve written loads on this topic; Start with 6 Fundamental Concepts of Systems Thinking and take our Systems Thinking course here

  • Collaborating to improve transparency and identify opportunities to add, retain and recover value, as well as to track and manage resources with stakeholders in the value chain

  • Understanding and measuring the “stocks and flows” relevant to any activities performed by the organization. Stocks and flows are the inputs and outputs and the way they move through the system. This terminology is from systems dynamics (take my 30 Days of Systems Thinking course to learn more about this).

  • Optimizing production processes to enable product and resource circulation and to adopt the principle of resource stewardship

There are also specific recommendations for engaging with behavior change and for enacting design for circularity, as well as circular sourcing, circular procurement and process optimization.

Another major part of ISO 59004 is that key circular economy terms are defined.

 
 
 

The terms “value creation model” and “value creation networks” refer to how an organization makes money and adds value to society and the supply chain within which the company exists. Both of these must be transformed if a business is to move from linear to circular, and they are used throughout all the standards.

What the definitions help to demonstrate is just how we are shifting our thinking about key aspects of the circular transformation and the role that business plays in this. Whilst these are all terms used widely in the sustainability movement, the provision of definitions in relation to how they apply to CE helps to provide us all with a foundation to build from.

The body of ISO 59004 dedicates several sections to defining an implementation model, which we have summarized in this process flow diagram below. The implementation model is an overarching approach, and in the next standard (59010), there is a specific process of business CE strategy development.

The appendix of 59004 offers a long list of actions businesses can take to implement CE at scale (we provide a much more detailed exploration of these in our Circular Economy Level 3 course).

These actions are referred back to in the other standards; they form a foundational part of the business strategy and value model that a company develops and assesses as part of its circular transformation.

In summary, ISO 59004 is designed as a functional and foundational starting point, defining the universal CE principles, sharing definitions of key terms in relation to enacting CE and providing guidance for implementing CE. The other two standards refer back to this standard to provide all of the important background information.

“Adherence to ISO 59004 enables organizations to create and share more value within society while ensuring the quality and resilience of ecosystems, ultimately supporting a sustainable future.”
— ISO

ISO 59010: Circular economy — Guidance on the transition of business models and value networks

This standard is designed to provide clarity on how an organization transitions its business model and operations to the circular economy. It details a business-oriented methodology laid out as guidelines for transforming an organization of any size from linear to circular as an actual actionable business strategy.

The document is laid out across the following key stages of circularization:

  • Setting goals and boundary

  • Determining a Circular Economy Strategy

  • Transitioning the value creation model

  • Transitioning the value networks

  • Reviewing and monitoring for continuous improvement

The Circular Business Strategy Framework

ISO 59010 details several stages in a Circular Business Strategy (CBS). This process is summarized in the graphic we produced below, and the recommendation in the standard is that it can be applied to any size business or organization from any industry or region.

As the graphic demonstrates, the first stage for a business is to set clear CE goals before moving on to the next stage, determining a strategy that identifies the opportunities and risks. Then comes the transformation of the value creation model (this is the business model and involves considering all the “R” levels that apply to your business — but the R levels mentioned above are actually called resource management actions) and transformation of the value network (which is your supply chain and the role you play within it) before the final stage, reviewing and monitoring, in which you would connect to the measurement guidelines provided in ISO 59020.

Detailing the CE Transition Process

When defining your CE goals, you need to be specific about what you want to achieve in the transition from linear to circular. For example, this can relate to reducing waste/resource flows, improving regenerative practices or extending product life. This will set you up for effective measurement and ensure you have clear goals that influence the rest of your transition process.

Once the goal(s) are set, the company needs to understand the current value creation model and the value network that it exists within. The best way to do this is to map the system that it exists within and continues to operate within (recommendations for doing this are provided in the standard’s appendix, and we offer courses on how to do this as well. See our Intro to Systems Mapping course at the UnSchool and Circular Futures training).

The standard defines these 9 business model elements that the company needs to reflect and define CE in relation to. We have developed a detailed checklist and worksheet for companies to run through in line with the questions and prompts provided in the standard (available to our Workshop participants).

Next up is setting the boundaries for what you will be addressing when it comes to circularity and then understanding your current performance in reaction to CE.

One important thing to understand about the ISO standards (and something I’m personally VERY happy about) is that it’s based on systems thinking, so many of the approaches and terms from systems dynamics are used to provide the guidelines for moving through a CE business strategy.

In this goal-setting stage, you are not just thinking about what you want to achieve but also establishing what is going on within your business system and the network that your system exists within. The maps you produce should identify how resources come in and out of your system, informing the goals you wish to set. This also sets you up for the measurement and assessment processes outlined in ISO 59020.

Some key terms to understand when doing this:

  • Business System: The scope in which your business operates and how you define your business as a system.

  • System Boundary: The framework in which you define a system. This can be a physical boundary, such as a factory site, or an intangible one, such as a cultural practice.

  • Resource Inflows: These are the resources that flow into your system. They are usually materials and should be identified by their type and whether they are renewable, regenerative, or renewable. For the purpose of measurement in the standards, water and energy are addressed in separate categories, but all other resources that enter your business system are accounted for here.

  • Resource Outflows: An outflow is what exists in your business system. This will include products produced, waste, byproducts and secondary materials. Everything except water and energy are accounted for in this category.

Activating the Transition: Design for Circularity

Design for Circularity (DfC) is detailed as a significant part of the CE business strategy. It involves a product and service creation approach that ensures all design aspects facilitate the wider CE value creation model.

The standard provides extensive guidance on this, including advancing designs that integrate repair, are easily maintained, allow for refurbishment, and can be remanufactured, upgraded, or reused. These designs minimize resource use and prolong product lifetime.

One of the key goals with DfC is to optimize the number of loops or cycles the product/material goes through to actively avoid waste and reduce material use. DfC is based on a systems perspective. This means that the product is not created in isolation but instead designed within the broader systems context, and the specifics of how it exists in the world, specific locations/cultures, etc., are all taken into account when it is created. I’ve also written a couple of handbooks that cover how to do this. Check out Circular Systems Design and Swivel to Sustainability for practical tips.

The standard specifies the following in relation to DfC’s systems perspective: preventing the use or release of substances that can harm human health and ecosystem resilience; considering the full sustainability aspects throughout the life of the product; and exploring new relationships with customers, suppliers and partners to design a suitable value creation model. This approach takes a full life cycle perspective.

Taking Action: Determining a CE strategy

A CE strategy lays out the goals and approaches that your organization will take to enact CE. This should be based on the six circular economy principles identified in 59004 and developed based on the organization’s purpose, vision, mission, identified gaps and opportunities; its need to reposition within the value chain or the value network; its need to expand its sphere of influence; and its desire to achieve a transition towards a more circular value creation model. Again, the concept of a sphere of influence is something we have been teaching at the UnSchool for a decade, and we have many practical tools for exploring and enacting this, like this 10-day Micro Course, Activating your Agency).

Think about your role within the system you are operating within and the opportunity for you to transition your value network towards full circularity. This will involve resource sharing and stewardship, collaboration, traceability and waste minimization.

From the standards perspective, this is about setting up the framework for long-term sustainability by identifying what is needed to achieve your value proposition now and into the future through CE. Your strategy development needs to include long-term resource availability and impact considerations. There are many suggestions made in the standards and we have created checklists to support ease of engagement (available to our workshop participants).

In summary, ISO 59010 is a detailed look at the steps needed for any sized company to transition its entire business model and value chain from linear to circular. It provides specific guidance on how to do this and focuses on the critical role design plays in achieving CE. All businesses should look at this standard and follow the steps when doing a CE transition.

ISO 59020: Circular economy — Measuring and assessing circularity performance

ISO 59020 is structured to provide specific guidance on how to measure and assess circularity at different regional, organizational, product and inter-organizational levels through methods such as:

  • Defining the “system in focus” for assessment

  • Overseeing targets and actions (of reduction, repair, reuse, recycling),

  • Measuring resource flows (including inflows, outflows, and losses)

  • Assessing sustainability impacts (in social, environmental, and economic systems)

The standard underscores the importance of data collection and analysis by always considering key indicators of circularity, such as the utilization of resources like materials, energy and water. The standard provides these indicators along with the formulas for measuring and appropriate reporting techniques.

The Assessment Framework

The framework for assessment outlines that initially, a context for the assessment needs to be set (this is the system being measured, the CE goals of the organization and any complementary methods that will be used) and is referred to as the “system in focus”.

The former two standards are referred to as the foundations for setting the goals and context for the assessment.

Then, three stages are progressed through:

  1. Boundary setting (defining the system in focus, timeframe and level of the system)

  2. Circularity data acquisition and measurement (select indicators and measure against these)

  3. Assessment and reporting

We produced this graphic to show the steps and elements of these three stages.

The guidelines specify a process of assessment that starts with defining the organization’s goals and then setting a scope of assessment (a system in focus) and a timeframe for the assessment (referred to as temporal state). This is all in relation to CE and sustainability goals. At all stages, the user group, target audience and interested parties are considered.

Some key terms and concepts outlined in this standard:

Circularity measurement requires data acquisition and methods of obtaining and reporting against indicators, which is what this standard lays out the formulas and methods for.

A circularity indicator is a quantitative or qualitative measure of a circularity aspect. From the perspective of the standard, these include mandatory and optional indicators. Below is a table of the mandatory and optional CE indicators.

Resource flows are measured based on internal and external processes, such as what happens inside your scope of assessment and what is external to that. For example, if you are producing a complex product, there are likely many external impacts and flows that you are not accountable for but are critical to your product.

Resource inflows are measured to quantify four types of content and have to add up to 100%:

  • Percentage of reused content

  • Percentage of recycled content

  • Percentage of virgin, renewable content

  • Percentage of virgin, non-renewable content

In summary, ISO 59020 is more complex than the others, as it offers a robust explanation of circularity indicators, a measurement process and the assessment criteria for validating and reporting on circularity at different levels, from product to organizational to regional. Anyone working to justify their CE performance needs to understand these methods so they can set up appropriate data acquisition and ensure they have been making decisions in line with preferable CE outcomes.

To purchase the standards from the ISO, go here.

Conclusion

Needless to say, this is a complex and detailed arena, and even with my many years of experience and expertise in CE, I had to invest a considerable amount of time to unpack and synthesize the specifics of each of the standards. Now that I have, I am even more fond of them! They really do offer clarity and the specifics that enable businesses of any shape or size to follow a process of transformation, set up data acquisition systems and report effectively on their CE performance.

I’m excited to get started in helping companies apply these to their business and ensure they have the right thinking tools and systems to deliver high-value CE outcomes. If that sounds like something your organization is up for, reach out and contact me, as I’m looking for some interesting case studies to work on.

If you too want to be ahead of the pack on this, join my 2-week Live Online training this November 8th/12th/15th/19th, 12–2pm EST / 5–7pm UK for the 4 sessions.

 

Get in touch if you are interested in private training programs to advance your skill set or activate CE within your company.

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10 Highlights from 10 Years of The UnSchool

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It’s been 10 years since I had a crazy idea to start an experimental knowledge lab for adults who wanted to help change the world, and what an incredible decade it has been! 

The UnSchool was born of a need to share systems, sustainability and design as tools for making change. It started in New York City in 2014 and was built by hundreds of people who came to engage, learn, share and create as we ran experimental workshops, events and fellowships, first in New York and then around the world. The UnSchool began with no funding, a tiny team and a lot of passion. And today, at 10 years old, we have morphed and grown and adapted and evolved. We even set up a farm and a not-for-profit for a few years!

 
 

The UnSchool always wanted to be a provocative and positively disruptive force driving change to help address some of the world's most complex problems through using a systems approach to creative interventions. I created the Disruptive Design Method (DDM) to support creative people in activating their agency and effecting change within their sphere of influence. Everything we have done has been about advancing science-led sustainability in its full sense of the word, taking social, economic and environmental action to ensure an equitable, regenerative and nature-positive future. 

Over the last ten years, we have done some very cool, creative and collaborative things, here are just some of the highlights: 

  1. We ran 10 fellowship programs in nine countries for over 300 people, with the last one taking place in Kuching. Watch the recap below!

 
 

2. We’ve made 10 free toolkits and have had thousands of people download and use them.

3. We have had 30,000+ people take our online courses.

4. We collaborated with the United Nations to make the Anatomy of Action. 

5. We restored and ran an abandoned farm in rural Portugal into a brain spa and living learning lab and hosted summer camps, educator training, community open days, creative residencies and immersive sustainability workshops for hundreds of people workshops on the farm. 

 
 

6. We have had our unique methods, such as the DDM, picked up and used by academic institutions around the world (positively disrupting the education system!).

7. We have seen our alumni grow their impact and capacity to make change all over the world.

8. We’ve given away more than $500,000 in scholarships. 

9. We have always adopted an approach to sustainability and climate action that is future positive, solutions oriented and practically activating. We believe in the possibility of creating a future that works better for all of us, and we see the missing link being the number of dedicated people who have the knowledge and skills to contribute to the change we need, in whatever capacity and agency they have. Check out our alumni stories to learn more about this impact and watch the recap of our first very Fellowship in NYC to see how it all began!

 
 

10. We have tried and tested many things, failed first, then adapted and adjusted our processes and methods. We have experimented, laughed, cried, hugged and rejoiced. There have been all the highs and lows of an unfunded startup built on passion and grit, but most of all, there has been change. 

So, what’s next for the unschool?

On our five-year birthday, I wrote this article saying I wanted The UnSchool to be obsolete at year 10 because I’d hoped that after a decade, we would have sufficiently inspired enough transformation around education, systems thinking, science-led sustainability and agency development.

I am confident that we have helped make this happen in many ways, but there is still a lot more work to be done, especially when it comes to transforming the design industry and the role that we each play as citizen designers in constructing the future we want to live in. 

So, we are doing a big rejig of all our initiatives, building new tools, making more free stuff and listening to what people need to help them activate their agency to make change in their profession and part of the world. We will, for now, keep creating tools that help people make change. Most recently, we released a free Eco-Anxiety toolkit as we started to hear and see the impact that burnout and climate anxiety are having on change-makers and people bearing the brunt of a changing climate. We are working on a report that details the responses from our design transformation survey and are about to launch a detailed workshop on the new ISO standards for the circular economy (sign up here). 

 
 

But we also want to hear from you — what do you need to help you make change? 

To make it fun (and UnSchool it), we created a quiz that, of course, involves prizes! It's part treasure hunt, part personal experience reflection, part funny questionnaire. Your total score gets you credit for UnSchools online to get whatever courses or handbooks you want — up to $500 USD! 

Please Note: The quiz is open for 10 days, so be sure to complete it by 11:59pm EST on 15 Sep 2024 to get your UnSchools Online credit.

 
 

I can’t tell you if the UnSchool will be around in 2, 5 or 10 more years. But I, for one, am committed to continuing to create things that evolve and adapt to the complex ecosystem we are all a part of — things that support agents within this system to be equipped to effect positive change, overcome inertia and contribute to crafting a world that works better for all of us.

 
“This is how we change the world. We connect the dots, do the work, love the problems at play, find the connections that breed the places to intervene. We collaborate and test, explore and fail productively. We find joy in the challenges, and we challenge ourselves to be contributors, not just extractors. This is how we change the world with the intent to make it work better for all of us.

Design systems change.”
— Leyla Acaroglu
 
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3 Scientific Methods for Assessing Humanity's Impact on the Planet

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At The UnSchool, we have been anti-celebrating Earth Overshoot Day for several years now. It’s been fascinating to watch the significant rise in collective awareness of just how urgent the need to redesign our economy, production processes and consumption practices is if we are to reverse the destruction of ecosystems, climate and communities. 

It was in the 1970s when we really started to understand that human activity has significant impacts on the Earth. Over the last four decades, the scientific community has invested significantly in developing rigorous methods of examining the causal relationship between human activities and ecological impact. 

Three scientific methods help us all understand our own individual impacts, collective consumption effects, and the ecological boundaries that Earth has. 

Today we are sharing three leading scientific methods for assessing impacts that allow us to gain insights at the personal, product and economic level to go from impact to action: 

  1. Ecological Footprints and Earth Overshoot: Ecological Footprints can be used to assess individual lifestyle choice impacts, as well as collective city, country and global impacts on biodiversity. This method is used to determine when Earth Overshoot Day occurs, which is the date each year in which we exceed Earth's capacity to sustain us, based on collective consumption habits. And for many parts of the world, that is today (Aug. 1st)! 

  2. Planetary Boundaries: Developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Planetary Boundaries method looks at the Earth’s limits in relation to 9 key planetary systems and warns of the snowball effects that could occur if we exceed these. The science is used to show global health and has included such methods as the Doughnut Economy. 

  3. Life Cycle Assessment: A method of assessing the whole-of-life environmental impacts of a product or service, Life Cycle Assessments look at the interactions between all aspects of a product’s life in relation to its actions in the economy. This method is now an underlying element of environmental product declarations and is also the method towards using digital product passports to communicate sustainability across value chains. 

In this article, we’ll explore each of these in more detail. If you are interested in diving deeper into these methods in relation to your business decision-making, we offer professional training for these concepts. 

Check out our online courses “Ecological Footprint Methods” and “Life Cycle Assessment and Thinking”, each at the reduced rate of $59 USD.

 
 

Ecological Footprints and Earth Overshoot 

Every year humanity consumes more resources than the Earth can replenish. This is the definition of unsustainability. As we go into ecological deficit year after year, we consume the resources needed to maintain a healthy system that can sustain and carry all living things on this beautiful planet. 

Each year on World Environment Day (June 5th), the Global Footprint Network announces when Earth Overshoot Day falls in the current calendar year. The date moves around depending on many factors, but the method of assessment essentially looks at the global biocapacity of the Earth and the collective consumption rate of humans. Then a date is calculated for when we have used up the available resources for that year. After that date, we are in ecological deficit, eating into the future generation’s resources. 

 
“Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. We maintain this deficit by liquidating stocks of ecological resources and accumulating waste, primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
”
— Earth Overshoot Day Website
 

In the 1970s, it typically fell around New Year’s Eve (Dec. 31st). That was the last time we lived within Earth’s carrying capacity; now, Earth Overshoot Day is often held in July or August, which means we use up all our allocated resources just over halfway through the year.  

This year, Earth Overshoot Day falls on August 1, 2024. The chart below shows how the date has moved up earlier and earlier each year since it was first calculated in 1971.

 
 

The Ecological Footprint Methodology allows for an assessment of the impacts of an individual, product, company, country, and even the entire planet. Developed in the 1990s, it’s a well-respected means of assessing and understanding the ecological impacts of actions, as well as providing the base data for the bi-annual Living Footprint Report.  

The Footprint Method looks at many “impact categories,” which are areas of our daily lives that impact the planet — like the food we eat, how we move around our communities, and the kinds of houses we live in. All our actions have impacts, and where we live also changes the size of our footprint as different countries have different amounts of biologically productive land. If you live in a colder country, for example, you often have to import food from a warmer country to accommodate your population’s needs. 

 
 
 

This is measured against biocapacity, which is the ability of areas to continuously renew resources or be regenerated. Carrying capacity refers to the ability for a country or ecosystem to sustain or support the population that lives there. This can be for humans and non-human species as well. This term comes from biology and refers to the number of organisms that can survive to the resources within an ecosystem. Ecosystems can't sustain themselves for too long when an overpopulation exploits all the available resources. The result is population decline or collapse; a population can only grow until it reaches the carrying capacity of the environment. 

Resource requirements are measured through global hectares (GHA), and a country or city is considered unsustainable if its demand for natural resources is greater than what it can supply itself. Most modern economies are unsustainable.

 
 

The Ecological Footprint method allows us to see how individual actions accumulate to have big impacts on the natural systems that sustain us. When you do your own ecological footprint, you will be asked to look at your lifestyle choices, which will then draw on the following impact areas:

 
 

The concept allows an average to be made: if everyone on the planet lived as you do, how many planets would we need to sustain them? The global average right now is 1.7 planets. 

Since the 1980s, we have rapidly increased the amount of natural resources that are extracted, used, and wasted; year-on-year, this gets worse.  This means we have a deficit, so we have to find innovative ways to meet our human needs while maintaining and respecting the life support systems that we currently have on Earth. 

One simple goal is to align the red line on this graphic with the green, which represents the Earth's carrying capacity. From this methodology, you can see how we started to expand our understanding of humanity's actions impacting the Earth's ecosystems, which leads us to the next important method, planetary boundaries. 

Planetary Boundaries 

The planet is a complex interdependent system with limitations or boundaries. The atmosphere’s edge is one reasonably obvious boundary, but research conducted by the Stockholm Resilience Centre has defined a set of nine planetary boundaries that are critical to the health and well-being of the planet and, once exceeded, threaten Earth's ability to sustain life. 

  The 9 planetary boundaries include:

  1. Stratospheric ozone depletion

  2. Loss of biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and extinctions)

  3. Chemical pollution and the release of novel entities

  4. Climate change

  5. Ocean acidification

  6. Freshwater consumption and the global hydrological cycle

  7. Land-system change

  8. Nitrogen and phosphorus flows to the biosphere and oceans

  9. Atmospheric aerosol loading

These demonstrate what we need from nature in order to continue developing and thriving. This planetary boundaries concept shows that there are limits to our actions.  

Late in 2023, a team of scientists was able to quantify the 9 processes that regulate the resilience and stability of the Earth as an entire living system for the first time. 

The concept was first developed by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and a team of international scientists in 2009. Rockström says that we have raced past 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries, these being: climate change, biodiversity, deforestation and nitrogen/phosphorus cycle.

“Boundaries are interrelated processes within the complex biophysical Earth system. This means that a global focus on climate change alone is not sufficient for increased sustainability. Instead, understanding the interplay of boundaries, especially climate, and loss of biodiversity, is key in science and practice. ”
— Stockholm Resilience Institute

Watch Rockstrom explain this in detail:

This work also greatly influenced the development of the Doughnut Economics framework developed by economist Kate Raworth. 

Life Cycle Assessment 

Life Cycle Thinking is based on the methodology of product environmental impact assessment known as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is the scientific process of understanding what impacts occur as a result of the materials/products that move through our economy (it is also sometimes referred to as Life Cycle Analysis, depending on the country you are in). 

LCA is a complex, deeply detailed process of breaking down all of the inputs that go into making something exist and examining the outputs that result. The European Union states that LCAs are the best framework for assessing the environmental impacts of products. 

“LCA is the factual analysis of a product’s entire life cycle in terms of sustainability. Every part of a product’s life cycle – extraction of materials from the environment, the production of the product, the use phase and what happens to the product after it is no longer used – can have an impact on the environment in many ways. With LCA, you can evaluate the environmental impacts of your product or service from the very first to the very last or from cradle to grave. ”
— Pre Sustainability (developers of the LCA software SimaPro)

Data is a crucial component of an LCA, and the outcomes are often as good as the data used for the assessment. As part of the development of an LCA, an inventory is itemized and used to collect data. 

Functional Units, Goal, and Scope of a LCA

Because LCA has a standardized process of assessment, it makes it reliable and transparent. The standards provided by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) are ISO 14040 and 14044; they describe the four main phases of an LCA:

  1. Goal and scope definition

  2. Inventory analysis

  3. Impact assessment

  4. Interpretation

Firstly there is defining the functional unit of what you are assessing. Everything created can be defined by a primary functional unit that often can be quantified as a certain number of units. For coffee cups, it’s carrying a certain amount of hot liquid (the hot part is important as it dictates material quality), for a pen it’s writing x number of pages of text, for transporting humans on roads you could have a car, bus or bike, so to normalize the functional unit across these, you would define it as driving x number of kilometers per day. The LCA always has a clearly defined functional unit that each product being assessed can perform at the same level so that apples are being compared with apples and not apples to bananas. 

A system boundary is then defined. This is a simple explanation of what processes will be included in the study and what will be excluded.  

Then a goal and scope is outlined. This essentially is the framework for what is being studied. The scope sets the boundaries for assessment. So, if you wanted to look at coffee cup options, the scope would define all the processes needed to transform materials into a usable cup and not look at the coffee or the milk or any of the things that go inside it, as it's not part of the goal of the assessment. The goal would outline exactly what is being looked at, the functional unit and why it is being assessed. 

After that, data is collected and assessed and the findings reported. Usually, certain impact categories are selected. and these are then shown as comparisons against the different products assessed. 

This is the image that the ISO standard includes to describe the core stages of an LCA:

 

Scrutinizing LCAs

When reviewing an LCA study, consider who conducted it, where the data came from, and what the goal and scope are (this is always outlined in an LCA). Also, check for the commissioner's vested interests and what functional unit was used for comparison. 

Additional factors, like the age of the study and what variables may not have been taken into account if it’s an older study, are also important to determine the quality of the data. 

The degree of detail that goes into conducting a LCA is pretty intense and rightly should be as thorough as possible. This detail results in more clarity of what’s going on across the entire life of a product, rather than just one area.

Published LCAs allow the wider community to explore the findings, uncover new insights into industrial processes and understand the environmental impacts of everyday products and service delivery.

Connected to LCAs are the use of various forms of the data in other standards, such as ISO 14024 (Type I label), a voluntary, multiple criteria-based, ISO 14021 (Type II label) for any written or spoken environmental claim, ISO 14025 (Type III label) for Product Category Rules (PCRs) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). There is also the advancement of digital product passports in the EU, which should include LCA data.

Remember that LCAs should pretty much always be peer-reviewed if the resulting information is to be publicly published. To check out examples and search for LCAs, type SCHOLAR into google (scholar.google.com) and it will come up. Once you are in there, search for things like Paper Cup vs Plastic Cup LCA and you will find quite a bit of data in the abstracts that are publicly available. The UN has a global database of life cycle data you can access here.

Life Cycle Thinking is a streamlined version of thinking about the full life cycle that anyone can do. We explored it in detail in this previous article, and if you want to dive into it in more detail, check out our dedicated “Introduction to Life Cycle Thinking” online course here. 

Anti-Celebrate by Taking Action this Earth Overshoot Day

The Global Footprint Network maintains a fantastic website dedicated solely to Earth Overshoot Day at overshoot.footprint.org. There you’ll find more information about the history of Earth Overshoot Day, resources for calculating your footprint, and the Power of Possibility platform, which “highlights many ways we can improve our resource security in five key areas (healthy planet, cities, energy, food, and population).”

Another way to take action is by checking out the everyday lifestyle choices you can make to reduce your footprint with our UN collaboration, the Anatomy of Action.  Finally, don’t miss the free courses provided by the UN’s Life Cycle Initiative here. 

Looking for online sustainability training?

To learn more about ecological footprinting, check out our online course “Ecological Footprint Methods” on our Swivel Skills online learning platform.

To gain skills in LCA and apply life cycle thinking to product design and development, check out “Life Cycle Assessment and Thinking”, which is also on our Swivel Skills sustainability training platform. 

Each of these courses is just $59 USD and comes with 365 days of access, downloadable worksheets and templates, and a certificate of completion that you can share with your network. 

UnSchool Online has a full course catalog of choices, including our popular Sustainability deep-dive course, also available through our brand new All Access Passes.

 
 
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Part 2: How Does Eco-Anxiety Affect Global Citizens?

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This is Part 2 of a 3-part series. Part 1 is here and is recommended reading before this article. 

Deep, complex emotional reactions to the realities of climate change are an important and natural response to an existential threat, and the way that the resulting eco-anxiety affects people is different. Where someone lives, their socio-economic situation, gender, age, cultural identity and worldview will impact the type and intensity of the feelings held regarding environmental destruction. 

Since the concept first entered the modern lexicon, there has been a significant increase in awareness, with Oxford Languages (2019) recording a 4290% increase in the use of the term eco-anxiety in English-language media sources during 2019 alone. 

In this article, we will explore some of the contextual aspects of climate and eco-anxiety, looking at the diversity of lived experiences and reflecting on our own experiences. The harsh reality of climate change is that many of the most affected communities are not the ones who have contributed to the creation of the issues. There are deep inequalities and systemic issues with all environmental impacts; thus, emotional reactions vary in relation to this. 

Here, an adoption of a climate justice lens and further research into the impact that geographical context has on eco-emotional experiences is needed. This would allow for a more nuanced conversation and exploration of coping and support strategies. 

The research shows that vulnerability to climate anxiety is most prevalent among those who:

 
 

As discussed in Part 1 of this series, there is a difference between feeling anxious about the anticipated effects of the climate crisis and reacting to the current experiences caused by a lived reality of climate change-related losses. 

There is even a new term for this called ”solastalgia”, which is the “distress caused by the transformation, deterioration, and degradation of one’s environment with relevance to the environment-health-place nexus.” Events that can trigger solastalgia include exposure to ecological destruction from prolonged environmental changes such as land clearing, biodiversity loss or forest fires; experiencing extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, or hurricanes; and changes to the built environment such as rapid industrialization or gentrification. This state is directly linked to the experience of your connected environment being transformed in ways that affect your connection to or perception of that space. 

The relationship between loss and grief is well established, so it's no wonder that people feel deep grief and fear when confronted with the destruction of nature, be it by climate-induced disasters or human-made systems. The knowledge of loss, even if not experienced directly, can be triggering, as it presents a trend that one can assume will lead to greater losses. 

Here, we have compiled some different perspectives on the issue of eco-anxiety and loss from a diversity of regions and demographic groups where data is available. It’s worth noting that much of the research to date has been Western-focused. 

Young People and Youth 

It’s often reported that climate and eco-anxiety affect young people most. Many academic studies report this, such as this 2022 study published in The Lancet which states that climate anxiety affects 16 to 25-year-olds and “...occurs mainly in lower-income countries located in areas that are more directly affected by climate change.” Given that youth are most likely to experience the consequences of climate change in their lifetime, yet have little perceived agency to stop the impacts now, this is very understandable.

Furthermore, a commonly cited study by Caroline Hickman and colleagues from the University of Bath in the UK polled 10,000 youths aged 16 to 25 years with 1,000 participants from each of 10 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines (which showed the greatest number of young people experiencing climate anxiety), Portugal, the UK, and the USA. According to the study, “Countries expressing more worry and a greater impact on functioning tended to be poorer, in the Global South, and more directly impacted by climate change; in the Global North, Portugal (which had dramatic increases in wildfires since 2017) showed the highest level of worry.” 

This study also found that 84% of respondents were at least “moderately worried” and 59% were very or “extremely worried” about the impacts of climate change. Over 45% stated their feelings about climate change negatively impacted their daily life and functioning with many facing negative thoughts, including that the future is frightening and people have failed to take care of the planet. Climate anxiety was reported to impact their life choices and decision-making (e.g. hesitancy to have children), causing a negative perspective of the future and their family security and disillusionment with the government.

 
 

Over half of the respondents in this study reported feeling sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless and guilty; they also said people had ignored or dismissed their feelings of climate anxiety. This demonstrates a trend where expressed eco-anxiety is dismissed or undermined as being an overreaction or something that is irrelevant and only affects young people. 

Interestingly, just under 20% of the respondents explained that they don’t talk to other people about climate change. When we perceive a threat, we exhibit a fight-flight-freeze response as a biological survival mechanism. The freeze response to climate change can manifest in eco-paralysis, resulting in depression, despair or as highlighted in this case, the inability to respond due to shock and overwhelm, causing the avoidance of the issue. But it can also result in a choice to avoid the threat and ignore it as this also can offer a perception of cognitive safety. 

Adults 

While current research indicates that eco-anxiety is most prevalent among young people, it is important not to underestimate the experiences of climate-related worry in adult age groups. 

Research into the relationship between eco-anxiety and age is still developing. One survey by the University of York and Global Future think tank surveyed 2100 people from Great Britain and found that eco-anxiety was widespread with three-quarters (75%) of adults in Great Britain saying they were worried about the impact of climate change, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

Another study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reported in 2022 that 64% of Americans are at least “somewhat worried” about climate change with 27% being “very worried” whereby the sample demographic was born between 1928 to 2012. Furthermore, the American Psychiatric Association reported in 2020 that 42% of Baby Boomers and 58% of Gen Xers are “somewhat” or “very concerned” about the impact of climate change on their mental health. Research from Switzerland in 2023 indicated that older people are engaging in pro-environmental behaviours out of concern for future generations. 

This study also highlighted that older people tend to express their concerns through different emotional responses than younger people. The reality is that many people will live through climate trauma, and the outcome of this acute experience can be a very real disturbance with eco-anxiety as a symptom. Adults do tend to process trauma in different ways to children and there is still much work to be done to understand how eco-anxiety and direct trauma experienced in adults affect their life choices, mental health and wellbeing. 

We are conducting a survey to explore this more; please take a few minutes to respond here. 

Gender-Based Impacts 

There is a gendered element to this all as well. Whilst multiple studies like the University of York research mentioned above report that women are more anxious about climate change than men, it’s also identified that many other emotions such as guilt, shame, grief, stress and being overwhelmed can be hidden under anger. This is particularly the case for men, which demonstrates the importance of not just attributing climate anxiety to women or young people, as it so often is.

When considering who climate anxiety affects and how, we have to acknowledge there will be identity politics around the term, which could affect people’s willingness to identify with it at all. 

Non-Western Communities 

Much of the available research on the topic of eco-anxiety and the subset of climate anxiety has been conducted in Western communities. However, there is a call for non-Western research to focus on the array of impacts on people from diverse communities around the world. Studies documenting interventions have been conducted in Nigeria, Hati and Tuvalu, which take into account the effects of climate-related events and explore different interventions based on unique cultural and social conditions to address the negative effects of climate-related anxiety.  

Some see the term and its current definition as being too reductive and vague to detail their complex relationship with the planet and the injustices they face. Additionally, whether people identify with the term depends on the definition provided to them which, as we looked at in Part 1, the definitions do vary. Thus, this will impact who and how someone associates feelings with the term. 

The realities of climate change disproportionately affect people of lower socioeconomic countries and the communities that deal with the brunt of the burden are those that have not benefited from the last 200 years of industrialization the same way Western countries have. So, there is a significant imbalance in the global distribution of impacts and effects of climate change. Furthermore, the concept of anxiety may be perceived differently in non-western cultures based on localized practices which needs to be taken into account. 

Indigenous and First Nations People

A systemic literature review conducted by Vecchio (et al 2022) describes the critical threat exposure that Indigenous people face when it comes to climate change, explaining that “unlike Western models of health, the land and sea are key determinants of general health, psychological, and cultural well-being for Indigenous communities globally.” 

Indigenous communities are particularly vulnerable given that their well-being is directly linked to caring for and connection to country and land. The disturbances that climate change brings exacerbate the physical and mental health impacts that First Nations experience. As such, this can’t be measured in the same way that Western health systems determine. “This intrinsic connection and reliance on natural environments is seen as vital for facilitating health, strength, and cultural wellbeing.” 

 

Image: Linking the physical and psychological impacts of climate change available here.

 

Vecchio (et al 2022)’s study on the existing literature showed that many Indigenous communities experienced a correlation between cumulative changes in their environments and decreased mental well-being, which was expressed through worry, fear, sadness, emotional distress and a decreased sense of self-worth. There was variation based on regional locations, the details of which can be explored more here in section 3.3.1. 

This study on Indigenous Inuit in Canada detailed how climate change, connected with historical injustices, “eroded Inuit wellbeing, expressed through distress, anxiety, depression, social tension, suicide ideation and deep feelings of cultural loss.”

Direct experiences can increase the intensity of the negative emotions, just as a lack of direct experience can decrease the perception of threat. Many Indigenous communities have been custodians over the land for extensive generations with knowledge being passed down, so they are more acutely aware of changes and well-positioned to provide solutions. 

There are places like Tuvalu in the South Pacific where the experience and threats are lived every day by all inhabitants and thus pose an immediate existential threat. The losses are hard to define as “anxiety” when the reality is that the community experiences a daily lived fear of being displaced, but little is being done by the global community to prevent them from losing their country and home. 

Anxiety to Action 

Academic institutions and organizations in the climate action space have started to identify protective coping mechanisms. These include terms such as "active hope" and "meaning-focused coping", which emphasize acting in accordance with one's own values, developing positive framings, and creating hope through action.

One key factor that plays into the degree of climate anxiety is “knowing danger is coming but not having any appropriate scripts, skills, or direct agency in place to mitigate it”, and many interventions are popping up to help address this.  

For example, Climate Cafés offer a decentralized drop-in space that allows individuals to gather and meet in a neutral space to discuss and make sense of their positive or negative climate-related emotions. This model of Climate Cafés has been adopted widely, and The Good Grief Network also developed a 12-step approach (similar to Alcoholics Anonymous) where trained peer facilitators offer a 10-week group program for individuals interested in recognizing and exploring their eco-distress while being supported in finding tangible actions that can help them. For more examples, see this article in Nature. 

Engaging in action in the face of climate change offers one way of regaining a sense of power and building personal agency, which could improve mental health. However, this is where the location and context of the individual directly affect the ability to access such support and ensure that it’s appropriate for the level of real threat. 

Another danger is that when people feel anxiety and powerlessness, they can double down on avoidance, which can further exacerbate the anxiety and climate denialism; this underscores the need for open, constructive dialogue on the reality of the changes underway and how to balance the threats with the realities of action. 

In the final article in this series, we will share a detailed list of actions for addressing eco-anxiety as provided in the literature and also release a toolkit for communities, individuals, workplaces and policy changes that can support transforming anxiety into action. In the meantime, here is a list of resources that can support you. 

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We are running a survey capturing individual experiences with eco-anxiety. The data will be used anonymously in our upcoming toolkit for dealing with eco-anxiety. Please take a few minutes to share your experience here. 

Thank you to Charlotte Adams for her research and writing contributions to this article.

 
 
 

Interested in getting the toolkit when it’s available? Add yourself to the list below 👇

 
 

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    ,

    20 Things You Can Do to Help Beat Plastic Pollution

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    In March 2022, the UN Environmental Assembly gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, and 175 nations agreed to develop an international, legally binding agreement by the end of 2024 to end plastic pollution. Spurred on in part by the growing global awareness of the catastrophic impact that plastic waste is having on the environment, especially the oceans, this historic day also highlighted the importance of us rapidly shifting to a circular economy.

    With the UN’s agreement set to come into effect at the end of this year and this year’s Earth Day theme being  Planet vs Plastics, we are sharing 20 actions that anyone, anywhere can take to help tackle plastic pollution. 

    This is a complex topic, one I have written about in the past. I’ve explored how recycling is broken and asked, Will Global Plastic Bans Work? 

    In 2018 we launched a campaign for a post-disposable future, as one of the main drivers of plastic waste has been the rapid transition from reusable to disposable items in everything from food service ware to sanitary items.

    The big changes we need to see will take all of us contributing in different ways, and one person’s actions can help make a difference, especially if those actions help create a movement.

    If you want to see more everyday actions you can take to make a positive impact, check out the UN collaboration we did called the Anatomy of Action. 

     
     

    20 WAYS to beat plastic pollution

     
     

    SWAPS:  Opt for reusable as often as possible and get creative with trading in your local community

    • Swap from single-use to reusable: This can be done across many areas, from how you get water when you’re out and about to what you choose for your office lunch. Swapping out a single-use to reusable can include bringing your own container or vessel, or finding the time and place to use the reusable options provided. 

    • Rethink food storage: Eliminate plastic baggies and wrap by swapping to reusable containers and beeswax wraps to store food at home. 

    • Ditch single-use period products and opt for new reusable ones: The silicone cups are life-changing! Reusable for years and very effective to use, one cup can save thousands of tampons from being used. The many new period underwear products are also helping save women money and reducing a bunch of plastic, so check out what’s on offer for you and switch out the plastic in your monthly cycle. 

    • Have a clothing swap with friends! Not only will you save your old clothes from the landfill, but you'll also get new outfits for free and have some fun social time. Many clothes are filled with plastic, so in general, try to always opt for second-hand or locally designed and made garments. 

    • Find some freecycle or like-minded communities in your area: Depending on your city, these swap-based communities trade goods and services with the caveat that it’s free. 

     
     

    SERVICES: Utilize services that are designed for and support the circular economy

    • Use a clothing or tool library: If you have these in your city, you can borrow, rent or lease anything from drills and exercise equipment to a fancy outfit you only need for one night. 

    • Food waste delivery services: Many cities have companies that save food from waste (usually due to overstock or minor aesthetic issues), and you can often get a lot of great produce and meals at a discounted price. Check out the Too Good to Go App to see if it’s active in your area. 

    • Subscribe to a low-packaging service: This is common now for things like personal care and cleaning products; they often come in tablet form so you are not paying for all that water, and you can use the tablet in a reusable bottle. 

    • Compost! If you don’t have space at your home, your neighborhood or city collection might have a green waste pickup service. Many places have community gardens that will accept it as well. You can buy small-scale worm farms to have mess-free, odor-free vermicompost right in your home, which takes up a very small footprint.

    • If you have a little one, look for a nappy/diaper washing service: These product-service-system models will lease you the clean reusable diapers and take away and bulk wash the dirty ones (this is key to making them more sustainable, as the bulk washing saves water and energy).

     
     

    STAY CREATIVE: Embrace DIY & activated agency by making your own items and speaking up in support of preventing plastic waste.

    • Make your own! This is a great solution for many household cleaning products and food items like non-dairy milks (almond and oat milk are very quick and easy to make — check out out Hero Veg Cookbook for recipes on how to make these!).  You can even make your own deodorant, toothpaste, lip gloss, eyeliner and many other items with a few basic materials, and the internet has tons of instructions on how to do these. 

    • Take your own: A simple but powerful option is to ask a shop to fill your own vessel when getting takeout or to-go food. You may get rejected, but it's worth asking and raising awareness of this need. Lots of really cool reusable food container services are popping up all over the world, and they might already be in your community! Check out the Dabba Drop in London as an example. 

    • Actively refuse single-use items when offered and make a point as to why: This could be when you are in a sit-down cafe and they bring you a drink in a disposable plastic cup; when ordering, check first what the item will come in and make sure to ask for a reusable option.

    • Don't be afraid to ask: Be it at your local cafe or your kids' school, ask for reusable options and explain why. The more people who request this, the more likely it is to become normalized and adopted.

    • Know your local recycling options and optimize for them: Most places still don't accept soft plastics, but every local waste service is different. Do a quick Google search to learn about your local pick-up and recycling options, and when you’re shopping, select items that can easily be recaptured.

     
     

    SHOP SMARTER: Be extra choosy about where and how you spend your consumer power

    • Seek out zero waste shopping solutions: For example, the ZeroWasteStore app enables you to get pantry items without the plastic. 

    • Buy bigger: Another great option for pantries, especially when it comes to soft plastic for household staples like rice, is to look for bulk options that will reduce the amount of plastic you purchase. This often saves you money as well when you buy in bulk, seek out specialty stores that offer bulk purchasing. 

    • Support shops and stores that are offering zero waste and plastic-free shopping: The key is to reuse packaging, not just swap to a different type of material that is disposable. So find stores that are actively reducing their plastic use and support them — it makes a difference! 

    • Find a local farmer to shop from: Many communities have farmer subscription services where a box of farm fresh food can be delivered to your home plastic-free. This will not only save you money and reduce the amount of plastic you get on your fruit and veg, but it also helps support local farmers (who are heroes in my mind).

    • Invest in start-ups and services that are creating post-disposable products and services: The best way to see more services available is to invest in them, and early adopters can often bear the financial load. But if you can’t afford it, and want to see more of it, then seek out and invest (by becoming a customer) in zero waste and sustainable services.


    HUNGRY FOR MORE?

    If you want to explore more things you can do, explore circular business models in our free Circular Business ReDesign Kit, download our free Superpower Activation Kit, or take on a post-disposable design challenge by downloading our free Post-Disposable Kit. 

    The UnSchool also offers a lot of free content, email micro courses, professional programs and accredited online certification tracks to help you be a more activated participant in solving global social and environmental issues.

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    The Rising Peak of Climate and Eco-Anxiety

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    This is Part 1 of a 3 part series on this topic by Leyla Acaroglu

    Have you ever felt overwhelmed or even depressed by the global climate and nature crises?

    I know I have. Despite having a very optimistic future-focused perspective, I can often feel distressed by the constant compounding disasters; floods, fires, famine — the consequences of our nature-destructive tendencies are all over the news and often present in our daily lives.

    Now moreso than ever, these issues are being directly attributed to climate change, which reinforces the need for action. But when you don’t see the action happening, it can create an even deeper sense of anxiety and despair.

    The resulting stress and pessimism felt by the awareness of environmental issues is called climate or eco-anxiety, and we recently took some time to look into the science behind this. What we found was really concerning. This appears to be widespread with the emotional and psychological toll of inaction affecting people’s mental health, life choices and productivity across all age groups.

    I wanted to share some of the high-level things we learned through our research, which also prompted us to create a survey about eco-anxiety to understand more about how this is affecting people in our community so we can develop some creative change-making tools to support people experiencing this. If you have a few moments to spare, please take it ⬇️

     
     

    Over the next couple of months I will share a series of articles on what we have found out, report on what you share with us via the survey, and develop a toolkit for tackling this issue in a creative way.

     

    Get the Toolkit

    Sign up to be the first notified when the Eco-Anxiety Toolkit is ready.

      We respect your privacy. Your information will only be used to send you the information you are signing up for.

       

      What’s going on?

      Climate-related emotions are becoming more prevalent as the awareness of the severity and the urgency to act on climate change has become more mainstream.

      There has been an increase in the number of people expressing their experience of negative emotions, such as climate anxiety and distress about the future, as a result.

      The concept of anxiety brought about as a result of experiencing environmental issues was first mentioned in the general media in the 90s to address citizen concerns about pollution in the Chesapeake Bay in the US. It started gaining more mainstream discussion in 2007, with the work of individual scholars like the Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht leading the conversation into the early 2010s.

      However, eco-anxiety did not begin to garner as much widespread attention and research as we see today until 2017 when the American Psychological Association partnered with ecoAmerica and Climate for Health to deliver the report Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance.

       
       

      This report delivered a working definition of eco-anxiety as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” This identified a host of emotional and physiological experiences ranging from anxiety and depression to fear and “doomism” as part of the suite of emotional states felt by people in response to environmental disasters and threats. The report points out “that uncertainty, unpredictability, and uncontrollability seem to be important factors in eco-anxiety. Most forms of eco-anxiety appear to be non-clinical, but cases of ‘pathological’ eco-anxiety are also discussed.”

       
       

      Despite this increase in research and mainstream discourse, climate or eco-anxiety is still widely misunderstood as a concept, with this 2021 systematic literature review concluding:

      “Eco-anxiety is a concept used for understanding the link between climate change and anxiety associated with perceptions about the negative impacts of climate change. The evidence suggests that further clarity and theoretical development of the concept is required to advance conceptual understanding of eco-anxiety. Our review also showed that most of the evidence comes from the Western countries, and more research is needed in other parts of the world. Indigenous peoples, children and young people are identified as vulnerable where their lived experiences of eco-anxiety are unclear and require further research.” — Understanding Eco-anxiety: A Systematic Scoping Review of Current Literature and Identified Knowledge Gaps

      Meanwhile, as academia works to come to a consensus and further develop an understanding of eco-anxiety, those who experience and live with the effects are left to navigate it with limited support while it impacts their daily functioning, life decisions, perspective of the future and productivity at work.

      The Lived Experience

      We live in an information overload age whereby it’s hard to switch off from content that can cause all sorts of distress and anxiety. But when you combine this with the lived experience of changing weather, fires, floods, the increased severity of weather events like cyclones and hurricanes, when you witness firsthand the devastation that environmental disasters, deforestation, and chronic air pollution have, the effects can be visceral and confronting.

      Some of the emotional responses to these experiences are anger, fear, frustration, hopelessness, avoidance, anxiety, depression, lack of energy and guilt or shame. These can lead to sleeplessness, changes to appetite and difficulty concentrating.

       
       

      Have you experienced any of these effects? Some people who struggle with eco-anxiety have reported difficulty with concentrating at work and can’t decide if they want to have a family with the potential for a climate-ravaged future. In an interesting juxtaposition, some share that they avoid absorbing any media that reminds them of the impending climate doom, while others sometimes even seek it out in what’s been called “doom scrolling.”

      I’ve worked in sustainability for over 20 years, and I absolutely choose to switch off to avoid certain portrayals of climate change. I’ve long felt that the negativity framing doesn’t work to engage people, as I myself become riddled with fear, which makes me shut down. It certainly doesn’t inspire creativity or action.

      Understanding eco-anxiety has the potential to shed light on a range of eco-emotions that reflect our interconnectedness with all life and systems on Earth. Eco-emotions can illuminate our relational ties, encourage us to reflect on what we truly value, and remind us of our fundamental dependency on complex ecological systems so we are moved to protect and nurture the Earth.

      So perhaps the fact that so many people are feeling some sort of pain associated with the crises in nature demonstrates the deep interconnection that we humans have with the natural world and innate desire to resolve this. And these feelings can be transformed from a negative ones of loss to proactive action.

      Let’s dive into how the definition of eco-anxiety has come to spread across three distinct contexts and how it’s affecting us.

      The Contexts of Eco-Anxiety

      There are numerous definitions of eco-anxiety that have emerged as the arena has gained more researchers focusing on it. There are inconsistencies in the use of the term and debate in the medical community around its definition. Still, there is a consensus that eco-anxiety is fueled by uncertainty and uncontrollability (similar to other anxiety disorders).

      The two commonly cited definitions include the APA’s 2017 version previously mentioned, “a chronic fear of environmental doom,” and The Climate Psychology Alliance’s version: “heightened emotional, mental or somatic distress in response to dangerous changes in the climate system,” in which somatic refers to the physical embodiment of stress.

      “The grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change. We contend that ecological grief is a natural response to ecological losses, particularly for people who retain close living, working and cultural relationships to the natural environment, and one that has the potential to be felt more strongly and by a growing number of people as we move deeper into the Anthropocene.” Cunsolo, A. & Ellis, N.

      Professor Albrecht, who has been at the forefront of this research, suggests that chronic stress on ecosystems is likely to result in “psychoterratic” or Earth-related mental health syndromes, including eco-angst, eco-nostalgia, solastalgia, eco-guilt, eco-paralysis, ecological grief and environmental distress.

      But this is not a one-size-fits-all situation. The context in which the person experiencing the emotions lives, the threats they experience directly or indirectly and their socio-economic situation will all affect the way eco-anxiety is experienced (a systems thinking perspective can greatly assist in better understanding these nuances).

      For example, a person living in a climate-affected area will have a very different threat level than a person living in an area that has not yet experienced any significant climate-related impacts. There is also the issue of climate injustice, where young people are likely to experience the greatest mental burden from climate change that older generations have caused and where countries that have not benefited from the rapid industrial growth of the West suffer the worst of the climate and nature crises.

      How is this experienced?

      The human brain is wired to respond to threats. As humans we have negativity and optimism biases that help us hone in on threats that may negatively impact our ability to survive, and conversely, have the ability to imagine a positive future for ourselves so that we can still function in everyday life (check out our course on Cognitive Science and Biases to learn more about this).

      The research indicates there are loosely three climate-related contexts for “ecological grief”, which is a subset of eco-anxiety:

      1. Grief associated with physical ecological losses: Refers to anxiety from the physical disappearance or degradation of species, ecosystems and landscapes, which can emerge due to gradual changes over time. This is also sometimes referred to as “slow violence,” in which harmful impacts play out over the course of many years or decades.

      2. Grief associated with the loss of environmental knowledge and identity: Refers to the grief experienced by those who have strong relational ties to the natural world and whose personal and collective understandings of identity are created in relation to the land (this is often referenced by Indigenous groups and identified as a core grief in the fight to communicate this to non-Indigenous peoples).

      3. Grief associated with the anticipated future losses: Refers to the future and anticipated losses to culture, livelihoods, and ways of life based on the changes already experienced and those projected to occur.

      These three contexts can be felt both simultaneously and on a spectrum. For instance, someone who has experienced a climate-related disaster can be anxious about the physical losses of their local environment while also being worried about the future anticipated losses.

      The symptoms of eco-anxiety

      Many of the symptoms of eco-anxiety are similar to that of general anxiety disorder. Like all emotions, the symptoms and their intensity can range and are influenced by personality traits, cultural notions of value (i.e. a greater value attributed to ecological loss can result in greater climate anxiety), and personal experiences (e.g. experiences of climate-related disasters).

      Research into other eco-emotions is emerging and reveals the complex and often competing feelings that fluctuate and can occur simultaneously.

      It’s not specifically anxiety that people feel; in fact, the research states that people have a constellation of emotions with common symptoms of eco-anxiety including:

      • Worry

      • Fear

      • Anger or frustration (e.g. due to the inaction of governments, large organizations and industries; self-directed anger; anger as a result of concern for younger generations and feeling unable to to cause systemic change)

      • Grief

      • Shame and guilt (i.e. their environmental impact or lack of effort in the past)

      • Irritability

      • Hopelessness/ powerlessness

      • Existential dread/ fatalistic thinking

      • Obsessive thoughts about climate change

      • Depression and sadness

      • Shock

      • Stupor

      • Overwhelm

      • Stress

      • Physical impacts include: headaches, stomach aches, chest pain, sleeplessness/insomnia, panic attacks, loss of appetite

      Experiencing intense feelings of eco-anxiety or being a survivor of climate-related disasters can lead to a state of eco-paralysis that manifests as apathy or fatalistic thinking, PTSD, suicidal ideation, and maladaptive coping strategies like substance misuse.

      Furthermore, research is beginning to uncover complex forms of climate anxiety and trauma and their intergenerational effects, such as when environmental damage causes the loss of personal or cultural identity, ways of life and knowing. For Indigenous and First Nations People, this is a deeply embodied experience whereby the loss of nature, land and culture is deeply connected to the colonial severing and stealing that led to the nature-disconnect we live in today (where we moved from human-nature relations that were based on reciprocity to one of dominance and exploitation that has fueled the eco-crises we face). So, in this case, the term eco-anxiety could be seen as a privileged position connected to the difference between those who can afford to feel anxiety about the situation versus those who are living the losses in real time.

      It’s important not to dismiss that positive emotions can also result from eco-anxiety, particularly when the feelings are acknowledged and navigated effectively. They can be a source of motivation for active engagement, hope, resilience, empowerment, and connection, particularly when participating in co-designing initiatives for collective action. The negative feelings are often the stated motivation for people getting involved in taking action, from tech solutions, young activists through to CEOs deciding to make the needed changes to their businesses.

      This is often where the hope lies, in being able to feel through the complex emotional states that fear and grief generate for us and transitioning these from paralysis to action. Or at the very least, having a collective dialogue about the felt realities so those experiencing them don’t suffer in silence.

      We are eager to understand more about these experiences so that we can develop an action-oriented toolkit to support people experiencing eco-anxiety — which is why we developed a survey to capture people’s thoughts, experiences and emotions about eco-anxiety.

      Our survey is designed to help you reflect on these experiences as much as help us understand more about how people are navigating eco-anxiety. The science on how to address climate anxiety is out there, so please help us in creating a tool for making change by taking the survey.

       
       

      In the next part of this series, I will dive further into how eco-anxiety is currently impacting citizens across the globe, so stay tuned for more.

      If you need support, please contact your local mental health support service, there is a global list provided here, or seek support from a qualified healthcare professional. Additionally, the Climate Council offers these resources.

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      Activating your Systems Thinking Superpower

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      Did you know that ​thinking about the full system of chocolate chip cookies​ gave Dr. Leyla Acaroglu the inspiration to start The UnSchool? It’s true!

       
       

      We believe 110% that thinking in systems is a critical tool for positive change, and in this journal post, we’re excited to dive further into the superpower that is systems thinking!

      What is Systems Thinking?

      Systems thinking is the ability to see the whole before the parts, and it's fundamental to the ​Disruptive Design Method​.

      The world is full of big messy complex social, political, and environmental problems, which are all part of bigger systems at play. In order to help disrupt the underlying issues, we need to first understood what is going on.

      From ​climate change​ to the rise in racism, homelessness, child exploitation, global politics and ocean plastic waste, these problems are all part of complex interconnected systems.

      Taking ​a systems approach ​enables you to develop a more dynamic and intimate understanding of the elements and agents at play within the problem arena, so you can identify ​opportunities for intervention​.

       

      This is our simple 6-step flow to making change from a systems standpoint

      Tools such as ​systems mapping​ are critical to overcoming the reductive mindset we were all taught in school — a mindset that teaches us to break the world down into individual and manageable parts, rather than see the complex, interconnected whole. (Leyla wrote more ​about the education systems failures here​, if you want to dive in!)

      From Linear to Circular

      Reductive thinking is what has led to the exploitative economy. In order to get to a ​circular economy​, we need systems thinking.

       
       
      “Problems are just unaddressed opportunities waiting for creative minds to tackle them. ”
      — Leyla Acaroglu
       

      By taking a systems approach, we can each undo the linear and rigid mindsets that helped create the problems to begin with.

      Thankfully, humans naturally have a curious and intuitive understanding of ​complex, dynamic, and interconnected systems​. So, it’s really not that hard to rewire our thinking systems from linear to expanded, from 1-dimensional to 3-dimensional thinking.

       

      UnSchool Kuching Fellowship participants engage in a​ systems mapping ​exercise during one of their sessions

      Our​ Systems Thinking online course​ is one of our most popular classes for a reason: systems thinking is a superpower that anyone can access to make change.

      We also have a handy 10 Day Email Micro Course, Systems Thinking 101, that is just $19 USD and is the perfect entry point for anyone beginning their systems journey!

       
       
       

      If you've already taken our Systems Thinking course, or have expertise in this area, then take a look at our advanced​ Systems Interventions course​ to learn to see critical relationships, understand feedback loops, and conduct consequence analyses. You will also establish causal relationships and gain radical insights into ​systems dynamics​.

       
       

      Want more change-making superpowers? Download our free ​Superpower Activation Toolkit​ for others like Problem Loving, Future Focus and more!

      Questions or suggestions? Reach out to us via programs@unschools.co

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      A New Way to UnLearn: Introducing 10 day email micro courses

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      This is hard for us to believe, but… we have been building courses for people to advance their skills in systems, sustainability, and design for a decade this year!

      In working with so many incredible creative change-makers around the world through the past 10 years, we know that people learn in different ways and have different accessibility considerations for investing in upskilling.

      With the undeniable need for as many change-makers activated as possible right now, one of our goals is to always find new approaches to delivering content that supports personal and professional transformation.

      As such, The UnSchool is now offering 10-Day Email Micro Courses that are packed with activities and knowledge, sent directly to your inbox, for just $19 USD!

       
       

      We currently have 3 different Micro Courses to choose from:

      • Agency & Activation 💥 Need a fast track to get shit done, take action and move your change-making initiatives forward? Here it is.

      • Co-Design 🤝 Want a road map to equitable engagement, better collabs & improved design outcomes? You found it!

      • Systems Thinking 101 🌐 Ready to get your feet wet with all things systems to make positive change? Think of this like Systems Thinking 101.

       
       

      If you’re a busy professional with limited time but you’re keen to learn how to make change, this is the perfect format for you! You'll also have access to the course material as long as you need so you can refer back to it as you build your change-making skills. Perks include:

      • Convenient delivery: All course material goes straight to your inbox through a daily email for 10 days

      • Accessible, robust material: Written in a format that's easy to digest and apply, you'll get videos, downloadable worksheets & extra resources along the way

      • Efficient daily practice: Expect to budget just 10-20 minutes daily to read and do the mind-boosting activities

      Questions or suggestions? Reach out to us via programs@unschools.co

      Enjoy!

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      Reflecting on 9 Years of Unlearning through the UnSchool, in 3 Acts

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      Reflecting on 9 Years of Unlearning through the UnSchool, in 3 Acts

      The UnSchool of Disruptive Design turns 9 years old this week! What an immense pleasure it’s been to create and share this experimental knowledge lab with tens of thousands of people from around the world over the last 9 years.

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      Alumni Becky Querido: Curating Systems Change experiences

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      UnSchool Alumni Spotlight on Becky Querido
       

      Can you give us an introduction to yourself and your work?

      I am a collaborative and creative Learning & Leadership Development professional that enables people to discover, experience and explore their potential, and cultivates in them positive lasting change. I utilize my strengths in connecting people, ideas and perspectives, creatively conveying vision and concepts, and finding opportunity in complexity in pursuit of growth and transformation.

      I find powerful dynamic ways for people to interact with content to turn information into insight and knowledge into experience. My passion for cultivating learning in others has evolved in my 20 years of practice in human resources, change management, and project management. This combination of experience has given me a unique gift in curating powerful learning experiences. My work has included designing change and learning programs and systems for higher education, healthcare and utilities organizations.

       
      Becky Querido presenting information
       

      What motivates you to do the work that you do?

      I am motivated by inspiring others to live a more enriching life that minimizes our environmental impact, and by helping people move from survival mode to thriving in their work and personal lives. My mission is to activate agency in others to be a force for regenerative leadership and renovate their workplaces, lifestyles and communities in sustainable ways.

      How did you find out about the UnSchool, and what motivated you to come?

      I discovered and started following Unschool in 2019 and was inspired by how the message of positive system disruption. I was curious to learn more about design thinking and how to apply systems thinking to make a difference to our global environmental challenges. (UnSchool team note: Becky completed our online Practitioner Certification Track!)

      What was your experience at the UnSchool like?

      Being an independent learner was difficult but I really connected with Leyla’s message and some of the concepts, such as gamification and social change theory. While it took me longer to complete than planned, I enjoyed the challenges which pushed me outside of my comfort zone and into taking action.  

      What was the main take away you had from coming to the UnSchool?

      The most important thing I can do is to take action. I have all the knowledge I need to act, and just need to put myself out there, have fun, and continue prototyping.

      Tell us more about your initiative(s), and how is it all going?

      I plan to continue to do workshops and bring people together to make micro changes to their daily home and workplace practices to think and act differently about their consumption and disposal choices.

      How did the UnSchool help you start/evolve it?

      The points challenges were key to getting me out of planning and into acting. The reflections and exercises helped me to generate ideas that got me motivated and ready for action. 

      How have you amplified this change you do in the world?

      My neighbours and friends have been influenced and impacted by my projects. They have integrated small changes into their lives to conserve resources. 

      How can people engage with, support, or follow your work?

      Website → www.querida.ca

      LinkedIn → Becky Querido

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      Alumni Julie Beretta: Creating Space

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      2021 ALUMNI PROFILES.png
       

      Can you give us an introduction to yourself and your work?

      Hello! I’m Julie, a yoga teacher, sustainability consultant, and writer (@thesustainablemag, @dinnerconfidential and I just completed my first book). With French-American origins, I was raised in Italy, but after spending several years working abroad and volunteering around the world on different projects tied to sustainability, I moved back to Rome in 2020, right before the pandemic hit.  

      Craving deeper talks, I became an active member of Dinner Confidential, where I facilitate monthly conversations around taboo topics through vulnerability and active listening. This feeds my passion for human relations, which also led me to get trained in the 7 steps and enroll in Gabor Maté’s Compassionate Inquiry approach. Using these tools, I help people uncover the unconscious dynamics that run their lives and prepare them for difficult conversations with themselves and others.

      All of the pieces of my work come together for me in my personal project, We Bloom (I plan to launch my website at the beginning of November). With this, my purpose is to create spaces for us to reconnect to our essence, communities and environment.

       
      What words, sensations and feelings arise when you think of sustainability? We started our introspective journey with a breathing exercise and then each shared our answers in this space free of judgement. The COVID restrictions only allowed for 6 people to take part and that actually made this moment intimate and memorable - photo taken in October 2020 In Sabina, Italy.

      What words, sensations and feelings arise when you think of sustainability? We started our introspective journey with a breathing exercise and then each shared our answers in this space free of judgement. The COVID restrictions only allowed for 6 people to take part and that actually made this moment intimate and memorable - photo taken in October 2020 In Sabina, Italy.

       

      What motivates you to do the work that you do?

      From a technological standpoint, we’ve never been as wired as we are now. Yet I often have the feeling that we are more disconnected than ever before; from our true selves, from our bodies, from others, from nature, etc. We got so deeply trapped into dynamics of separation, but everything is interconnected. What got us to forget that? 

      The work that I do results from a personal necessity I had to reconnect. I have the need to be in touch with my feelings, to move my body, to slow down, spend time in nature, share deep talks —  and I know I’m not the only one.  

      So, opening a space for people to talk about how they relate to certain topics, like the one of sustainability, and getting them to share how they really feel about it, was an important first step for me. What motivates me now (and what I wish to do with We Bloom) is to create a bridge between people who are passionate about this topic and others who are less naturally drawn to it.

       
      How are products made? I assigned a product to two teams of two. Each team went through the 5 key stages (extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, packaging and distribution, use, end of life). Isabel and Flavio analyzed the life story of jeans - photo taken in October 2020 In Sabina, Italy.

      How are products made? I assigned a product to two teams of two. Each team went through the 5 key stages (extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, packaging and distribution, use, end of life). Isabel and Flavio analyzed the life story of jeans - photo taken in October 2020 In Sabina, Italy.

       

      How did you find out about the UnSchool, and what motivated you to come?

      I found out about the UnSchool through a friend of a friend. I was looking for simple tools to add to my experience, so that I could demystify sustainability for those who manifested an interest in it yet didn’t know where to get started.  After I heard Leyla’s TED talk, I checked out the UnSchool webpage: finally I’d found somebody who made sustainability look cool and exciting!

      What was your experience at the UnSchool like?

      I did a one month Masterclass in Circular Systems Design at the UnSchool. My experience was rather short but intense. I acquired a lot of knowledge (keeping up with the amount of content was in fact quite a challenge!) and many practical tools and activities (i.e. life cycle thinking, systems mapping, theory of change etc.) to gain clarity and come up with realistic solutions to integrate sustainability into our lives.  

      What was the main take away you had from coming to the UnSchool?

      I knew that everything was interconnected, but I didn’t realize how interconnected everything actually was.  That was my main takeaway from coming to the UnSchool.

      Tell us more about your initiative(s), and how is it all going?

      Thanks to the Unschool Masterclass, I spent a month getting curious about the following questions:

      • How do people relate to sustainability? 

      • Why do those who’d like to take action don’t do so?

      • What stops them? 

      What I found out was that many of us wish to make changes in our lives. Yet often, the sensations, words and emotions associated with sustainability are so uncomfortable that they make us want to look away instead of digging deeper. 

      So I came up with a simple idea to respond to that problem, and opened non-judgemental spaces - both physical and virtual - for people to share their feelings, sensations and beliefs about sustainability. I used elements of my yoga practice, my facilitation skills, and some of Leyla’s tools to give people an opportunity to explore new ways of relating to this topic.

      I ran this workshop - The Sustainable Practice - in the fall of 2020 and plan to have it again very soon, both in person and online. Stay tuned!

       
      We ended this beautiful day with a round of "Take Home Message". Each participant shared what they got from The Sustainable Practice and how they intend to relate to it from now on. - photo taken in October 2020 In Sabina, Italy.

      We ended this beautiful day with a round of "Take Home Message". Each participant shared what they got from The Sustainable Practice and how they intend to relate to it from now on. - photo taken in October 2020 In Sabina, Italy.

       

      How did the UnSchool help you start/evolve it?

      The UnSchool helped me mine the problem and gave me the tools I needed to offer easy and practical activities for people to understand sustainability differently. 

      How have you amplified this change you do in the world?

      No matter what I do, I try to remind myself and others that WE ARE thanks to nature.   

      I also try to spread what I’m learning in the various languages I speak (English, Italian, French and Spanish) to assist as many people as I can on their journey to sustainability.

      How can people engage with, support, or follow your work?

      I’m launching my website at the end of the month, for now you can follow me on:

      Linkedin → Julie Beretta

      Instagram → Julie Beretta

      Any other thoughts you want to share?

      My interest in human behavior is what inspires me to expand our collective knowledge of our interconnectedness with the Earth. Sustainability isn’t a passion for me, it’s a duty.  And even if what I’m putting forward  is rather simple, I believe it’s an important first step all of us can take to start living  with more intention and respect for our environment.

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      The Trap of Wishcycling

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      By Leyla Acaroglu, originally published on Medium

      Image by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on UnSplash

      Image by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on UnSplash

       

      Wishcycling is when people place non-recyclable items in the recycling and hope those items will end up being recycled. The unfortunate reality, though, is that these actions contaminate the recycling stream and reinforce the very problem of waste.

      Wishcycling comes from a place of good intentions, but as we all know, good intentions do not always lead to good outcomes.

      I think it’s safe to say everyone has done this at some stage.

      We’ve popped the coffee cup into the recycling bin with some coffee still in it and the lid on, or that thin plastic wrapper, a pizza box, lightbulb, broken drinking glass, batteries, chopsticks, maybe even an extension cord (I’ve seen it happen), and hoped that it would go off and be magically made into some new thing.

      Yet the truth is, we don’t have a magical recycling system where everything can be easily transformed into something new. In fact, most things you think are recyclable, are probably not. Recycling has not been able to keep up with the rapid changes to our hyper-disposable and complex material world. Yes, your uncoated paper, tin and aluminum cans, PET bottles, and a few other ridged plastic products can technically be recycled, but the vast majority of the packaging and products that end up in your home, can’t or won’t get a second life.

       
      Image authors own. Source

      Image authors own. Source

       

      Waste collection systems all over the world are struggling with the diversity of material combinations of products and packaging. Coupled with the recent changes to the global recycling supply chain, we have an exponential waste crisis unfolding. The list of what not to include in your recycling (because it will end often up contaminating the entire load of recyclables and be destined for landfill or incineration, all at a cost to the recycling company) is long. It’s actually surprising just how many not-to-include items are on the list in some places. That’s because recycling is different everywhere, and because we have created a material world so complex, it’s hard for the waste processors to keep up with the diversity of ever-changing waste streams.

      When modern recycling first became a regular curbside thing in the 70’s (in part to reduce the amount of waste filling up city landfills), the material world was very different. Originally it was just glass, metal and paper that were separated and collected. These had clear markets they could be sold back into, and so the economics of recycling was feasible. Then came combination products like tetra packs and chip packets (plastic and aluminum together), and a vast number of plastics. The diversity of new packages and household products started to really muddy the waters for the recyclers, and over time, most recycling moved to a single market — China.

      Now we live in a material age where there are tens of thousands of different material and product combinations that enter homes the world over, and after a few decades of being told that recycling is great, we wishfully place many of them in the recycle bin, feeling good and hoping for the best.

      Take, for example, the samples of packaging that I collected from different retailers in the UK. I found instructions, in small print on the back, mainly telling me that the products needed to be returned to the supermarket or were not recyclable at all. I was alarmed by how many packages (organic food products I might add) explicitly stated: “Do not recycle.” Nearly all of them were non-recyclable in my household collection system, yet a quick look in the shared recycling bin in my apartment block and it was overflowing with these very same un-recyclable materials.

      The issue of greenwashing — misleading consumers into thinking something is green, or in this case recyclable, when it’s not — is a topic I have talked about in the past, and this certainly plays into the wishcycling issue. But it’s not as simple as all of us being manipulated or duped into thinking that everything with a recycling symbol is recyclable.

      Many of us really do wish that things we buy can be recycled because it validates us buying them to begin with.

       
      Organic products with different instructions on where and if the packaging can be recycled!

      Organic products with different instructions on where and if the packaging can be recycled!

       

      The people producing these types of packaging and products are very rarely thinking about the end-of-life issues that their material combination choices will have on a waste stream. They deflect responsibility onto us, the customers, and onto the city that will have to manage the plethora of produced waste from their poor designs. I also think it’s unfair that there is an expectation that the customer will be able to decipher the many different options for end-of-life management, for what appears to be the same types of materials, when they are not, as there are hundreds of different types of polymer combinations.

      Equally, retailers don’t set adequate guidelines on what types of packaging they will accept in their products, so it becomes a free-for-all. Without shaming the specific brands or supermarkets, I can say that a quick walk up and down the isles of several UK supermarkets showed me that most of the packaging was un-recyclable. I’m going to guess this is the same in Australia, North American, China and most other major economies.

      How can we, the customers, be responsible for not recycling when so much of what our food and hygiene products are designed into, is packaging that is not even collected in most cities? Here is a selection of packaging from fruit and nut packaging from major UK supermarkets, all non-recyclable. I wasn’t just cherry-picking these ether! Go look in your cupboards and see what is actually recyclable, and what is most likely not.

       
      Orange, lime and nut bags from two different UK supermarkets, all not recyclable.

      Orange, lime and nut bags from two different UK supermarkets, all not recyclable.

       

      Plastics are particularly problematic as they are not easily recycled. Whilst the industry invested 50 million dollars a year to convince us that a number inside a triangle stamped on the base of a piece of plastic will mean that the product will be recycled, the likelihood of it being turned into something new will depend on many different factors, such as: if it’s even technically possible to recycle it (often not); how contaminated with food or product it is; if the local council will collect it; if the local municipal waste processing facility will take it; and if there is a market for that type of plastic to be sold into. Oh, and if there is a market for that plastic to be made into new plastic products. The oil and plastics industry has long known that it’s cheaper and easier to just turn virgin oil into new plastic than it is to collect, clean and resell it. They have profited off us believing that recycling is the solution when they have long known it is not.

      This all leads to much confusion about what can and can’t be recycled, which unfortunately leads to people’s wishcycling, which then goes on to contaminate recycling streams all over the world, and then we get blamed for it! Education alone will not fix an inherently broken system.

      Mainstream curbside recycling has been around for just over thirty years, and it’s in the last fifteen years that half of all the plastic that has ever been produced has been made and sold. To add to this, more than 90% of plastic ever produced hasn’t been recycled. Not because we consumers do the wrong thing, but because most of it is not easily recyclable!

      The Recycling Industry

      The margins on recycling are already very thin, with the collections and sorting often being more expensive than the value of the products being recycled. Some recycling processors still use human line sorters, and others are entirely mechanical. The machines that sort waste are often engineered for the main types of recyclables, such as glass, metal and hard plastics, not the plethora of other stuff that ends up in the sorting lines.

      Then, even after the products are all sorted out and bailed up, the waste processing company has to find a buyer for that specific waste stream. Metals usually have a healthy demand, and thanks to the rise in online shopping, the paper board industry is doing ok. But plastics have always struggled to find a place to go (all the more reason to focus on post disposable design).

      We wishcycle in part because we have been told that recycling is great and it will solve the issue of waste (this the plastics industry did a great job of convincing us of in the 90s, by creating the numbers up to 7 inside triangles that get stuck on certain types of hard plastics to supposedly help everyone identify and recycle them — side note, the history of the design of the original recycling symbol, the triangle made out of arrows, the Mobius Symbol, is fascinating and well worth the read here in this article.).

      I have explained in the past that the global recycling system is broken, and that recycling is part of driving the generation of waste. It legitimizes the production of waste and creates a false solution to a manufactured problem. But here in this article, I want to explore the phenomenon that results from confused, good-intentioned, or perhaps lazy people that don’t know what to do with certain types of waste.

      I will be the first to admit that even I am one of them at times. Intrigued by how others experienced this, I asked the UnSchool team to do a quick snapshot assessment of food items in their houses. As can be seen from the image below, it’s all very confusing about what the symbols mean. The cross through the recycling symbol means it can’t be recycled, but should we be happy that these ones even have any instructions at all? Because many of the other items they found had no information stating whether it was or wasn’t recyclable. This begs the question, whose responsibility is this? Ours, the supermarkets’, the local council, the recycling companies’, the packaging designers’, the product owners’? The federal government’s?

      With such a confusing mess, it’s no wonder people wishcycle!

       
      North American packaging: single-serve applesauce, coffee, frozen berries and crisp tube.

      North American packaging: single-serve applesauce, coffee, frozen berries and crisp tube.

       

      As I explored these issues, I come to feel very sorry for the recycling sector; they are beholden to the decisions made by the producers of products and packaging, and to the lack of regulation or guidance from the government. Then they’re burdened with the responsibility of finding new homes for an ever-growing stream of disposable stuff made with little care for what its end-of-life destination or impact will be.

      How big is the wishcycling issue?

      The less sexy name for the issue of wishcycling is recycling contamination, and in wealthy countries like the UK, Australia and the US, it’s a massive issue.

      According to the UK Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), in 2018, contamination meant councils in the UK sent 500,000 tonnes of recycling to landfill. Research conducted by WRAP revealed that 82% of households in the UK add at least one item to their recycling that is not accepted. The amount of plastic packaging used in supermarkets in the UK is staggering. In 2017, the 10 biggest UK retailers produced 900,000 tonnes of packaging and 2bn plastic bags.

      “More than two-thirds of consumers (69%) believe supermarkets and retailers are responsible for reducing the amount of plastic used, and many want to see more progress.” — Packaging News, 2021

      In the US, the recycling system is increasingly under pressure. The EPA explains the conundrum of recycling: “​​Most Americans want to recycle, as they believe recycling provides an opportunity for them to be responsible caretakers of the Earth. However, it can be difficult for consumers to understand what materials can be recycled, how materials can be recycled, and where to recycle different materials. This confusion often leads to placing recyclables in the trash or throwing trash in the recycling bin.”

      All over the US, recycling with no market to sell to, or place to store it is being burnt or sent to landfill. Increasing costs of processing have meant that some councils have just stopped collecting recycling altogether. This analysis shows how different states are working to address the issues with recycling in the US.

      “Since 1960 the amount of municipal waste being collected in America has nearly tripled, reaching 245m tonnes in 2005. According to European Union statistics, the amount of municipal waste produced in western Europe increased by 23% between 1995 and 2003, to reach 577kg per person.” — The Economist

      In Australia, a country where over 60% of people recycle, it was reported recently that 58% of plastic and 23% of glass packaging were put in the wrong bin. This is contributing to ongoing issues with contaminated exports to neighboring countries, where over 50% of recycling is sent to be processed.

      To add insult to injury, Reuters reported last year that the oil industry plans on investing 400 billion dollars on plants to make new plastics and just 2 billion on reducing plastic waste. Wishcycling is only going to get worse.

      Addicted to Disposability

      The issues of wishcycling go deeper than just misunderstanding what is and isn’t actually recyclable. It speaks to a wider issue of waste and our relationship to it — specifically, how planned obsolescence and enforced disposability feed our addiction. To justify consumption, we need to believe that there is a better destination for our waste than just landfills, incineration or escaping into nature. We want it to be ok to create it, and as our material lives have become more disposable, more complex, there is a higher desire for the idea of recycling to work.

      All over the world, the amount of municipal solid waste being generating is growing at unprecedented rates. In India, in 2001 it was 36.5 million metric tonnes, twenty years later in 2021, it’s now 110 million metric tons. This is estimated to grow to 200 million metric tons by 2041 (source, statistia).

      “China is responsible for the largest share of global municipal solid waste — at more than 15 percent. However, in terms of population the United States is the biggest producer of waste. The U.S. accounts for less than five percent of the global population, but produces roughly 12 percent of global MSW and is the biggest generator of MSW per capita.” — Global waste generation — statistics & facts, Statista, 2021

       
      Trash in a canal near Sahiwal Jhal Road in Pakistan, a Photo by Muhammad Numan on Unsplash.

      Trash in a canal near Sahiwal Jhal Road in Pakistan, a Photo by Muhammad Numan on Unsplash.

       
       
      Trash piling up on a London street (a very common sight), Photo by Paul Schellekens on Unsplash.

      Trash piling up on a London street (a very common sight), Photo by Paul Schellekens on Unsplash.

       

      Recycling is not the solution to waste. The global increases in solid waste generation are happening at rates far, far greater than any recycling system can manage (except maybe Germany, which has policies that shift responsibility back onto the producer and Wales, which is the world's third-best recycler!).

      Recycling doesn’t work because its existence incentivizes and legitimizes the creation of waste. Thus, as a solution to the global waste crisis, it does no more than temporarily mask the issue at hand. We live in a linear economy, a system that requires the production of waste for it to function. We designed an incentive system of growth that relies on continual consumption, which means we must make waste to perpetuate it. To solve the waste crisis, we need to redesign the entire system of materials and how they flow throughout the economy. And certainly, companies need to be held accountable for the things that they create and pump out into the world.

      This is the biggest design challenge of our time. How do we redesign everything so it works better for all of us? How do we meet human needs without destroying the systems that sustain us? This is the topic of a book I’ve been working on for some time and the more I reflect on the changes that need to occur, the more I see that many of the solutions put in place (such as recycling) are actually reinforcing the problems and preventing us from reimagining the systems that created this issues to start with!

      I find this a hard realization to voice, but under the current system, recycling is a key part of legitimizing the disposable economy we live in and thus we need to stop relying on recycling and demand a full redesign.

       
      Recycling contamination. Photo by Vivianne Lemay on Unsplash.

      Recycling contamination. Photo by Vivianne Lemay on Unsplash.

       

      Aspirational Recycling

      Recently there were reports of UK recycling being dumped in Turkey after the recycling market took a huge hit from the China waste ban that started in 2018 (the rise in waste trafficking is a rabbit hole I will explore in another article).

      This is where the wishcycling situation plays into a psychological bias we are all part of. It’s also called aspirational recycling, which feeds into the desires that people have to “do the right thing.” Here, we all want recycling to be the solution to our growing global waste crisis, so much so, that people are likely to recycle items that connect to their self-identity, such as the coffee cups or the take-out food containers, even if they have a suspicion that they are not recyclable (which cups are not, nor are black plastic take out containers). A Harvard Business Review article claims there is a bias whereby waste production is increased through the pre-knowledge that an item could be recycled, which leads to an increased use of disposable items. So we trick ourselves into using things that are non-recyclable by wishing that they were. This is the root cause of wishcycling.

      We collectively rely on recycling as a crutch, allowing the potential of materials being reused to justify our continued consumption and use of disposable items.

      Industry relies on this collective bias to continue to produce more and more non-recyclable stuff and feed into a collective misunderstanding of what is and isn’t recyclable. Confusion is a great tool for distraction. When known side effects (such as the millions of tons of plastics in the oceans) come to light — and even though there is a nonexistent recycling system for the billions of tons produced each year— they go back and blame it on us for not recycling properly!

       

      Is Recycling Worth It? By NPR

       

      Then there’s the issues of different rules in different places, and the persistent claims from industries that things are recyclable (even if they are not), along with the misinformation that recycling is somehow the silver bullet solution to the world’s waste crisis — it’s no wonder we’re so misdirected. We wishcycle because we have been told that recycling is the solution and we all want to do the right thing.

      Our desire for things to be “greener” often makes us do un-green things. This is not really our fault though; we’ve all fallen victim to decades of marketing spin from industries addicted to disposability, saturated with ads that tell us that littering is the issue and recycling is the solution. The false answer to a manufactured problem is to believe that a simple act of separating our waste into that which can be recycled and that which will end up in the ground or being burnt will fix the myriad of environmental and social equity issues that waste creates.

      Recycling may have a place in a well-designed circular economy, but it will not solve the problem created by our addiction to easy, convenient, disposable stuff. The only way we can stop waste is by designing it out of the system to start with and this requires us to redesign everything, the materials used, the way we create products through to the entire economic system that they work within.

      Wishcycling is part of a fairytale that has been told to us over and over again, it says recycling is a good solution to a massive problem. It feeds into our collective delusions that disposability can be remedied by the same system that benefits from waste. This all adds up to confused good-intentioned people who put their broken Christmas lights and soiled diapers in the recycling and hope for the best. And an industry that then blames the customer for not getting it right.

      Where did the wishcycling concept come from?

      The term “wishcycling” first appeared around 2015 when journalist Eric Roper wrote about the waste industry’s rising challenge of dealing with new types of materials and polymers that were making their way into the recycling bins of households.

      In an article, Roper interviewed Bill Keegan, who was the President of a waste and recycling firm DEM-CON, where he mentioned the idea of people wishing things would be recycled. Inspired by the concept, Roper wrote a follow-on piece the following week about the concept of wishcycling where he detailed how plastic bags and bowling balls, food sachets, and loose bottle caps were all contributing to recycling contamination.

      In the article, Roper explains, “A number of materials in particular frequently show up at local processing facilities, causing problems for the complex machines that make curbside single-sort recycling possible. They ultimately end up comprising the ‘residual’ waste that facilities cannot recycle.”

       

      Wishcycling on the news (on Fox news!)

       

      According to the industry magazine Recycling Today, “there are five common curbside recycling contamination themes: tanglers (hoses, cords, clothes), film plastic (plastic wrap or bags), bagged things (garbage or recycling), hazardous material (propane tanks, needles/sharps) and a category that can be summed up as ‘yuck’ things that downgrade other materials and clog the system (food, liquids, diapers, etc.).”

      To help address this, on a practical level, online tools like this can help keen people figure out what can and can’t go in their recycling right now. But let’s be honest, the average person is more likely to make a quick judgment based on assumptions, leading to wishcycling. I know in my case, I feel guilty when I put things in the normal waste bin, so I want to avoid it and hope that the oat milk tetra pack is indeed going to be recycled!

      Commonly wishcycled items:

      Paper coffee cups: They are lined with plastic and have polystyrene lids so are not easily recycled. These have to go in the trash, so get a reusable cup for your daily caffeine fix!

      Paper take-out containers: They are also often lined with plastic and if not then contaminated with the oils and residues of the food, the best you could hope for is the unlined ones going directly in your home compost or organic waste collection.

      Broken glasses and ceramics: Recycling facilities are usually high-tech places that use lasers and magnets to separate out the recyclables. But often there are humans working a line, and broken glass can’t be picked out by the machines — humans with hands have to separate them out.

      Pizza boxes: Any food-contaminated paper product is hard to recycle because the fibers absorb the grease and thus make the recycling process harder. So they have to go in the general waste or if you have organic waste collection/composting then it should go in there.

      Flexible and soft plastics: These are basically ALL your food plastic packages that are soft and flexible, such as crisp and candy wrappers, rice bags, nuts and loose lettuce bags. Anything that is flexible is unlikely to be recyclable in most mainstream waste recollection services. Some stores offer a takeback program if you are diligent enough to separate, collect and take them back to your store.

      Any electronic item: 100% of these have to go in a dedicated electronic waste recycling collection service. They are filled with complex and often toxic materials and can even explode, so be sure to find out from your local council about collections and drop-offs for e-waste.

      Light globes: Most light globes are made of several different materials and thus can’t be recycled through the normal collection and need to be taken to a specialty recycling drop-off location.

      Any household item: Broken toys and old T-shirts are most likely not recyclable in your household collection. These need to be taken to a specific location or better still, repaired and resold.

      What can we do about it?

      Waste is produced as a result of consumption. So the first thing we can do is nip the issue in the bud by not buying the things that can’t be recycled to start with. Of course, it would be even better if the companies who produced unrecyclable crap stopped designing such items, and supermarkets and producers got together and figured out how to create more universal packaging solutions that dramatically reduced waste, to begin with. Ahh, that would be bloody brilliant. But in the meantime, whilst we all wait for some of the biggest companies in the world to catch up to the growing global demand for a circular economy (I’m looking at you Amazon), then we have to each take on the task of figuring out what is actually recyclable in our community and then be a bit more diligent about where it ends up.

      I for one buy mostly from a local food producer who only sells local produce and delivers it in reusable boxes. When I do have to shop at the supermarket I try and take a bit of time to read the packaging (and I still get it wrong sometimes FYI). I compost all organic waste and include all light uncoated paper products and bio-based plastics in the compost drop-off point (this will be industrially processed so all the biodegradable packaging can go in it).

      It can feel insignificant to take these small micro-steps against a tidal wave of waste, but our own actions are calculated up and used to influence the actions that industries take. Once they realize people are actively avoiding certain products, they will be forced to refect and hopefully change. Wherever we can flex our consumer power, we help shape the way new trends emerge through demand (oat milk, and vegan food options, for example, is a relatively new addition to grocery shelves for a reason!).

      Wishcycling is a symptom of a much broader issue at play: we have designed a world addicted to waste and disposability. Until we break that cycle, we, as everyday people, will continue to have to navigate our way through the material complexity that is thrust upon us.

      But as long as we believe the fairytale that recycling will solve our waste crises, then we will continue to enable industries to get away with creating more and more disposable, unsustainable and un-recyclable crap.

      ——————

      If you want to get started on your change-making journey, then check out my list of free tools for circular and sustainable design, or explore the everyday actions you can take via my United Nations collaboration, The Anatomy of Action.

      The big opportunity for systemic change is in the way we do business, so I have courses on circular systems design, sustainable design, the circular economy and how to activate sustainability in business.

      If you are interested in diving deeper into how to activate sustainability in any size business and want to help to bring about the transition to the circular economy, then consider signing up for my 2-day in-person Masterclass this October in London.

      — -

      Additional sources used in this article:

      Rebecca Altma, Discard Studies, On Wishcycling, 2021, available here

      Stephanie B. Borrelle, The Conversation, Recycling isn’t enough — the world’s plastic pollution crisis is only getting worse

      Jackie Flynn Mogensen, 2019, Mother Jones, One Very Bad Habit Is Fueling the Global Recycling Meltdown

      Erin Hassanzadeh, 2021, CBS Minnesota, Pandemic-Driven ‘Wishcycling’ Is Causing Big Problems At Recycling Centers

      Drew Desilver, 2016, Pew Research Center, Perceptions and realities of recycling vary widely from place to place

      Tom Mumford, 2020, ReCollect, Wishcycling 101: When Good Intentions Lead To Contamination

      ,

      Our Right to Repair

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      by Leyla Acaroglu, originally published on Medium

      It should not come as a surprise to anyone that our current linear economy relies on continuous sales, which requires things to wear out faster, look a bit uglier and quickly become less desirable than the latest version, all in order to keep feeding the linear ‘waste-based’ economy. That’s why consumer products are often made to break, designed with an intentional lack of replacement parts, or have their lifespans controlled by the producer through savvy tech interventions.

      The term used to define the practice of intentionally designing products to break or become aesthetically undesirable is called planned obsolescence. This is a well-used technique that companies rely on to increase sales through manipulating consumer desires and product functionality. It manifests itself in all types of products, from high-end tech to appliances, to fashion and even furniture.

      When a product is designed this way, it’s hiding all sorts of tactics that are intended to lock owners out of the products they have purchased by making it nearly impossible to repair or upgrade once they break.

      There are a few ways that this occurs. One is to restrict the availability of spare parts and add clauses to user agreements that state that warranties are voided or even that it’s illegal to use third-party repairs or products. Another way is to throttle usability, such as reducing the operating speed of a tech product or designing a battery to wear down after a certain number of recharges (not to mention making it impossible to get into the battery to replace it when this happens!). Products can also be easily made to appear old or outdated by manufacturers as they introduce newer versions of their best sellers. This is called aesthetic obsolescence, and it has its roots in the car industry.

      To maintain the benefits of a closed system, producers work to ensure that they have legal and technical rights over their goods through iron-clad user agreements (who really reads them anyway!?) and even upgrades that limit their use (such as printers that don’t work when you use non-authorized ink cartridges — this NPR podcast tells a great story about this). Home printer companies are notorious for this kind of practice, with them losing several legal cases where consumers fought back against their tactics.

      As more and more products become part of the internet of things, I wonder if all our tech-enabled consumer products will move toward limited functionality by design as well? After all, it’s a money-generating (and thus addictive) business model. What irks me the most about these insidious practices is that we citizens have limited rights to repair, and in many cases, there are great inequalities as people get trapped in continual consumption cycles that are bad for their bank balances and for the planet as a whole.

      There are a host of consumer rights eradicated by these practices. What’s more infuriating than being fleeced of money for products we already own is that the material losses are far greater than just our bank balances. We eat into future resources every single time tech is wasted, not repaired or prematurely turned obsolete. Phones and laptops contain many different complex materials, including rare Earth minerals, all of which (as the name implies) are in limited supply on Earth — not to mention, there are stark concerns around the ethics of the mining of these minerals along with the energy expenditure required to dig them up in the first place!

      When companies lock us citizens out of the products they produce, they are manipulating the market so that we are forced to continue to buy replacement products over and over again despite our frustration. This means people who may already be vulnerable to market changes are further disadvantaged, as re-purchasing brand new products is expensive.

      But right now, so is repair!

       
       

      Last week, I managed to spill my morning coffee on my cell phone as I accidentally kicked the phone off a table (don’t even ask). The result was a messy floor and a broken screen with a dash of coffee in it. I looked up a local repair shop and within an hour and a half the nice man had replaced my screen — all I had to do was part with 160 pounds. Given the cost of a replacement phone is 4 or 5 times higher than that (and I’m obsessed with sustainability), once I got over the sting, I felt the price was a fair exchange for his skills in fixing my mistake. The only issue is that since the phone company doesn’t want me or him to repair their products, they don’t issue any parts to independent repair shops. In fact, what we just did is actively policed by phone companies like Apple. The new screen is not an official replacement product (as these are not available to people outside the phone company), so it also makes my battery drain faster. All of these tactics are designed to disincentivize me from getting my phone repaired under the conditions that suit me (fast and local) and instead, attempt to keep me within a tightly-controlled ecosystem.

      I used to have a Fairphone 2, which is a phone designed to allow repair by the user. When I broke that screen (again, don’t even ask, I am a very clumsy person!), I ordered the replacement part online for under $100, it was shipped to me and I replaced the screen myself. I was a bit annoyed that they didn’t offer a take-back service for the now-defunct broken screen part (which was an entire section of the phone), so when that phone finally stopped working (and they had stopped providing upgrades to that product line), I had to get a mainstream phone (albeit reconditioned and second hand).

      Repair should be mainstream and accessible. It should not be the exclusive offerings of a small start-up phone company, but a right that we can all engage with when we need to, without breaking any laws or ending up with a battery draining issue! To do this, companies need to offer repair manuals and spare parts, as well as be open to repair being part of their product's life journey.

      A big part of moving to a circular economy is repair. It’s a far better solution than recycling when it comes to high-value products, as it keeps functionality and materials in play. Repair is also more preferable to remanufacturing, as again, it avoids additional impacts. There is a hierarchy of post-disposable design solutions that can massively reduce waste and move us to a more sustainable future.

      Whilst we wait for companies to take the initiative, we need citizen’s rights to repair through consumer legislation. Thankfully, this is happening right now all over the world. France has even gone as far as making planned obsolescence illegal.

       
       

      The Right to Repair Movement

      Fortunately for us, there have been many people fighting for our rights to repair for decades, and they are getting some big wins right now.

      The movement has gained a lot of momentum recently, with the EU and UK putting in place new legislation, and last week Joe Biden signing an Executive Order to enable the right to repair across the U.S. This will enable farmers the right to repair their tractors (currently they are locked out by the technology), and it will direct the Federal Trade Commission to create new rules to prevent manufacturers from imposing repair restrictions (such as to your cell phone!).

      Biden’s Executive Order will “make it easier and cheaper to repair items you own by limiting manufacturers from barring self-repairs or third-party repairs of their products.” — The Whitehouse Fact Sheet: Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, July, 9, 2021.

      A report from PC Mag showed that most Americans support a right to repair, no matter what political side of the aisle they’re on. The more people become aware that they don’t currently have a right to repair, the more the demand grows for legal remedies to this legal loophole that has been exploited at our expense for decades.

      Whilst there are many things to celebrate with these new laws, there is still much room for improvement when it comes to eliminating waste by design and giving consumers true rights over the things they own (such as smartphones not being included in the new UK legislation).

      The Road to Now

      The use of planned obsolescence has been known for decades, and the impacts of waste on the planet too, especially electronic waste. But recently, several high-profile lawsuits (such as both Apple and Samsung having to pay out a few million dollars to settle class-action lawsuits against them intentionally throttling batteries so customers would be forced to upgrade), has made more and more people aware of the practices, which in turn, encourages a stronger legislative demand for consumer protections.

      Recently, we have even had the co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak come out in support of the right to repair. He said there would have been no Apple computer had he not had access to the schematics of tech in the 80s, which enabled him to tinker and create. Apple is not alone; they are like many in the tech sector who avoid releasing any user diagrams or schematics that would make it possible for people to upgrade, repair or adapt the products that they purchased, and should thus technically own.

      This method of locking us all out of our consumer goods by limiting our ability to repair or upgrade products that we own has made its way into everything from our tech to our washing machines.

      Right to repair is all about extending the useful life of products, making spare parts available for home repairs, legalizing and incentivizing repair and tackling the insidious practice of making things to break (planned obsolescence). These changes will re-enable tinkering and user adaptation; they’ll also save us money and ensure that we have our consumer rights protected.

      Companies like iFixit have been working to make repair a normalized part of the design and the consumer community for years. They buy up new products as they are released, and their engineers get to work taking them apart to create the repair manuals and videos that the companies should have created to begin with (and hate them making!). They also sell the toolkits that my phone repair shop probably used to fix my coffee-laden cellular device!

       

      ifixit reporting on right to repair wins for 2020

       

      There are also repair cafes, the repair association, Maker Labs, and a healthy fixer community that has been pushing for these rights for years. So, thank you to everyone who has been campaigning for our rights to be protected and for the better design of products!

      Many years ago, in 2011, I ran a week-long collaborative experience around waste and repair called the Repair Workshops (inspired in part by Platform 21’s Repair Manifesto). 10 talented artists and repairers first spent days repairing mounds of broken household stuff that we had been given by a local charity shop that was about to whisk it all off to a landfill (charities are often burdened with huge waste fees from people’s broken donations). Then we spent a few days open to the public, offering free repairs to anyone. It was so moving and amazing to see people of all ages come in with some personal or favorite product that they wanted to have fixed. One lady even brought in some bread with her to test the toaster she had been given on her wedding day 50 years before.

       

      2011 Repair Workshops

       

      Through this project, I discovered that no matter what it is, people often want to keep the things they already own. Repair is a hugely rewarding experience, as something that has lost its functionality is brought back to life again. People not only have an emotional attachment to things that have spent time in their lives, but the value of already having it makes it inherently more valuable.

      The lack of replacement parts, skilled repair people and a fixing culture forces us to replace rather than repair, which increases our personal costs and eats into future generations’ ability to have access to natural resources that we are wasting today. Everything new that we make requires huge amounts of natural resources, creates carbon emissions and contributes to all sorts of environmental and social ills.

      Repair is not just a fun and money-saving thing to do — it’s a vital part of the transition to the circular economy. Repair is about extending the life of a product, but it’s also about valuing materials that come from nature as well. By designing for repair, it shows that a company also values its customers and their choices. It shows that they have invested in higher-value, longer-lasting products that we should then also invest in.

      Whilst the new right to repair bills are welcomed, until companies take proactive action to ensure that the design of their products is sustainable and circular, we will continue to be stuck with things that are made to break, along with limited options for spare parts, along with the tools and skilled people to repair them. We will bear the cost of bad design, and legislators will continue to have to try to fill the gaps of rights that tactics like planned obsolescence take away from us.

      Repair is a right that we should all have the option to use when and how we need it.

      — -

      To find out more about designing for the circular economy, check out my handbook Circular Systems Design and my classes on sustainable design and the circular economy.




      ,

      Alumni G N Raghu: Decentralized Technology & Textiles

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      Photo courtesty of G N Raghu

      Photo courtesty of G N Raghu

       

      G N Raghu is a mechanical engineer, entrepreneur and community activist. Passionate about human-scale technology and providing rural employment opportunities in India, he joined us in Kuching, Malaysia for our fellowship program.

      We recently caught up with Raghu to hear more about how his ventures are going and how he’s using the tools that he gained from his UnSchool experience.

      Can you give us an introduction to yourself and your work?

      My name is G N Raghu, and I'm from India. I graduated as a mechanical engineer and worked as a machine designer in the automotive industry for a short while. To justify myself as a mechanical engineer, however, I quit my job, traveled across India and learned that there is a thirsting need at the grassroots level for decentralised technology. 

      I started working with SELCO Foundation for 2 years in textiles, which helped me understand the specific details and scale of the solutions needed in the textile sector. The cotton value chain is one of the biggest livelihood activities in India; due to centralisation and huge scaling-up of processing, it has created skewed development with the people involved in the whole supply chain of cotton. This means that the technology required for centralization has reached its peak, whereas decentralized technology development is still a few decades behind, resulting in discrepancies in development.

      To break that, and to give a better solution, I started working on the technology required for cotton processing in a decentralised manner. This has taken me through the works of Gandhi, J C Kumarappa and E F Schumacher and finally, to Kirkpatrick Sale. Their ideas of scaling and replicating, production by mass and Swaraj has led me to think toward the scale of science or technology that is very sustainable to operate.

      Photo courtesty of G N Raghu

      Photo courtesty of G N Raghu

      With that in mind, I founded Studio for Humanscale Technologies (SHST) with the help of Janapadaseva Trust and Puvidham. Having understood the rural textile situation,  we started working with the local community. With the right network and the help of Suhasini Koulagi and Ashok Kumar B V, we together founded Bag’N Stories, a social enterprise that provides women with home-based employment making bags and other products that raise awareness around the issues with disposable plastics.

      What motivates you to do the work that you do?

      I grew up with my parents in a rural part of Mysore where my father used to run a paper recycling industry where 40 people worked. The prime reason why my father started this work was to increase the scope of rural industry, to provide employment opportunities and to recycle paper waste to produce cardboard.  

      This was the initial motivation for me to create impact through my work, and as I grew up, I came in contact with Janapada Seva Trust , where I learned the importance of the rural economy through volunteering. After I graduated, I started  working with Sumanas Koulagi, a friend of mine and grandson of Surendra Koulagi who was the founder of the community-driven social organization Janapadaseva Trust. I learned there are huge gaps in technology for those who work with their hands — not in farm produce but especially in textile, particularly in the cotton value chain.  At the same time, I was trying to make sense of my degree, so this situation motivated me to look into alternate technology. 

      Photo courtesty of G N Raghu

      Photo courtesty of G N Raghu

      Bag’N Stories was founded purely on the basis of need, where I was trying to work with a community near where I grew up along with some friends. One of the very first things we started with the community is to provide some kind of sustainable home-based livelihood activity, which slowly turned into a product. And to market the product, we started a social enterprise. 

      How did you find out about the UnSchool, and what motivated you to come?

      After I stopped working with the Selco Foundation, in order to move to my hometown and start something of my own, I partnered with Freedesign. Freedesign is founded by Abhinav, an UnSchool fellow (Mumbai fellowship) and it was through him that I explored the UnSchool. It was the right time for me to have a platform and mentors to explore enterprises, problem solving and design problem solving. 

      UnSchool is about these things, which was the main motivation for me to try and engage with the UnSchool and the Fellowship program, community and courses. 

      The Kuching fellowship group at the Borneo Lab were we were based for the week (Photo courtesy of the UnSchool)

      The Kuching fellowship group at the Borneo Lab were we were based for the week (Photo courtesy of the UnSchool)

      What was your experience at the UnSchool like?

      The whole Fellowship program was designed over a week in a destination with like-minded people from all around the world considering a locally-focused problem to learn different techniques and tools to identify, understand and love problems. Then we learned to apply these tools to design solution processes, which was perfect for me, as I had just started an enterprise to address social and environmental issues. 

      The flow of the program considered the local issues with a global perspective, which is exactly what a change-maker like me needs. The tools which were used over the 7 days course equipped me to take up any problem statement and design a solution or solution process to best fit. 

      The program also included community engagement, food, sustainability, recycling, expert mentoring, success stories, and a whole lot of fun, which were all the right ingredients. 

      What was the main takeaway you had from coming to the UnSchool?

      There are two important takeaways that I had from the UnSchool fellowship program. One is the network provided by the fellow UnSchool alumni, who are change-makers from all over the world working on problems in every field. And the other one is the introduction to the tools, and how to use them to better understand and design the processes to change issues.

      Raghu and fellow Sarah after a print workshop with social art collective Pangrok Sulap (Photo Zoe Palmer)

      Raghu and fellow Sarah after a print workshop with social art collective Pangrok Sulap (Photo Zoe Palmer)

      Tell us more about your initiatives, and how is it all going?

      Studio for Humanscale Technologies

      At Studio for Humanscale Technologies (SHST), we work towards providing technology and solutions that can be implemented in rural communities or for the people who work with their hands. This can enable them to do their work more efficiently while also ensuring that technology doesn’t lead to automation that leads to the loss of jobs for these people.

      Hence, human scaling the technology is very important so that we understand to what extent the automation or mechanization has to be done so that tools are still under the control of humans.

      SHST not only designs, develops, fabricates, tests and implements technology, but it also provides space for those who want to understand the relationship between technology and society. 

      After the engagement with the UnSchool, I understood that it’s very important to educate and take these ideas to more people.  To do this, we are on the verge of opening a center or an institute to share with more people through education, training, skills and courses. Apart from this, SHST has been working on projects in textiles, agriculture, education and human-powered machines. 

      It is evident that technology is a key driving force behind the outsize influence of our civilisation. Hence, it is essential to embrace human-scale technology, which encourages a sustainable and equitable future. In this context, the studio designs human-scale technologies that empower people and not that enslave. It also provides consultancy services.

      The key aspects of such technologies are:

      Controlled by artisan:

      With the advent of centralized industrialization, people's lives are organized to run the machines continuously for increased profit. In other words, machines are controlling human lives and people have become subordinates. In contrast, human-scale technologies empower people by giving them control over machines. Thus, people won't operate as soulless machines.

      Low cost:

      Investment is a key factor that determines the level of freedom and disparity in society. As investment costs increase, technology can't be owned by masses. Thus, loss of freedom in turn creates inequality. In contrast, human-scale technologies are low-capital investments and can be owned by masses. Therefore, it enhances people's freedom and encourages equality.

      Creative space at work:

      Creative element is crucial for enjoying any work. But modernity based on centralisation has kept creative elements only for a selected few, leaving menial work for the rest of the masses. Hence, work is increasingly perceived as burden and drudgery. In contrast, human-scale technologies ensure creative space for artisans and encourage enjoyment at work.

      Local maintenance:

      Increased shifts towards technological automation makes people depend on others, particularly on manufacturing companies for maintenance and services. As such, artisans lose control over their lives. In contrast, human-scale technologies are designed in such a way that by and large they can be repaired locally.

      Efficiency:  

      An important role of technology is to reduce drudgery. But in today's rush of increasing efficiency, we have reached an era of automation displacing labour and loss of livelihoods. In contrast, human-scale technologies are designed within desirable efficiency that support livelihoods.

      Enhancing freedom of artisan:

      Freedom is fundamental for human well being. Our civilisation is based on technologies that are beyond human-scale, creating a world of unfreedom. High capital investment, complicated designs and urge for increasing efficiency resulting in centralisation and in turn, loss of freedom for the masses. In contrast, human-scale technologies encourage decentralisation that brings freedom for masses.

      Bag’N StorieS

      Bag’N Stories is a social enterprise and we mainly address two issues. First, unemployment in rural areas. Through economic activities, it aims to impact rural economies and empower women. Secondly, it addresses environmental issues like usage of disposable plastic by providing sustainable alternative options to the people. Apart from this, it also aims to bring back some traditional practices of rural India. 

      Bag’N Stories’s Mission

      • Women empowerment by providing a sustainable home-based  livelihood activity

      • Delivering financial independence to those women who cannot travel out for work in rural and urban parts of Mysore

      • Capacity building for local women and skill development

      • Provide an alternative solution for disposable plastic bags

      • Bringing awareness to the people about the damage caused by disposable plastics

      • Providing sustainable packaging solutions for FPO’s, organic stores and other sustainable products

      • Conveying the story of the product or the producer to the customer, thereby bridging the gap between them through visual story printing

      • Entrepreneur development and training

      • Replication of the model owing to horizontal development, rather than scaling up which results in vertical development

      We have set up stable home-based activities for the women who are in the rural and urban parts of Mysore, thereby giving employment and also the freedom from financial dependency. The activities will include stitching, screen printing, natural dying, block printing, knitting, quilting, making macrame products, etc. 

      After running successfully for 2 years, we have finally come to realise a few of our dreams. 

      1. To provide stable home-based work for 20+ women. 

      2. To train and develop a community member to be a social entrepreneur.

      3. To replicate the model of Bag’N Stories owing to horizontal development. 

      Kavya, from a rural part of Mysore, is now working with us for 6 months and understanding how a social enterprise works, along with all that is needed to run a social enterprise. Kavya has established a brand named Darji Collective under Bag’N Stories and aspires to completely take over it within 2 years. 

      How did the UnSchool help you start/evolve it? How have you amplified this change you do in the world?

      One of the initial thoughts after the UnSchool fellowship was to take our idea of Humanscale to others too, to anyone who is interested in working in the social sector through technology. To do this, we understood that we now need to establish a center where we can sustain and also replicate the idea to others. And right now, SHST is in the process of ideating the Center for Humanscale Technologies. 

      Apart from this, I have very much improved in problem-solving processes and designing, using the tools I used in the UnSchool fellowship. And I often find myself drawing systems maps or X mapping, or jotting down every parameter that comes into play of a particular problem statement and drawing relationships with each of these parameters to find out those key parameters upon which our solution process can be designed, and so many other tools everyday. And sometimes I will be using the life cycle thinking tools we learned to evaluate the raw materials of Bag’N Stories. 

      Darji Collective, an initiative by Bag’N Stories, also draws inspiration from the Unschool Fellowship and the courses through its entrepreneurs development programme.

      Raghu and fellows during a life cycle mapping activity (Photo Zoe Palmer)

      Raghu and fellows during a life cycle mapping activity (Photo Zoe Palmer)

      How can people engage with, support, or follow your work?

      The talent investment program through the center for Humanscale technologies is one of the ways to engage those who are interested in exploring our Idea. To stay in touch with our work, follow: 

      SHST website: https://studioforhumanscaletechnologies.webnode.com/
      Bagnstories & Darjicollective Website: www.darjicollective.org
      Darji Store: https://www.instagram.com/darjicollective/?r=nametag

      Alumni Pavlina Pavlova: Circular Solutions for the Business World

       

      Pavlina Pavlova is a Bulgarian-born entrepreneur and a non-profit activist currently living in Switzerland. Passionate about the circular future, she joined us in 2018 for a DDM Facilitators Training and most recently, for a live online workshop for our Business and Workplace Sustainability series.

      We recently caught up with Pavlina to hear more about how her ventures are going and what she’s learning about circular solutions for the business world. 

      Encycled participating at a pitching session at the Unleash + acceleration program (personal archive) (Pavlina = fourth from the left)

      Encycled participating at a pitching session at the Unleash + acceleration program (personal archive) (Pavlina = fourth from the left)

       

      Can you give us an introduction to yourself and your work?

      Born and raised in Bulgaria, I moved to Switzerland for graduate studies, and several years later, I am still on a mission to explore every alpine valley in this beautiful country. Maybe being busy in the mountains is just an excuse, as I also find Swiss society and the innovation scene very inspiring.

      With my academic background in climate, environmental impact and sustainability, I am convinced that the circular economy is the only future-fit framework to engage companies responsibly in resource efficiency and climate action. 

      An entrepreneur and a non-profit activist myself, I previously co-founded a circular venture and a non-profit organization. Bringing my experience from global innovation workshops and programs, for more than 2 years, I am part of the design and development of a Swiss circular economy business platform. In my everyday work, I support companies in getting involved in a circular economic future through disruptive collaboration and transformation. 

      Welcoming program participants in Impact Hub Zürich (photo from personal archive)

      Welcoming program participants in Impact Hub Zürich (photo from personal archive)

      What motivated you to come to the UnSchool?

      I have been following the UnSchool ever since I realized that university education equipped me with the knowledge to understand the problems, but not the skills to make a positive change in the world.

      Considering the upcoming challenges in my engagement with the new circular economy platform, and thrilled about visiting the CO Project Farm’s Brain Spa, I joined the Facilitation Training in 2018. It provided me with some tools, but more importantly it unlocked a disruptive thinker mindset and a great network of like-minded people, which I could use in developing a multi-stakeholder initiative and facilitating innovation and systemic change through the years.

      Inspired and empowered, I have been using many of the USschool approaches and formats, adapted to  different settings like stakeholder meetings, client workshops or startup programs. It was thus a logical follow-up to subscribe to the UnMasters Certification track, in which I am currently still enrolled. 

      Although I am confident in the circular economy as a business strategy, I lack substantive  knowledge on more general business sustainability issues and how they are embedded in big company's structures. I’m very curious to know more about the business ethics narrative and how it developed since I left university several years ago; for me, the new series of the UnSchool in Business and Workplace Sustainability is a must for all organizations. 

      Prototype of the first solar sauna worldwide, developed by Lytefire with upcycled materials one month after a brainstorming session at the Fideriser Heuberge (Credit: Urs Riggenbach)

      Prototype of the first solar sauna worldwide, developed by Lytefire with upcycled materials one month after a brainstorming session at the Fideriser Heuberge (Credit: Urs Riggenbach)

      Speaking of Sustainability in Business, what was your experience like taking THE live online workshop?

      As usual when working with the UnSchool community, I experienced a great mix of cultures, backgrounds and expertise —  from industrial representatives, to consultants and designers, some sitting in t-shirts and in humid climate in early morning time zones, while others are in sweaters in foggy autumn afternoons.

      The Zoom classes with Leyla are a strange hybrid between the online video courses and the live workshops: you can’t slow down her speaking as she always suggests on the online courses, but you also can’t see her moving around all corners of the room like in analog life. 

      As if planned, the cutest Puppy, named likewise, is timely intervening to make the class a real-life experience. Both presenting and facilitating, Leyla managed to organize the class very interactively and to relate the topics to the different case studies of the participants.

      Thus, we all gained some insights on the particular challenges in the luxury tourism business or the drinking water distribution business. 

      What was your biggest takeaway from that online training? 

      One of the key takeaways from the training is the how-to-guidance for a multi-level assessment and the prioritization of areas of impact, from product to experience to supporting the activation of a sustainability strategy.

      In the view of how the pandemic and climate change demonstrate the limits of our society and economy, the key to a versatile and resilient economy of the future lies in the circular economy framework and decentralized closed-loop supply chains. To support these transitions, the Unschool provides data on increasing demand for sustainability leadership and climate policy frameworks. 

      The Green Revolution is knocking on the door, and the next few years provide a great opportunity to activate change for a climate-positive, socially equal future. As sustainability is becoming an indispensable component of advanced performance management of multinationals and corporate structures, the knowledge of company culture and decision making processes is crucial to those who want to lead the way.

      Team brainstorming for a new offering (Credit: Leana Fischer)

      Team brainstorming for a new offering (Credit: Leana Fischer)

      What are the next steps you’ve got planned for your venture?

      Equipped with the right reasoning and inspiration, and the amazing set of tools and knowledge bits I gained through the Sustainability in Business Sprint with the Unschool, I am currently working on an action plan with one of our customers on how to become carbon-neutral and truly circular, and looking forward to getting into its implementation.  

      As this chapter of my career is about to end soon, I am extremely grateful and energized about the opportunity to share the collected experience from engaging with Swiss entrepreneurs globally. In a collaboration with the biggest acceleration program for SDG ventures, I am currently developing a curriculum and running training with program managers from 24 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Balkans.

      Not only is this international exchange so precious in times of physical isolation, but I feel so empowered about the speed these regions are gaining on developing circular solutions. With the energy and the capacities these economies have compared to Europe, I see the circular future closer and more tangible. 

      Following this, many new ideas and projects are shaping, including a circularity assessment tool, a circular design platform and/or a podcast. I am always looking for new companies who are willing to transform their business model or are curious to take upon new challenges. 

      Drop me a line — I am curious to hear from you. 

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      Activate Positive Change this Earth Day with 50% off at #UnSchoolsOnline!

      It’s almost Earth Day again and whilst we truly believe that every day should be Earth Day, we are always excited to join in the celebration of the big blue beautiful dot we call home. 

      So from April 20-22, we are doing a flash sale with 50% off everything at UnSchools Online*! This includes all our brain-activating courses, engaging digital toolkits, paradigm-shifting handbooks,  our new skills badges that help you show off your smarts, and even the brand new 3 Dimensions of Sustainability in Business 4-Week Sprint course!

      🌏  Use code ‘earthday21’ at checkout to get your smartypants discount from April 20-22! 🌍

      *For all subscriptions, tracks and payment plans, 50% will be taken off your first month’s payment only.

      This year, EarthDay.Org is running not just one, but 3 days of climate action throughout April 20-22. Since we know that bridging the gap between wanting to do something and actually doing something requires knowledge, tools and activation, which when applied breeds confidence and results — we want to provide you with positive feedback loops that help you start or continue in making positive change for the planet! 

      We’ve said many times before, and we will keep screaming whenever we can, we need to be celebrating and protecting our beautiful life-giving planet and shared home every single effing day. 

      Last year, our founder Leyla Acaroglu wrote a perspective on Earth Day 50 (which happened in 2020) where she said: 

      The tragic trade-off of our expansion and domination over the globe is all too obvious. Take a peek at any one of the exponentially-growing environmental concerns: ocean plastic waste, air pollution, deforestation, the Sixth Great Extinction, climate change. As we sit stuck in our homes, lamenting and stressing about the killer virus sweeping through our communities and blaming it on bats, we forget that we made all of this mess. We destroyed the habitats, we created the market for live animals, we facilitated the air pollution and environmental conditions that are starting to be correlated with high death rates of COVID-19. We lit the match that started the fire, and we are responsible for finding the means to extinguish it without destroying the place in the process. 


      Humanity is completely reliant on Earth’s majesty, and it’s time for us, as a species, to get our shit together and respect the systems that sustain our very existence. Let’s commit together to activating our individual agency to help contribute to the needed collective change, and as creative rebels, as individuals, as business leaders, as government representatives--whoever you are and whatever you do, just get activated in making change so that every day, we celebrate the splendid life we get to live on Earth.

      “There is no other known life-support system in the entire universe as magical as this one, the one you are on, right now, orbiting a sun whilst being orbited by a moon, whilst moving through space. This life-giving beauty is our home, and for some magical reason, it gave you and me and all the other things here life. This life we were given requires us to breathe air to survive. Do you see that tree or little bit of green trying to get up through the cracks on the pavement? Its entire system of existence, the fractals that formed its repeating design of leaves and branches and roots — these are the same building blocks that we are made of.” - Leyla Acaroglu, Why Every Day Should be Earth Day

      Making change does not have to cost money either! Here are three free things you can get right now: 

      1. If you want to help activate your organization this Earth Day, download our new (free!) action-oriented toolkit, the 3D Sustainability in Business Framework Free Starter Kit.

      2. Making change is easier when you have like-minded friends! Download our new community app here for desktop or search ‘UnSchools’ on your mobile phone’s app store to start connecting. You get the first 30 days for free! 

      3. Check out all our free resources and find your superpowers with our free Everyday Superpowers toolkit.

      ALL THE UNSCHOOL COURSES
      SUSTAINABILITY
      SUSTAINABILITY

      Learn how to map life cycles, how to calculate your ecological footprint, develop your ability to think critically about sustainability and bust through persistent eco-myths.

      SYSTEMS THINKING
      SYSTEMS THINKING

      This foundation course will help you wrap your head around the systems at play and give you the tools you need to understand the complex social, industrial & environmental systems and how they interact.

      MAKE CHANGE
      MAKE CHANGE

      This course will give you a more profound perspective on change, packed with agency-boosting content that helps you explore what change means to you and define a personal approach to your change practice.

      RESEARCH
      RESEARCH

      Far from any traditional more boring approaches like clipboard-based surveys, this course will help you develop exceptional and rigorous approaches for designing, enacting, and interpreting research.

      GAMIFICATION + GAME THEORY
      GAMIFICATION + GAME THEORY

      Learn how to use gamification in experience design, using the mechanics and motivators that support engaging people in delightful and fun ways and form a powerful toolset of cognitive and social understanding.

      COGNITIVE SCIENCES + BIASES
      COGNITIVE SCIENCES + BIASES

      Understand where to focus your efforts as a change-maker and know where to intervene, you need to understand the intersections of behavior, bias, attitudes, and social structures.

      ETHICS + EMPATHY
      ETHICS + EMPATHY

      Unpack contemporary philosophical and practical applications to ethics and ethical conduct (through the lens of social change and sustainability) and explores the visceral and cognitive experience of empathy.

      LANGUAGE, INFLUENCE + EFFECT
      LANGUAGE, INFLUENCE + EFFECT

      From dream time stories to methodologies, become adept at concepts governing Moral Panics and logistical framing, and discover how to master language and storytelling for positive social change.

      SYSTEMS INTERVENTIONS
      SYSTEMS INTERVENTIONS

      The tools gained will prepare you to identify where and how to intervene in a system, build effective systems interventions, plus design systems in which these interventions can exist.

      IDEATION + PROTOTYPING
      IDEATION + PROTOTYPING

      Whether you’re working on products, systems, or services, this course will refine your ideation skills and help you find a format that works for you in your creative production practices.

      , ,

      New Free Toolkit! 3D Sustainability in Business Framework Starter Kit

      , ,

      Exciting news: we have an amazing new FREE, action-oriented toolkit to share with you to help any organization transform their business practices to be more sustainable and circular.

      As part of our Sustainability in Business course series, this new 50-page Starter Kit includes an overview of our 3D framework for assessing, actioning and transforming the operational, product and experiential impacts of any business. Filled with useful content, clear graphics, and several sample worksheets, you can learn the framework and get started on your sustainability journey right away!

       
      The 18 impact arenas explored in the 3D framework for business sustainability

      The 18 impact arenas explored in the 3D framework for business sustainability

       

      Businesses need to recognize that they play a critical role in the global transformation toward a more sustainable future. The way that they operate the products that they produce and the experiences that they create for their workers and customers all interact with the natural world through supply chains and design choices. Our framework helps dissect these to understand impact areas and then provides the steps for taking action. 

       
      3D+Graphics.jpg
       

      In the context of business, sustainability is about ensuring that workplaces, products, business structures and customer experiences are ethical, equitable and economically viable.  However, we understand that sustainability is complex and often misunderstood, and it can feel like an overwhelming pursuit for business managers. So, in alignment with our equity mission to continuously release at least 20% of our content and knowledge for free, we are very excited to share our new toolkit that offers up a simple framework for assessment to action.

       
       

      Behind this toolkit are thousands of hours of workshops, trainings, projects and professional expertise focused on the key impact areas of sustainability in business. You can expect to discover how to understand impacts, assess impacts, and take action right away after utilizing the framework within the starter kit. Then, you can dive deeper if you want by taking our 4-Week Training Sprint that provides more extensive details, actions and activities to advance your knowledge and capacity for activating sustainability in business. 

       
       

      The framework was developed by Dr. Leyla Acaroglu and draws on her years of experience in conducting environmental impact assessments and supporting businesses through their sustainability journey. The framework has three main components, providing a more holistic perspective of where impacts occur and how they can be addressed —  all assembled into an easy-to-follow, 3-step framework. 

       
      sustainability impact areas
       

      STEP 1: UNDERSTAND IMPACTS 

      This section of the toolkit provides an overview of the impact areas; operations, products and experiences. There are 18 common domains for consideration from energy, waste and water to direction and engagement of your customers. At each of these business areas there are impacts occurring and opportunities to design more sustainability outcomes. Assessing them illuminates these impact areas and gives you a starting point for recognizing the opportunities you have to make change.

      sustainability impact areas

      STEP 2: ASSESS IMPACTS

      After you've started to understand and identify the impacts your organization has, you can move to a more detailed assessment phase in order to develop your first set of benchmarks to understand current impacts and have a baseline to measure future progress against. There are many ways of assessing impacts in detail, but our 3D framework offers three main tools for assessment: sustainable supply chains, environmental auditing and sustainable design strategies. The starter kit provides you with simple worksheets to get you started. Our online learning system also offers a more advanced toolkit included in the 4-week sprint. 

       
      environmental audit
       

      STEP 3: TAKE ACTION

      Post-assessment, the final section of the toolkit helps you set goals and clear pathways for change, as well as develop policies and create action plans that activate your reporting and promote continual improvement on your sustainability journey.

       
      3.png
       

      Remember, sustainability is a process of transformation, with many untapped opportunities just waiting for you to uncover them. In the final section of the toolkit, we offer up our self-assessment tool that provides you with a place to continually check your progress and encourage you toward your sustainability goals. 

      Whatever you are at now, just starting out or leading the way, your current position should not be the end of your actions — it’s the beginning. The journey to a better future is always ongoing.

      ,

      Alumni Marcela Godoy: Sustainability Trend Labs & Lifestyle Campaigns

      ,

      Marcela Godoy is a consultant and activist living in Chile. We met her at our São Paulo Fellowship back in 2016 and recently connected to hear more about how her change-making has evolved and expanded (which it has in very big ways!). Read on to find out more.

       
      Marcela-Godoy.jpg
       

      Can you give us an introduction to yourself and your work?

      Hi, I'm Marcela Godoy. I’m a consultant and activist. I define myself as a change-maker in sustainable consumption and production systems. I live in Chile, and I am passionate about the circular economy. 

      I co-run as a Sustainability Director, the consulting firm Stgo Slow, a sustainability trends laboratory, through which we advise companies on sustainability management, ecodesign, circular economy, trends, lifestyle and sustainable communication.

      I’m also the president of Circular, the Association of Sustainable Consumers of Chile, which is a citizen organization where we work in educating on sustainable lifestyles through the #AcademiaCircular. We create awareness campaigns and represent citizenship for the creation of public policies associated with sustainable consumption and production systems.

      What motivates you to do the work that you do?

      Thanks for this great question! I think it's the balance between my career and my activism; being able to work on what I believe in is a gift, discovering it and daring to live the adventure of doing it is a treasure. I feel very fortunate to have discovered my passion and to be able to continue to work on it. 

      The challenge is to maintain it, which is why perseverance in doing things with professionalism, seriousness, a collaborative spirit and technical and scientific support is essential.

      How did you find out about the UnSchool, and what motivated you to come?

      In 2015 I watched Leyla's TED talk, and she blew my mind because back then I also used the example of paper and plastic bags to explain concepts such as efficiency, biodegradability and the product life cycle approach to my students at the university.

      So I felt that I was on the right track and that I wasn't really crazy when I saw her talk! This motivated me to work on creating a story to close the knowledge gap in sustainability for other professionals and consumers.

      And of course, I wanted to live the whole UnSchool experience. To continue learning with Leyla and the fact that there was going to be a fellowship in Sao Paulo was a great opportunity. So I applied and attended the third UnSchool Fellowship in 2016. 


      What was your experience at the UnSchool like?

      It was an amazing week! And a real adventure, because I had been living my motherhood almost full time and it was the first time I was away from my little daughter Matilde.

      I met incredible people with whom I still have contact. I learned so much more about sustainability, and of course I met Leyla, one of the women that I admire most.


      What was the main takeaway you had from coming to the UnSchool?

      It was definitely systems thinking, I always explain how it changed my life. Now I live, work and even decide everyday things using systems maps.

      And the whole experience had an impact on the design of the training programs I run; in fact, the Academia Circular I started in Chile is inspired by the UnSchool of Disruptive Design!

       
      Alumni working during the Academia Circular 2018. Photo by Circular.

      Alumni working during the Academia Circular 2018. Photo by Circular.

       

      Tell us more about your initiative(s), and how is it all going?

      The two initiatives I lead are in the context of sustainable consumption and production systems. Stgo Slow works with companies to  improve their production patterns and the communication of these improvements. On the other hand, Circular works both with the government of Chile supporting the creation of public policies related to sustainability and Circular Economy, and with citizens, listening and educating about the impacts of our consumption decisions as well as the power that we have as consumers to change the whole system.

       
      Speaking about circular economy and consumption and production systems at CEFA - Circular Economy Forum Americas 2018, Photo CEFA 2018.

      Speaking about circular economy and consumption and production systems at CEFA - Circular Economy Forum Americas 2018, Photo CEFA 2018.

       

      While running Stgo Slow, we have developed the Ecodesign 3.0©, an upgrade to the traditional methodology that incorporates marketing 3.0, improving stakeholders’ engagement and innovation by introducing market research and analysis of consumers’ lifestyles to the process.

      In Circular, we participate in several initiatives in the public and private sectors. We were part of the Extended Producer Responsibility Law Committee (Ley REP) and are currently part of the Chilean Plastics Pact, the Road Map for Circular Economy in Chile for 2040. We also are part of the committee that developed the eco-label of recyclability for packaging in Chile, which will inform consumers about the recycling level and how to close the loops correctly.

      I just realized it's a lot of things! It’s a lot of work and requires a lot of time, which by the way is ad honorem, so it is what we call “efficient activism”.

       
      Introducing the Ecodesign 3.0 methodology at the Latin American Summit of Innovation in Plastic Packaging, Mexico, 2019. Photo by Stgo Slow.

      Introducing the Ecodesign 3.0 methodology at the Latin American Summit of Innovation in Plastic Packaging, Mexico, 2019. Photo by Stgo Slow.

       

      How did the UnSchool help you start/evolve it?

      It helped me a lot, to find others who were taking action in different spaces, with different purposes, but with the same strength, mobilized to achieve sustainability as I was.

      Living the intensity of that experience, and then realizing that change begins at a personal level, helped me act as an agent and as a collective in a social movement.

      And finally, The UnSchool helped me to assume that it is possible to do both: to work on what I love and to live from what I believe.

      How have you amplified this change you do in the world?

      By creating a community of mobilized people who want to truly change the world, without greenwashing, with social justice and equity.

       
      Matilde telling the story of "Stephen, the single-use plastic eater" in the 2019 mini circular workshop. Photo by Circular.

      Matilde telling the story of "Stephen, the single-use plastic eater" in the 2019 mini circular workshop. Photo by Circular.

       

      This hard work is not possible without my best friend and partner Carola Moya, with whom I design and develop all the ideas that come to mind! 

       
      With my partner and friend Carola Moya, in an interview for the webserie "El Nuevo Vestir", in the episode "The new challenges of the fashion consumer".

      With my partner and friend Carola Moya, in an interview for the webserie "El Nuevo Vestir", in the episode "The new challenges of the fashion consumer".

       

      I also try hard to give these values to my daughter, although she is the one who ends up teaching me everything. She is my greatest pride; she even has been a facilitator in the workshops for children in Circular. We started an instablog @para_grandes_y_pequenes, where we relate our journey towards sustainable living with a language for all, grown-ups and little ones.

      How can people engage with, support, or follow your work?

      You can follow Stgo Slow and Circular on Instagram, as this is where we are most active with publications and news.

      , , ,

      6 Focused Learning Categories to Boost your Change-Making Skills

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      Here at The UnSchool, there’s a handful of things that we never stop talking about: making positive creative change, embracing systems thinking, normalizing sustainability, igniting the circular economy, leveraging the Disruptive Design Method, and finally, diving into Cognitive Science by hacking our brains, mindsets and biases so that we can all expand our sphere of influence and active our agency to make massive sustainable changes to the way we live on this beautiful planet we all share!!!

      When we started this experimental knowledge lab in 2014, we did so with the intent to give others the tools they needed to disrupt the status quo and solve complex problems in order to make the future work better for us all. Now that we’ve been fully operational for almost 7 years, having transferred knowledge to thousands of change-makers like you all around the world, run fellowships in 10 countries (!), and created >80 offerings at UnSchool Online, we decided to organize our courses, toolkits and ebooks into the themed-knowledge areas that we focus on the most. 

      Featured
      SYSTEMS THINKING
      SYSTEMS THINKING

      Systems are all around us. Explore how to identify, work within, and understand the systems that make up the world around us, the relationships that connect us, and how to map them effectively for change making initiatives.

      SUSTAINABILITY
      SUSTAINABILITY

      Sustainability is all about social, economic and environmental considerations we make to create a future that works better. Map life cycles, calculate your ecological footprint, think critically about sustainability and bust through eco-myths.

      DISRUPTIVE DESIGN
      DISRUPTIVE DESIGN

      A holistic approach to complex problem solving combining sociological inquiry methods with systems and design thinking approaches to help you to develop interventions that are smart, effective, thoughtful, and sustainable.

      COGNITIVE SCIENCE
      COGNITIVE SCIENCE

      Learn how the brain works and how our minds organize information, understand where to focus your efforts as a change-maker and know where to intervene, the intersections of behavior, bias, attitudes, and social structures.

      CREATIVE CHANGE
      CREATIVE CHANGE

      New career paths continue to unfold, and at the centre is creativity. How we evolve as a species requires new ideas, ways of seeing, doing and making change. Creativity is not a hobby - it is a cognitive skill and job title for the future.

      CIRCULAR ECONOMY
      CIRCULAR ECONOMY

      Understand the difference between our existing, resource-draining linear systems and the circular systems that we need for a regenerative, sustainable future, gain insight into how governments, industries, and individuals are shifting.

      Our six brand new learning categories — Systems Thinking, Sustainability, Circular Economy, Creative Change, Disruptive Design, Cognitive Science — are designed to help you find what you need more efficiently and take a more targeted approach to refining your creative change-making skill set. Whether you are brand new to the world of making change or you’re a leader in creative change, we have offerings that can help you build your knowledge bank, refine your skillset, and amplify your impact. These new learning categories are simply like destinations on your change-making journey map, and we’ll step you through where to go based on where you are right now. 

      Over the next few weeks, we’ll spotlight each of the new learning categories here in our journal to help give you a better understanding of why these focused areas are so important not only to us — but for your work, too. Stay tuned! 

      PS: Speaking of knowledge transfer, have you browsed our recently upgraded Free Resource Library lately? It’s packed with brain-activating content (like Leyla’s Decade of Disruption report, or The Circular Classroom or Sustainability in Business!)  and practical tools (like the Superpower Activation Kit, the Circular Redesign Kit, and our personal Post Disposable Kit!) that you can utilize right away.

      CLIENTS & COLLABORATORS FOR ACTIVATING POSITIVE CHANGE

      We have worked with loads of organizations, especially ones with acronyms like TED, IDEO, AIGA, UN, along with a bunch that have normal names, too.  We work with small to massive organizations, academic institutes and individuals around the world, all with the unifying desire to turn what they do into something better, more positive and sustainable. We also work closely with executives and CEOs, as well as Human Resource and Sustainability Managers. If you want to make change, we are here to help. 

      UNSCHOOL WEBSITE DIRECTORY

      601 w26th Street, New York, 10001, USAhello@unschools.co

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      © DISRUPT DESIGN LLC 2014-2024

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