Free Sustainable Design and Circular Economy Toolkits

By Leyla Acaroglu

Over the years, my team and I have created a range of free, open-access toolkits to support change-makers in adopting the skills needed to help transform the global economy into a circular and sustainable one by design. 

Here I have assembled some of my favorite ones and a list of what we have created for anyone wanting to get started on activating change for free!

Through my design agency, Disrupt Design, my small team and I take commissions to make tools and self-initiate our own designs to help make change, wherever we can we get our clients and collaborators to allow for 20–100% of the content to be free and open access. We ourselves are committed to having a minimum 20% of our content open-source and free for all. 

Many of these toolkits would not have been made possible without the financial support of forward-thinking companies and organizations who see the value in creating beautiful and accessible content. So thanks! And if you are one of them, reach out to see what great things we can create together! 

The Circular Classroom 

We collaborated with the Walki Group, Co-Founders and the Finnish Education System to develop engaging and practical in-class resources on the circular economy, sustainability and creativity.

The Circular Classroom is a free, trilingual (English, Finnish + Swedish) educational resource for students and teachers alike. It is designed to integrate circular thinking into high school classrooms, all packaged up in a fun, beautiful format of video and workbooks.

The intention behind the project is to support young people in recognizing the exciting opportunity that redesigning products, services and systems have for the future, for exploring how their engagement with the world today impacts the future, and for supporting their decisions around future professions.

This commissioned project is designed to activate the circular economy in Scandinavia. The 3-part circular education program for high school students is available for free online in English, Finnish and Swedish. It is designed to be integrated into the Finnish high school curriculum, and is applicable globally.

The interactive video series and workbook toolkits includes an Educators’ ‘How To’ manual, as through our discovery workshops, we learned that students were very interested in this information, but the teachers felt they didn’t have the knowledge base to deliver it. This program is designed for co-learning between students and educators and includes 15 interactive educational activities.

www.circularclassroom.com

Circular Redesign Workshop Toolkit 

The Circular Economy Workshop Redesign Toolkit was inspired by years of running workshops with companies and organizations that want to embrace sustainable design, life cycle thinking and the circular economy.

We developed this over time when needing our own workshop facilitation tools, and then decided to put it together with instructions and make it open source so others can facilitate their own! 

Download the full toolkit here >

The Anatomy of Action 

A collaboration with the United Nations Environment Program, this project’s ambitious goal was to make sustainable living irresistible. To do this, we identified academically-validated lifestyle actions that will make a measurable change when amplified across communities. 

A year-long research study we conducted resulted in 5 key areas of impact and recommendations, which we turned into a momentum-building mixed media campaign called the Anatomy of Action.

This open-source project includes three videos, a downloadable toolkit to custom adapt to the local context, 350+ social shareable hand-drawn graphics, a 150-page data validation report, and a custom website. Within 15 days of the launch (still ongoing), there were 19k views, 3,500 toolkit downloads and 100+ countries who engaged, translating the graphics and data into multiple languages.

anatomyofaction.org

Post Disposable Activation Kit 

Your everyday actions can help to seed a movement that will dramatically and quickly reduce the massive environmental and social burdens that disposability has led us to, and help activate a global shift to a future that has positive outcomes for the entire planet. 

This requires all of us to embrace #POSTDISPOSABLE change! We have created a set of free tools to help you activate your leadership and make lifestyle shifts for a post disposable future! Become a citizen designer and help activate positive change now. Available in Spanish, Hindi & English. 

Check out the toolkit here > 

Superpower Activation Kit 

When I was named Champion of the Earth by the UN in 2016, we were inspired to create a toolkit of the everyday actions we can all take to activate our agency for a sustainable and just planet. That's how the Superpower Activation Kit was born! 

We put together this toolkit of everyday superpowers so every active citizen of the world who wants to participate with more purpose in the construction of the systems around them can do so. The 12 powers are based on a wealth of scientific data in our Disruptive Design Method, and the toolkit provides practical advice on how to activate them.

Download the toolkit here > 

Change Makers Lab Card Game 

As part of our 20% open source content policy, we have designed a fun hands-on toolkit that shares a series of activities designed for the Change Makers Lab created for SEAC Thailand. 

In this pack you get a full card game pack in Thai and English as a series of over 21 games to play with them focused on sustainability, systems thinking, active citizenship and making change.

Download the toolkit here >

Disruptive Design Workshop Facilitation Kit 

Expanding upon our skillset in experiential education and transformative change, we created this 65-page digital toolkit for Oxfam Asia. The guide was designed after a two-day Disrupt Design Activating Equity and Digital Activism workshop in Bangkok with Oxfam, along with 40 invited creative and media partners.

The goal was to create a step by step guide they could use within Oxfam to run workshops that help them design more effective campaigns to move people from knowledge to action. Chapters cover everything from ethical research to stakeholder engagement, systems mapping and creative communication decisions.

Download the toolkit here >

QUICK LINKS TO CONTENT

Circular Classroom (Finnish collab)
Anatomy of Action (UN collab)
UnSchool Open Source Kits & Classes
Disrupt Design Medium
UnSchool Journal
Fellowship Journals

Intro to the Disruptive Design Method
The ChangeMakers Lab Gard Game Kit
The Circular Classroom
The Post Disposable Activation Kit
Circular Economy ReDesign Workshop Kit
Superpower Activation Kit

New year, new you? On resolutions and getting over cognitive barriers to get shit done

By Leyla Acaroglu 

How many of us kick start a new year with a list of resolutions or actions, or even just ideas to make changes and finally get our shit together?

It's such a nice opportunity, the ticking over of a new year, and in this case a new decade, to take action on all the changes we have floating around at the back of our minds. Quite the job we hate —  start exercising, clean up the mess in the back room, change careers, volunteer more, start a new hobby, become a vegan, or in my case, every year for the last five years it has been, “Write the book.” Yes, it's hard to admit, but that has been my New Year's resolution for five solid years and, no, there is no completed book yet (although it's happening and I do have a new handbook coming out early this year! My 5th in 5 years, so I clearly have a complicated relationship with writing). 

Why do we all seem to have this innate desire to make changes when the year changes? It’s possibly because humans actually really enjoy a bit of healthy disruption, and the collective release of the old year allows for a really clear demarcation from the old to the new. The birth of a new year offers space for reflection and agenda setting that many other busy moments throughout the year just don’t allow us to catch. And of course, we also have all that ‘free time’ over the holidays to think and ponder and plan...

There is a growing body of research around how humans accept disruptions and adopt new behaviors at certain times in their lives. When I was researching sustainable lifestyle changes for the Anatomy of Action initiative, our collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme, I uncovered some fascinating things about social norms and personal behavior disruptions that may help you get a grip on your New Year's resolutions.

Understanding Social Norms

Social norms are the unwritten rules of what is/isn’t deemed ‘acceptable’ in any given society. They are pervasive and often implicated in influencing how we act, especially when around others. They are regulated by shaming those that don’t conform to them, and rewarding those that do.  In the context of everyday life, social norms subtly influence the decisions and choices we make each day. 

Norms, like so many other things in life, are in constant flux, so they require constant check-ins and recalibration to the evolving practice of everyday life. It would be exhausting if we had to consciously check in with all the appropriate social practices of our communities, so the human brain does a lot of this social norm calibration subconsciously by mirroring the behaviors of others around us. 

There are two prominent sociologists who have contributed to the understanding of how social norms influence us — Anthony Giddens’ Structuration Theory (1991) and Elizabeth Shove’s Social Practice Theory (2012). Both speak to the notion that change occurs when agents within a system are enabled to alter their everyday practices.

So, we don’t have our behaviors changed by others, but instead we are changed by the structural forces and interactions in our daily lives with the output of others actions. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, meaning that it's hard to determine who is the first to make a shift in the status quo that then catches on and becomes a new social norm.

What we do know is that comparing our own practices against those of others affects what we do - or don't do.

There was a study in 2008 that demonstrated this; it looked at what would motivate people to opt into reusing their towel in a hotel. Goldstein and fellow researchers tried out a few approaches to socially normative messages to the inhabitants of a hotel room, ranging from, “The majority of guests reuse their towels,” to,  “The majority of guests in this room reuse their towels.”

The latter was way more successful in influencing people to opt to reuse their towel. Why? Because the desired behavior (of towel reuse) was seeded with a marker of social location-specific behavior to plant the normative expectation.

Basically because it said IN THIS ROOM, it made people even more aware of the social cue of reuse being specific to that space they were in, so the norm was set and people complied. The researchers go on to point out that, “A wide variety of research shows that the behavior of others in the social environment shapes individuals' interpretations of, and responses to, the situation.” 

It’s not new to us that we humans respond to cues in our environment, but how does this apply to something like a New Year's resolution? Do you think you would make a commitment to doing something differently if nobody else was doing it? I am one of those people who pride myself on being a bit different, so whilst I don’t write a list and share it with others as that would be way too obvious, I do totally make a mental mark at the turning of the new year to accomplish certain goals in that year. Knowing how social norms affect you and using these to your own motivational advantage could help you stick to your goals and make those positive changes contagious.

Overcoming Cognitive Dissonance 

The gap between what we say we will do and what we actually do is referred to as cognitive dissonance, a prevalent aspect when considering any form of behavioral economics. Research has found that simply caring about something does not mean that someone will alter behaviors towards it. Once we are made aware of a gap between what we think and what we do, we are more likely to change our opinions rather than our actions. 

The reality is that we often benefit from ignoring ourselves and behaving in other, more habitual ways, even if we are totally aligned with one value, we can still end up doing something completely opposite to it! Barkan and colleagues (2015) call this ‘ethical dissonance,’ which they say “arises from the inconsistency between the aspiration to uphold a moral self-image and the temptation to profit from unethical behavior.” When confronted with this, people often find ways to redefine their unethical behaviors as ‘non’-violations based on pre-violation justifications — like when you know that the cheap chocolate is unethically produced but you are able to rationalize purchasing it, just this once. 

Basically, we are all very good at messing with ourselves. So you need to find a way of reducing and identifying the dissonance so that you can stay on track with your goals.

Disrupting Everyday Habits 

The good news is that we can mess with ourselves and disrupt our own everyday habits by engaging with new experiences. Swapping from an existing one to a new option in an environment that reinforces the positive benefits, or when we are already experiencing dramatic changes, can all help us overcome inertia. A study by Fuji and colleagues from 2001 found that people were more likely to alter the way they commuted to work when they were forced by a temporary freeway closure to pick between a shorter train trip or larger drive. Many people who tried out the train then continued taking the train after the freeway reopened but they needed a disruption to force the new behavior to start.

This ‘habit discontinuity hypothesis’ states that habit-changing interventions are more likely to be effective when they are delivered during life changes (Verplanken and Roy, 2016), like when we move houses, go on vacation, or have a baby. Likewise, interventions that allow for habit swaps and new behaviors to be tried out are often more successful when the environment in which the habit is performed is altered (Carden & Wood 2018). So, as you start the new year, when we are more than likely on vacation mode, you have the space to start a different routine, this is the perfect time for your brain to offer you the commitment ceremony of New Year's resolutions to actions.

The challenge now is: how do you mess with your own mind enough to ensure you stick to them? 

When we developed the Anatomy of Action, our goal was to find a series of tangible, practical and achievable everyday lifestyle swaps that anyone anywhere could start to adopt to integrate sustainability into their everyday lives. We looked at many of the growing movements that are already happening, from zero waste living through to protein swapping.

There are 5 main lifestyle areas that we all engage in that we offer 3 swaps for each, and then there is also a further detailed list of actions you can take. In total, there are over 65 actions! So, if you are looking for some planet positive actions to start disrupting your life a little bit with, then head on over to the website. Check them out, and get started with your sustainable lifestyle hacks in 2020! 

References 

Gifford, R.D. and Chen, A.K., 2017. Why aren’t we taking action? Psychological barriers to climate-positive food choices. Climatic change, 140(2), pp.165-178.

McDonald, S., Oates, C.J., Thyne, M., Timmis, A.J. and Carlile, C., 2015. Flying in the face of environmental concern: why green consumers continue to fly. Journal of Marketing Management, 31(13-14), pp.1503-1528.

Barkan, R., Ayal, S. and Ariely, D., 2015. Ethical dissonance, justifications, and moral behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 6(DEC), pp.157-161.

Giddens, A., 1991. Structuration theory. Past, Present and Future. In: Bryant, C. and Jary, D.(eds.). Giddens’ Theory of Structuration. A Critical Appreciation. London: Routledge.

Goldstein, N.J., Cialdini, R.B. and Griskevicius, V., 2008. A room with a viewpoint: Using social norms to motivate environmental conservation in hotels. Journal of consumer Research, 35(3), pp.472-482. 

Shove, E., Pantzar, M. and Watson, M., 2012. The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes. Sage.

Fujii, S., Gärling, T. and Kitamura, R., 2001. Changes in drivers’ perceptions and use of public transport during a freeway closure: Effects of temporary structural change on cooperation in a real-life social dilemma. Environment and Behavior, 33(6), pp.796-808.

Verplanken, &  Roy., 2016. Empowering interventions to promote sustainable lifestyles: Testing the habit discontinuity hypothesis in a field experiment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 45, pp.127-134.

Carden, L. and Wood, W., 2018. Habit formation and change. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 20, pp.117-122.

Lally, P. and Gardner, B., 2013. Promoting habit formation. Health Psychology Review, 7(sup1), pp.S137-S158.

Don’t be a Party Pooper! 10 Simple Hacks to Zero Party Waste

Happy (almost) New Year...and new decade! With the new year comes an exciting metaphor for change. Lots of people are excited to make resolutions to change their lives for the better, but old habits aren’t the only thing left behind when the ball drops at midnight — so is waste. Heaps and heaps of waste. Think: abandoned disposable drink bottles, micro-plastic-ridden confetti, balloons, trash, food, etc.

Why not start making positive changes before this year ends by being intentional about reducing your party waste? With a few simple swaps, you can throw a fantastic shindig that leaves your party guests feeling excited, inspired, and even activated! 

1. Start with electronic invites
   Picture it: you mail out a paper party invitation. The recipient grabs it from the mail, gets excited, rsvp’s, and puts a reminder in their phone. What do they do next? Yep — toss the invite in the trash. Save everyone time and money, and save a few trees at the same time by just sending out electronic invites.  Bonus: Include a reminder to delete the email because the Internet is physical, or even better, invite in person in the old school, face-to-face way!
   

2. Arrange a rideshare among those attending the party
   How we move is directly related to climate change and air pollution, so helping your friends get to a destination with minimal impacts is a great way to reduce waste. This could even be a fun way for your friends to make new like-minded friends on the way to the party. Bonus: Include public transit options in the invite, or if you live relatively close to each other, figure out a way for walking meetups to happen!
   

3. Prepare a delicious plant-based menu
   Food is the biggest daily impact in our lives, but you can throw an amazing party with low-impact food choices. Swap proteins for plant-based options, buy from the bulk section at your local co-op or market, and try to find produce from a local source. Bonus: Ask people to bring containers in case there are leftovers to take home with them.
   

4. Ditch disposables 
   Parties are notorious for being packed with disposables — plates, forks, straws, napkins, bottles, individual food packaging— the average party is a plastic nightmare. But the good news is that is there a reusable swap for all your party needs. There are lots of ideas here in our Post Disposable Activation Kit to help you get started. Bonus: If you’re making party gifts, see what you can give that is an experience instead of stuff, or find other unique zero-waste gifts.
   

5. DIY your decor
   Say no to disposable confetti, garlands, tinsel, paper decorations, and balloons by instead getting creative and crafty to make your own decor. Use fresh flowers or food dishes to add some color to your table, and throw some birdseed outside instead of confetti to keep the festive vibe going. Bonus: Re-purpose what you already have around the house to decorate, and make it reusable for next year
   

6. Serve up sustainable sparkling drinks 
   We all know that midnight traditionally brings clanking champagne flutes filled with bubbly goodness. But mass producing champagne of course has environmental impacts, so try to find some made with locally-grown grapes. For an alcohol-free option, have some glass bottles of sparkling juice made from locally-grown apples on hand! Bonus: If you or a friend have a seltzer maker, use that instead of buying bottles of fizzy mix.
   

7. Kindly find ways of engaging with others who may not be quite there yet when it comes to disposables and waste-filled celebrations 
   It’s highly likely that everyone at your party won’t be where you are on your sustainability journey, and some people might even think you are *gasp* weird for having actual plates and veggie-centric food. Start thinking now about how you can mitigate their questions in a kind way that might spark their curiosity, or how you might even start a conversation around this topic! Bonus: Read this article by Leyla to help you reframe how you view frustration to prep for these convos.
   

8. Be a rebel and break from the status quo by making up your own friend traditions that are more about giving back and having a positive impact. 
   New year, new you? How about “new year, new creative ways to make change” instead? Okay, maybe not as catchy and probably won’t be used in an email subject line anytime soon, but why not flip this from an individual-centric resolution to a positive impact plan that can affect your community and the world at large? Maybe even brainstorm one day a month that you and your changemaking squad rally and make positive change in your community! The sky is the limit here, so have fun thinking of creative ideas. Bonus: Exchange hugs with all your party guests at midnight. Hugs boost your endorphins, which all changemakers need!
   

9. Instead of just hangovers, send your guests home with challenges to activate their agency and get positive things done this year.
   Party favors are out, ways to level up are in. Create an easy-to-do list of things that can make an immediate positive impact in your community (Go plogging! Make a #meatlessmonday meal! Grow your own herbs! Organize a clothing swap!). Write ideas on a piece of paper (that you are reusing, of course), and send one suggestion home with everyone as a fun way to start 2020 on a positive note. Bonus: Share one of our free courses or toolkits with them.
   

10. Plan a check-in with your friends to help each other keep your creative-changemaking resolutions. 
    How many times do we go into the new year with the best of intentions, only to fall off the wagon a few months into the year after the lull of normalcy has resumed and our old habits take over? It happens to the best of us, so set up a plan for (fun!) accountability in advance. Plan a changemaking day, a positive impact meetup, or even just an e-mail exchange to see how everyone’s doing with making change. Bonus: Throw another party a few months down the road and follow steps 1-9 all over again!

What’s your anatomy of action for 2020? Tell us in our LinkedIn group for creative changemakers, and reminder: if you’re signing up for one of our certification tracks,  you can get the first month FREE (but only through January 4, so hurry) Just use the code ACTIVATING2020 when you register, and month one of any one of the tracks will be free.

Happy new year, and happy changemaking!

Tips for a More Sustainable Holiday Season

Activating your Anatomy of Action for a more Sustainable Holiday Season 

Holidays are a great time to connect with friends and family, take a well-earned rest, and experience new things. Many of the everyday actions that we built into our UNEP collaboration, the Anatomy of Action, are perfect to try out around the holiday time — not just because it can be an incredibly wasteful time (think of all the unnecessary and unwanted gifts, the wrapping, the traveling, the wasted food, the packaging of the food and the stuff, etc., etc.), but also because it fits into our method of working around habit disruptors. 

Did you know we are each more likely to make changes to our lives when we already have changes occurring?  When we are moving house, having a baby, or going on vacation, for example, these moments are so different from the norm that our brains are more ready and willing to take on all sorts of changes and adopt new behaviors. So, give some of these actions a shot this holiday season, and see if you can help design a future that works better than today! 

FOOD

This is a holiday MUST! So much food is purchased, eaten, and wasted around the holidays, but there are many simple steps you can take to reduce your negative and increase your positive impact: 

• Protein swap from high impact to low impact by trying your hand at vegan potlucks, plant-based parties, and meatless main meals.

• Get creative with your leftovers, and find ways of converting them into a new meal or composting (you can even just bury your food waste in your backyard if you have one!). 

• Give the gift of herb gardens or plant-based cookbooks to help find ways of supporting your friends’ and families’ adoption of more healthy and nutritious plant based meals. 

STUFF

This is by far the biggest impact of the holidays! How much wasted, unwanted, needless stuff is purchased and then stuffed in drawers and cupboards over the gift-giving season? I shudder to think. Here are three easily-adoptable, stuff-reducing actions you can take: 

• Arrange a second-hand gift trade or experience extravaganza instead of doling out things you don’t know if people want or need.

• Make something instead of buying more sh*t. Think beautiful preserves, your famous pasta sauce, or handicrafts —  I even once made a DIY kids’ game that was the hit of the holidays! 

• Ditch disposables and go for a zero-waste approach, whether it’s free from packaging altogether or wrapped in newspaper, cloth, or other reusables. Make it a fun challenge in your family to see who can zero waste the most!

MOVE

Many people have to move places to see their loved ones or go on adventures over the holidays. Airports are packed, and the skies are filled with more people and thus, more Co2. Here are some simple tactics for getting places with less impact:

• See if you can take a train to your destination over flying — consider it a more relaxed way of entering into the holiday time. 

• Arrange a rideshare system with extended family and friends if you have to drive to your destination.

• If you have to fly, then find a way of offsetting your carbon, like by buying a tree for family members (and planting it, of course).

MONEY

We all spend way too much of it at this time of year, and what we do spend it on will have a huge impact on what is on the market next year and into the future! So, here are simple money impact hacks:

• Instead of buying stuff, make an ethical investment for yourself or a loved one.

• Divest from high-impact stuff, and opt for lower impact things (for example, swap tech for board games). 

• If you are in a cold place, turn down the heat and pull out those ugly Christmas sweaters! If it’s hot where you spend your holidays, then find ways of staying cool sans-AC.

FUN

This is the entire point of the holidays —- rest and relaxation, fun times with the people we love, and a break from work life (for some!). Here are a few fun-inducing, lower-impact actions you can take: 

• Try out a staycation by exploring somewhere closer to home. 

• Ask for gifts that help you stay curious, like books, games, and e-learning subscriptions.

• Opt for time well spent over stuff-heavy experiences.

And remember to enjoy this process! Making changes and lifestyle swaps is about experiencing new things and being more courageous. Sometimes, change can feel a bit uncomfortable at the start, but that's the good thing about it: you can change, see what works, adjust, and then try again in different ways until it fits for you and your life. The actions we each take everyday have impacts, and we all have the power and opportunity to make more effective lifestyle choices so that the planet and all the people we share it with can have a better future. 

Find out more about the many actions you can take to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle by checking out the UNEP collaboration we developed, the Anatomy of Action. And if you haven’t yet joined our LinkedIn group for creative changemakers, join us there and share your tried and true sustainable holiday hacks!

Anatomy of Action: The many ways to have fun!

Let’s be honest — being a creative problem solver can be completely overwhelming and totally exhausting. From negativity bias to creative burnout through to compassion fatigue, there are many hurdles that can result in spending personal energy trying to make the future better than today. And then when we want to take a break from it all, there’s another thing that us sustainability-focused humans will consider, too: the impacts of our travel and leisure. Add in the negative stigma of sustainability that many people associate with going back to ‘the dark ages,’ and now we have a lot of confusion around how to kick back, enjoy ourselves, and have some fun.  If you’ve been following our work at the UnSchool for a while, then you may know how much we value fun (if not, watch this or this to get some insight). So, it was very important to us to look at how we can have fun in a better way through the Anatomy of Action. 

Action 1: Enjoy the Journey

Being an ethically-conscious traveller can have positive impacts on the communities you are visiting and on your personal well-being. Opting for a “staycation” vacation near your home — preferably in nature — can be rewarding for your health, the local economy, the environment, and, of course, your wallet! If you’re not into staying in your own house, consider an AirBnB; its sharing model has been found to make better use of existing resources. Aching to venture out a bit? A short road trip is also a more sustainable way to travel than flying. As environmental author Kate Galbraith noted in this NYT column, “The second-best thing to staying home — a more generous definition of staycation — is venturing just a few hours away, to a park or town that you haven’t already seen many times. The quick trip can seem as if you’re a world away, without the hassle of navigating a Transportation Security Administration screening or a long stint in the car.” 

Many people want to see the world — so much so that “tourism’s global carbon footprint has increased from 3.9 to 4.5 GtCO2e, four times more than previously estimated, accounting for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.” And, many emerging economies depend on tourism revenues, small island development states in particular. So if you go the distance, or if you travel for sun and surf, first opt to stay longer, since take off and landing are the most polluting parts of a flight. Secondly, eat local: according to the UN, “Food is the second largest C02 emitter in the tourism industry. In small islands like Mauritius, 98% of food is imported. Asking people to enjoy local foods will be both beneficial for the planetary and the social aspect.” Of course, you’ll also want to ditch disposables and be proactive in your footprint.

#EnjoyTheJourney Everyday Actions

1. Research and ensure your tourist purchases and activities have a positive impact wherever you go 

2. Consider vacations close to home and see the things that other people travel to your community to see

3. Travel slowly and take time to discover by taking the train/bus or cycling and walking  

4. Visit fewer places but stay longer in each

5. If you take flights over 6000 km, travel through hubs rather than direct and consider staying close to the venue to reduce travel time 

6. Experience the real: eat and stay local, embrace diverse cultures, experience what the terrain has to offer (run, bike, hike), and help local economies 

7. Refuse disposable plastics and other single-use items and minimize your visit’s impacts

8. Collect memories from your trip that leave footprints in the sand, not on the planet - be mindful and proactive about the impacts of your fun times

Action 2: Stay Curious

Learning, curiosity, discovery, wonderment — whatever you want to call it, life is made more valuable (and fun!) through the addition of new knowledge, ideas, and actions. This does not mean you have to enroll in a professional learning program or institution; learning opportunities are everywhere, and we can choose the medium that works best for us, as this Harvard Business Review article points out: “Books, online courses, MOOCs, professional development programs, podcasts, and other resources have never been more abundant or accessible, making it easier than ever to make a habit of lifelong learning. Every day, each of us is offered the opportunity to pursue intellectual development in ways that are tailored to our learning style.”

 By embracing curiosity, you can gain all sorts of lifelong benefits, from a more flexible outlook on life and work, all the way to setting a better example for our kids and communities. You’ll also be better prepared for the future, as everything around us is constantly changing: “Trends including AI, robotics, and offshoring mean constant shifts in the nature of work. Navigating this ever-changing landscape requires continual learning and personal growth.” And, staying curious is good for your brain! Studies are proving how engaging your learning superpower can stave off age-related cognitive and memory decline.

Finally, learning is a great way to enhance your social life because it helps foster relationships and can introduce you to like-minded peers (especially if you take a workshop or volunteer for a cause, for example). This is an increasingly important point to consider since we have become increasingly factioned and isolated within our hyper-busy societies; in the US alone, an estimated 42.6 million adults over age 45 are thought to be suffering from chronic loneliness. This isn’t just a social or cultural issue — loneliness actually has a physiological impact “via stress hormones, immune function and cardiovascular function with a cumulative effect.” Some officials even believe that loneliness poses a greater risk to public health than obesity! So, when you take up learning new things, consider being intentional about finding a way to integrate social interaction to help build meaningful relationships along the way. 

#StayCurious Everyday Actions

1. Adopt a lifelong learning approach to keep your mind thirsty and active

2. Seek out and support new ideas to make the world a better place

3. Learn from nature and see where it fits in with your life

4. Discover more about the systems that sustain us - like where your food comes from and make more informed choices

5. Choose technologies and apps that make it easier for you to live more sustainably 

6. Foster an open and independent mindset

7. Be future focused and stay positive about how to contribute to a better world

8. Learn new things through formal and informal education 
   
   

Action 3: Choose Experiences

We are a sum of our experiences. Our identity is not defined by our possessions (in fact, more stuff equals more stress), but instead it is an accumulation of the places we’ve been, lessons we’ve learned, people we have interacted with, and the experiences we’ve had (good and bad!). Experiences we lock into our memories through daily living help create who we are. Emerging science highlights that the aspirations people have sometimes differ from what society labels as “the good life”. Traveling, spending time in nature and with family and friends, learning and seeing new things, and keeping active seem to contribute to happier and healthier lives.

As we swap from materialism and favor experiences more, some may worry about the economic impacts of doing so. As James Wallman points out in his book Stuffocation, “That’s the magic of experientialism. It’s not anti-consumerist or anti-capitalist. Money is still going into the economy and creating jobs – we’re just spending it on experiences. I’ve seen a transformation in my own life.” Indeed, making an economy more sustainable does not mean that it has to be a no-growth economy.  Like we pointed out in our “Stuff” section of the AoA, there are many economic opportunities to be reaped in transitioning to a circular economy that leverages collaborative consumption and “a move away from the ownership and consumption of physical things towards the consumption of intangible experiences.” 

There are numerous personal benefits to choosing experiences — namely, experiences make us feel happier and more fulfilled as we consumer experiences directly with others. And when we opt to spend time in nature, the health benefits expand that much more: improved cardiovascular health, better sleep, and a lower risk of Type II diabetes, to name a few. This is especially important to model for our children, who, as child-advocacy expert Richard Louv has noted in his book The Nature Principle,  “have become increasingly alienated from the natural world. “ Citing skyrocketing rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, depression, and ADHD, he links a lack of interaction with nature to a slow but steady erosion of mental, physical, and spiritual health. The good news is that we can correct course, get out there, and experience all that the world has to offer! 

#ChooseExperiences Everyday Actions

1. Engage in experiences and services that add value to your life 

2. Find ways to spend time with people you care about and make you laugh 

3. Spend more time connecting with nature and natural spaces 

4. Opt for active recreational choices for increased health and wellbeing (sports, games and outdoor activities)

5. Find daily ways to relax and take time out to reduce stress and anxiety 

6. Give yourself (more) digital detox time and embrace analog experiences 

7. Pursue purpose and passions, not possessions

8. Consider the impacts your current actives have on your life, and do more of what makes you happy

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and the economic issues we face are indeed complex. While the global environmental issues may be big and sometimes overwhelming, they are the outcomes of many individual actions. So, the choices we each make as individuals, as workers, and as members of societies have the potential to reinforce undesirable actions or to create the opportunity for new, more sustainable solutions. 

The actions outlined in the Anatomy of Action are are some of the top-level actions any individual can do to help support the global shift toward a more sustainable and regenerative future. No matter who you are, every action you take has an impact, so by taking these more considered actions, you can contribute to a global movement towards activating the SDG’s. There are many other things you can do; this list is by no means an exhaustive account of all the aspects of our lives, but all the actions in the Anatomy of Action offers a starter list that any individual, anywhere can take action on to help make a positive future for all of us! 

Anatomy of Action: Money, Money Money

Activist Anna Lappé has famously said, “Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want,” and no matter how complex economic systems and personal finances can be, our individual impacts do really does boil down to that one simple sentence.  

Like it or not, money makes the world go ‘round, as it is the core component to basically all of life’s functionality. Security, basic needs, pleasure, movement, hopes, dreams, relationships — money dynamically infiltrates every aspect of our being and influences the quality of our lives. But just because modern society ingrains social pressure to accumulate more and more money, does not mean that we have to be unethical about how we use it. Indeed, we can use money to powerfully influence the future so that it works better for us all, or blindly reinforce aspects of society that need to be changed. The power and influence of every dollar and cent spent is why Money is the fourth area of focus in the Anatomy of Action. 

Action 1: Ethical Investment

If you’re not investing responsibly, you’re investing irresponsibly. Everything we buy has an impact on people and the world around us in general, so when you are thinking about purchasing what you need and want, consider your real needs and what types of goods and services you want to see more of in the future. You have the power to choose what your money supports (and what not to support).  This goes for goods and services AND investments in stocks and bonds. The power behind this truth is becoming increasingly evident, as the global Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) market is now worth nearly $23 trillion, and there are more than 300 sustainable investment-related policy tools and market-led initiatives, in which more than half of them have been created in the last few years. Similarly, according to this report from the US SIF: The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, “High net worth individuals are increasingly influencing SRI issues including climate change, diversity, human rights, weapons and political spending with $3 trillion in sustainable assets.”

Investing in the future is also about the companies you invest in when you buy something. Financial planning that considers your sustainability impacts and available ethically- motivated options can support your family and your community, as well as the planet at large. In 2018, for example, more than half of impact investors reported tracking their impact performance against the SDGs, which are all about the future greater good for all. Choosing to invest how every big or small amounts of money you have in more locally produced goods and services can have positive economic outcomes for your community as well, as it injects cash directly into your community.

#EthicalInvesting Everyday Actions: 

1. Spend time and money on things that have positive impacts 

2. Decide on your priority social and environmental issues and invest accordingly 

3. Ask your bank about their sustainable investment policy and if they don't have one then swap banks if you can 

4. Speak up and voice your preference for sustainable investments - look at long-term drivers that affect company performance

5. Invest in goods and services produced in sustainable ways

6. Never invest in products made from endangered wildlife

7. Invest in a diversified portfolio (don’t put all your eggs in one basket)

8. Put savings in responsible stocks, investments, including pensions and banks

9. Pay taxes to help build your community

10. Advance your family finance skills and financial management to avoid going into or starting to get out of debt

Action 2: Divestment

Intentionally investing isn’t the only way to send a message to the market; divestment is another powerful way to share how important sustainability is to you. Divestment happens when people move money away from industries and commercial activities that are unsustainable and instead choose investments, banks, energy providers, and other companies and services that are supporting renewable options, sustainable consumption and production, and development of more sustainable and ethical industries. 

Most notably, fossil fuel divestment (inspired by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa) is on the rise, and as of early 2018, more than 700 organizations from more than 76 countries with over $5.5tn (trillion!) of assets have committed to divesting in fossil-fuel companies and instead will invest in climate solutions. 

The needs are clear, with the planet and human health suffering in unprecedented ways — like the fact that unpaid health bills from air pollution due to fossil fuels accounted for US$5.3tn in 2015 (!) — that’s more than global health spending (and by the way, we talk a lot about the impacts of fossil fuels in our Move journal article). The UN has issued multiple warnings and clearly stated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2018 report: “Unless humans transform the economy in such a way that has no documented historic precedent, the earth will experience worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040.”

While this cautioning is scary to consider, let a problem-loving approach override the fear, knowing that we all do have individual agency that, when activated for positive sustainable change, adds up to bigger collective shifts. 

Make no mistake, as more and more people do this, it sends strong messages to companies to consider their business models and actions to support renewable energy, sustainable technologies, and more responsible products. When it comes to fossil fuels, just 100 companies (all within the oil and gas industry) are responsible for 71% of global carbon emissions — so aiming at divesting from any of these 100 companies can definitely have a large impact. And in doing so, there will be a ripple effect in “creating a new wave of the moral entrepreneur or norm entrepreneur, concerned with labelling a particular behaviour (carbon pollution) as morally reprehensible, and, by so doing, shifting attitudes about climate change mitigation.”

#Divestment Everyday Actions

1. Move your money; ask your bank how they invest your money.  If it is in fossil fuels or other unsustainable industries (such as weapons, tobacco etc) - then move banks, and tell your bank why 

2. If you have a retirement fund, you could be inadvertently investing in unsustainable industries.  If so, ask your fund manager to move to a more responsible fund

3. For investments in stocks, bonds, funds you can avoid investing in companies you believe are harmful and choose to invest in those that support more sustainable efforts

4. Swap your energy provider to a non fossil fuel based provider or support collective or community run wind and solar farms 

5. Divest from fossil fuel or unethical companies 

Action 3: Energy Positive Homes

One of the areas we spent a lot of our money on is our living space. Our homes are a massive contributor to our personal ecological footprint, from rent to energy services, homes eat up a chunk of our personal budgets so they can greatly impact our anatomy of action. In the US, homes and commercial buildings consume 40% of the energy used throughout the country (and 10-20% of the average American’s energy bill expenditure might be wasted due to drafts, leaks, and outdated systems) — this, coupled with the fact that energy use per m2 in buildings needs to be reduced by 30% by 2030 to be in line with the Paris Agreement and follow the Sustainable Development Scenario, demonstrates what kind of opportunity lies in energy positive behaviors. 

Energy efficiency, renewables, appliances, and behaviors at home not only promote climate change mitigation, but also save money, generate utility savings over time, and increase the value of property; in fact, the World Green Business Council shares that “energy-efficient housing is more affordable over its lifetime than non-efficient buildings.” Renewable energy offerings are becoming more prevalent and therefore quite affordable; for example, US-based power company PG&E offers 100% renewable energy at the cost of USD $4.36 /month. Making your home more sustainable can also help support the local economy and can increase the level of comfort by enhancing the quality of your life. 

Swapping to a renewable energy supply moves us toward sustainable energy, but most of the savings can be attained through small technical interventions in the home, ensuring it is well insulated against hot and cold weather. And, as the US EPA has reported, “In addition to energy efficiency techniques, other emissions reduction opportunities for the home include actions such as: Making water and wastewater systems more energy-efficient; reducing solid waste sent to landfills; capturing and using methane produced in current landfills; reducing leakage from refrigeration equipment; and using refrigerants with lower global warming potentials. 

#EnergyPositiveHomes Everyday Actions:

1. Find ways to save on your energy bill via do-it-yourself or professional audit of energy used/saved/lost in your home and make simple changes 

2. Regulate home temperatures better by adding verandas, green roofs, high inertia walls, and bio-based insulation

3. Adapt to the season: stay comfortable and save energy (wear a sweater, draw blinds in summer) 

4. Take simple steps: seal windows and doorsteps, avoid thermic bridges, install double glass glazing, use LED bulbs, invest in high inertia radiators 

5. Change habits: open the curtains for natural light; close shades in hot climates; cover pans when boiling, spend less time in shower, compost organics

6. Produce your own energy: install a small scale solar installation to power your home

7. Collect rainwater and reuse it for gardening, toilets, and washing machines

8. Use appliances as intended, consider buying more energy and water efficient appliances when replaced

9. Compare energy providers available and choose a more sustainable one (renewable energy)

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and the global economic issues we face are indeed complex and vast. While the global environmental issues may be big and sometimes overwhelming, they are the outcomes of many individual actions. So, the choices we each make as individuals, as workers, and as members of societies have the potential to reinforce undesirable actions or to create the opportunity for new, more sustainable solutions.  

The actions outlined in the Anatomy of Action are are some of the top-level actions any individual can do to help support the global shift toward a more sustainable and regenerative future. No matter who you are, every action you take has an impact, so by taking these more considered actions, you can contribute to a global movement towards activating the SDG’s and designing a circular economy that gives back more than it takes. There are many other things you can do; this list is by no means an exhaustive account of all the aspects of our lives, but all the actions in the Anatomy of Action offers a starter list that any individual, anywhere can take action on to help make a positive future for all of us!

Anatomy of Action: On How We Move

There’s no denying that we live in the age of busy — we are continuously on the go, living amongst a chaotic frenzy of personal responsibilities, appointments, leisure activities, and whatever else is demanding our presence and attention. But the way we move has led to some devastating impacts for our home planet and for all the people who inhabit it, like soaring carbon dioxide emissions and dangerous amounts of air pollution. Reducing these emissions is, without a doubt, a matter of life or death, as at least 3.7 million people die each year as a result of outdoor air pollution, and transportation currently contributes 23% of all carbon dioxide emissions. 

We all have to get places, and the impact we each have on climate change and air pollution is directly attributed to our transport choices. You can opt to drive less, share your ride, and swap to electric. Let’s dive into how the Anatomy of Action (AoA) explores the different ways you can move around your community to swap to having more intentionally positive impacts. 

Action 1: Keep Active

Humans around the world are sitting more than ever before in our human history, and much of the push to a sedentary lifestyle involves a long commute paired to work that is paired with sitting at a desk all day. These sedentary lifestyles have quickly taken a toll on human health, with over 300 million adults around the world being categorized as obese. 

Then there is  the environmental impact that all this individual vehicle use is having, but there are many ways to transport yourself from one place to another, offering a perfect opportunity to use your body to get around. Human-powered transport, like walking, biking, skateboarding, are great for a variety of reasons; it’s much cheaper, cleaner, and better for your general health, and the increase in more human forms of mobility often increases road safety. According to this research, “Increasing median daily walking and bicycling from 4 to 22 minutes reduced the burden of cardiovascular disease and diabetes by 14%, increased the traffic injury burden by 39%, and decreased greenhouse gas emissions by 14%.”  By just cycling to work, you reduce your chance of cancer by 45% and cardiovascular disease by 46%. In many places around the world, walking and cycling are the norm, but more can be done to enhance the infrastructure to ensure our cities are more human transport friendly. For example, introducing sidewalks in a city can reduce serious traffic injuries by 25%. 

Personal car transportation contributes huge impacts to air pollution and to your carbon footprint, so whenever you can, swap your car rides to human-powered transport options to help reduce these stats, to save costs and time, to reduce noise and congestion, and to encourage a shift in the way we design cities and move around them. 

#KeepActive Everyday Actions

1. Pre-check and choose routes for walking and cycling, give yourself extra time, get exercise, increase your productivity and health and wellness, and reduce your transport impact

2. Engage with green spaces and support urban conservation projects in your community by using public nature spaces for moving around, like bike paths

3. Give your productivity and personal wellness a boost by walking or cycling instead of taking short personal car rides 

4. Start a group of people commuting to work at the same time to make a walking or bike ‘bus’ if safety is of concern  

5. Swap short drives for walks or bike rides (or learn to rollerblade, skateboard, or scooter if you want a cooler way to get around)

6. Support local government initiatives to introduce better urban design, walkable cities, and mass public transport systems 

Action 2: Share your Ride

It’s true, sharing is caring! Not only does sharing car rides when you have to take them reduce emissions, but it also saves money. Transportation studies put “the annual cost of congestion at $160 billion, which includes 7 billion hours of time lost to sitting in traffic and an extra 3 billion gallons of fuel burned.” Or, consider this German study which has calculated that “a 10% increase in the modal share of walking and cycling in urban areas would mean that the German GDP would go up by 1.11% by 2030, representing €29bn, based on German GDP in 2012.” 

Of course, ride sharing will have positive impacts on air quality, too, which is a crucial point of intervention given that in 2014, 92% of the world population was living in places where the WHO air quality guidelines levels were not met. Rather than taking your car, by walking, cycling, or taking public transport like trains and busses, you not only lower your carbon footprint but also invest in the services to keep them functioning.  There are numerous case studies that show the positive flow-on effects of investing in design for human-powered transport or ride sharing — like this one from Portland, Oregon that found “the number of miles of bikeways (lanes, paths, and boulevards) increased 247% from 79 in 1991 to 274 in 2008. This coincided with the share of workers commuting by bicycle rising from 1.1% in 1990 to 6.0% in 2008.”

#ShareYourRide Everyday Actions

1. Join bike, scooter, or car share services if your city has them

2. Use public transport and give extra time to yourself (read a book, enjoy music, meet someone new)

3. Join rideshare apps or start collaborative commuting with your neighbours or friends 

4. When using on-demand taxi services, opt for the green option (if available) and the ride share option 

5. If available, consider intercity or intercountry rail services over short distance flights

Action 3: Go Cleaner

In addition to using your own body to get around and ride sharing, you can opt for electric forms of mobility to help reduce the harmful emissions at the city level caused by petrol-powered transport options. There are multiple benefits of low-carbon mobility, like an improved economy, reduced spending on imported fuel, increased energy security, and of course better human health. Globally we are seeing a rise in electric vehicle use and charging stations, so now is a great time to find ways of swapping to electric.

Many countries are offering financial incentives for low-carbon vehicles, like the UK who provides “100% first year allowance for business owners up to 2021, UK Plug-in Car Grant of £3,500, Exemption from London Congestion Charge, Significant Fuel Savings vs. a comparable Combustion Engine Car and no car fuel benefit for company cars, and Scottish customers can enjoy interest-free loans of up to £35,000 (personal) or up to £100,000”. And it’s not just passenger vehicles that we’re seeing electric options pop up; battery- and fuel cell–electric trucks and buses, especially transit buses, are already in operation across many US cities and are continuously expanding their fleets, not just in the US but also across the world. In fact, the global adoption of electric buses is expected to triple by 2025. 

#GoCleaner Everyday Actions

1. Explore all the options available to you getting around and find which ones have the least impact 

2. Adjust your routes so that you are going the least distance 

3. Swap short distance drives for alternative modes of transport 

4. Look for and ask about flexible working options to reduce your commute, such as working from home, video conferencing or later start times 

5. See if there are leasing services where you can give an electric car or bike a try

6. Swap your fossil fuel car to an electric one

7. Use cleaner fuel when you can

8. Support government or business initiatives that provide alternative fuel and cleaner transport options for your community 

Why the AoA?

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and the transportation  issues we face are indeed complex. While the global environmental issues may be big and sometimes overwhelming, they are the outcomes of many individual actions. So, the choices we each make as individuals, as workers, and as members of societies have the potential to reinforce undesirable actions or to create the opportunity for new, more sustainable solutions. 

The actions outlined in the Anatomy of Action are are some of the top-level actions any individual can do to help support the global shift toward a more sustainable and regenerative future. No matter who you are, every action you take has an impact, so by taking these more considered actions, you can contribute to a global movement towards activating the SDG’s. There are many other things you can do; this list is by no means an exhaustive account of all the aspects of our lives, but all the actions in the Anatomy of Action offers a starter list that any individual, anywhere can take action on to help make a positive future for all of us!

Anatomy of Action: Getting to grips with STUFF!

Stuff! It is everywhere, all around us, fulfilling needs and helping to make our modern lives possible. But SO much stuff is wasted, useless, or unnecessary, and the impact of the material world is astronomical. Wherever you are right now, you can look around and see a bunch of stuff that has been manufactured, purchased, and at some point, will be waste - this linear economy has resulted in heaps of unintended negative consequences on the planet, many of which we are now seeing come around to hurt us - like ocean plastic waste. 

It’s hard not to get overwhelmed when thinking about the amount of “stuff” in this world. The average American household contains 300,000 items, an average British 10-year-old child owns 238 toys but usually only plays with 12 of them,  and 77 million automobiles will have been sold by the end of 2019.  With the rise of cheap manufacturing and convenience-driven shopping (free 2-day shipping, anyone?), stuff is now as ubiquitous in our lives as food, only it doesn’t nourish and sustain us but instead, it often simply takes up space — first in your home, then in a giveaway box or most likely, a landfill, with 99 percent of stuff being trashed within 6 months! We have become obsessed with buying sh*t we don’t necessarily need, and the economy is fueled by the hyper-consumption loop that drives the faulty GDP system. That’s why, for the second category of the Anatomy of Action, we tackle how to improve our consumption habits with thinking beyond buying, slowing down fashion, and ditching disposables. 

Action 1: Beyond Buying 

What’s behind so many of the negative environmental impacts we’re grappling with today? Although there’s no one singular, simple answer, we’d be remiss not to look at the linear economy that we’ve designed over the last century in order to meet human wants and needs. Our current economy is based on a waste-based system of production where we take raw materials and natural resources out of nature, process them into usable goods to meet human needs, and then discard them back into giant holes in the ground that, ironically, were often where we took the raw materials from to begin with.

This entire system is in opposition to the natural systems that sustain life on Earth — which are circular and regenerative — and it’s counterintuitive to the way we function as living organisms. For example, we all require nutrients to survive, which is part of the beautifully-designed system of nutrients cycling through bodies and back into the ground to grow the next generation of food; this nutrient cycle is one of the fundamental ecosystems that makes life on Earth possible. Basically, humans designed a broken system that needs waste to sustain itself, and thus everything is intended to constantly lose value after it's purchased. Our linear economy does not fit in a circular world, and we can instead find ways of circumnavigating this cycle and activating our agency within the economy by buying better things. 

This needs to be emphasized when we start to think “Beyond Buying”, as we cannot sustain the wasteful, reductive linear economy and thus need to transition to a circular economy in order to shift the status quo of our consumption problem. While many people automatically think that transitioning to circular systems design will result in monetary losses, it’s actually the opposite in that a circular economy offers some huge financial incentives. Current research indicates that the material saving potential alone, for example, is estimated at 500 billion € per year for the European industry, and the job creation potential of remanufacturing and recycling in Europe is estimated at one million new jobs!

Along with rethinking how we consume stuff and implementing circular design practices, there are also huge opportunities in sharing, swapping, repairing, and repurposing the things that we already have. Consider the fact that on average, cars in North America and Western Europe are only in use 8% of the time, or that the average electric drill is used 6 to 13 min over its lifetime. It makes absolutely no sense as to why we all need to own so many items individually, and it’s much more practical to consider collaborative consumption.

Similarly, we’ve also become accustomed to a throw-away economy in which instead of repairing our goods, we discard them and then replace them instead. This isn’t all the fault of the consumer, however — 77% of EU consumers say they’d rather repair goods than buy new ones, and indeed, there are systems issues with planned obsolescence and enforced disposability that encourage this uptick in buying new devices. This is especially true with tech gear and the trend of replacing smart phones on an annual basis (there are now more phones on this planet than people!), which is a massive missed economic opportunity among its other issues. In fact, a United Nations University report estimates “the value of the recoverable materials in discarded electronics was $52 billion dollars in 2014 alone.”  Similarly, if the industry were better regulated and made phones easier to take apart and recapture, then the cost of remanufacturing them could be reduced by 50% per device. 

So, as you can see through this small snapshot, there are huge opportunities in moving away from this exploitative economy and moving beyond buying. This is, in short, what the circular economy is all about: meeting our needs with new sustainable product designs, service delivery models, and new approaches to business where we get better experiences with less stuff. To start, we can find ways of introducing things into our daily lives that have more value and last longer, reduce disposability, and maximize material recapture. 

Whilst we wait for all producers of goods and services to adopt these new approaches, consumers of all walks of life can be more conscious of what they need, what they are buying, and how they value the things that fill our lives. Increasing the usable life by repairing, sharing, reselling, and reducing helps reduce the need for new goods. If you can, invest in goods with longer warranties and design durability, and find companies that offer buyback and repair schemes for their products along with swapping and sharing things you need. Consider what you need before you buy products so that you can ensure you acquire things that will last longer, be used multiple times, and are intended to be in the economy for as long as possible before being waste. 

#BeyondBuying Everyday Actions: 

1. Consider what you really need and what impacts these have on the planet before making buying stuff and reduce what you buy

2. Continue or start sharing, swapping things like appliances, tools, clothes, talents and services

3. For new purchases, look into how you can get what you need via a service or a product that lasts longer and has been made sustainably 

4. Find things with extended warranties and that can be repaired, and then make sure you repair things

5. Buy beautiful second hand things and find new homes for things you no longer want

6. For technologies and gadgets use them longer, repair and donate them and ensure you find a reliable recycler at the end of their life 

7. Delete old emails and other files stored on the cloud (servers use heaps of energy)

8. Offer your technical skills and talents to extend product use, help others, and build a sense of community

9. Recommend and buy from companies that provide spare parts to repair, that offer take back services or use recycled materials in production

Action 2: Fashion Slow Down

One of the most pervasive subcategories of stuff that accumulates and creates waste is found in textiles. Fashion is a hyper-fast, resource-intensive industry that impacts nearly everyone on the planet in some way. We all wear clothes not only for functionality, but also to express a certain style and identity. But with global clothing production doubling in the last 15 years,  the fast fashion phenomenon exacerbates labor conditions (excessive dust, heat, rodents, lack of sanitation, etc.), and product quality is pushed as low as possible by brands to make inventory on a weekly basis. And then, after the newest styles are purchased for the thrill of newness and a low price, they often just sit in one’s closet, unworn. According to research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, “...the average number of times a garment is worn before it ceases to be used has decreased by 36% compared to 15 years ago, and the same pattern is emerging in China, where clothing utilisation has decreased by 70% over the last 15 years.” 

You know what happens next — after garments sit unworn in a closet for some time, they are then shipped off to the landfill whenever a tidying-up urge hits. Recycling isn’t happening: 84% of all textile waste is sent directly to landfills. Of course, all of this negatively impacts climate conditions, whereas  “reuse of clothing saves 29kg CO2e per kg of clothing compared to recycling and 33kg CO2e compared to disposal.” When we configure the economics of this environmental disaster, we find that “globally, customers miss out on USD 460 billion of value each year by throwing away clothes that they could continue to wear and some garments are estimated to be discarded after just seven to ten wears.”

 You can avoid contributing to this by breaking the vicious cycle perpetuated by constantly changing clothes by finding responsible brands that support the betterment of workers and the environment or by buying second hand. In becoming a conscious and responsible consumer through the power of your decision making, you will help the environment and society in significant ways.  

#FashionSlowdown Everyday Actions

1. Celebrate being unique - buy vintage, redesign old clothes, create a core basic or ‘capsule’ wardrobe, and be bold in your fashion choices

2. Give your clothes a second chance: share, reuse, repair, recycle, sell, and donate high-quality fashion for second-hand use

3. Think long-term: buy quality clothes that last and take care of them. Today’s new pieces are tomorrow's vintage treasures 

4. Let brands know when you are not happy with their practices and help encourage them to move towards sustainable production

5. Use your consumer power to buy better clothes and to increase the availability of more sustainable fashion options

6. Ask brands about how best to take care of their clothes, how they produce and source, and how they are committed to sustainability 

Action 3: Ditch Disposables

We have a collective global challenge unprecedented in the history of humans on this Earth. We have designed ourselves into a tightly-wound system of disposability that is wreaking havoc on the systems that sustain us all. No human is immune to these outcomes from our collective actions, as no one can deny that they need food, air, and water to survive and thrive. Thus, we are all implicated in the necessity to dramatically redesign our manufacturing, production, and consumption systems to be post disposable.

From the oceans to the air, our natural systems have become innocent victims of our hyper-disposable cycles of meeting human needs. This is not an alarmist warning — this is a biophysical realty of the planet we all share. The data tells the story here; with over 320 million tons of plastic being consumed globally and more plastic produced in the last decade than ever before, plastic is infiltrating all of our natural systems, especially the ocean with more than 8 million tons of it leaking into the ocean each year, thanks to poor disposal practices, broken recycling systems, and the lack of waste management in emerging economies where plastic is pervasive.

The UNEP reported in 2018, “Only nine percent of the nine billion tonnes of plastic the world has ever produced has been recycled. Most ends up in landfills, dumps or in the environment. If current consumption patterns and waste management practices continue, then by 2050 there will be around 12 billion tonnes of plastic litter in landfills and the environment. By this time, if the growth in plastic production continues at its current rate, then the plastics industry may account for 20 percent of the world’s total oil consumption.”  And we’re just scratching the surface on how all of this is also impacting human health, as we’ve recently learned that 90% of table salts contain microplastics and the average adult consumes approximately 2,000 microplastics per year through salt.

All over the world, our daily lives are overwhelmed with single-use products and plastics, from packaging to beverage cups and bags. As shared by UNEP, "The most common single-use plastics found in the environment are, in order of magnitude, cigarette butts, plastic drinking bottles,  plastic bottle caps, food wrappers, plastic grocery bags, plastic lids, straws and stirrers, other types of plastic bags, and foam take-away containers. These are the waste products of a throwaway culture that treats plastic as a disposable material rather than a valuable resource to be harnessed." 

Disposable products are not just hazardous for the environment but also costly to remove and hard to recycle. By ditching disposables in whatever way you can, you are supporting the global movement to go #zerowaste and sending signals to producers and stores that we don't want plastic in our oceans and littering our streets. This is more important than ever before with the recent global shakeup stemming from China refusing to take more recycling — by 2030,  it’s estimated that 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will be displaced due to this new law.  But the good news is that from personal beverage containers to shopping in bulk and even making your own cleaning products, there are hundreds of micro actions you can take to support the global trend towards a post disposable future.

#DitchDisposables Everyday Actions:

1. Swap daily disposables such as straws, bags, coffee cups, take out food containers, forks, razors, sanitary products for reusable alternatives, you will save money in the long run 

2. Continue or start to buy at bulk food stores and bring your own containers and bags to take products home in 

3. Carry your own vessel for water and hot drinks 

4. Rethink food storage to eliminate plastic baggies and wrap, you can swap to reusable containers and beeswax wraps 

5. Clean greener- from toothpaste to household cleaning products there are alternative and often cheaper ways of getting things clean such as bicarb soda and vinegar 

6. Replace disposable hygiene products with reusable ones, such as swapping pads & tampons for the menstrual cups and moon pads

7. Consider ways to refill products like cleaning and household liquids in bulk to reduce packaging 

8. Use your consumer power where you shop, eat, and work to voice the change you want to see and reduce disposability from our lives!

Why the AoA?

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and the consumption issues we face are indeed complex. While the global environmental and social issues being big and often overwhelming, it is important to be reminded that they are in part the outcomes of many individual actions. So, the choices we each make as individuals, as workers, and as members of societies have the potential to reinforce undesirable actions or to create the opportunity for new, more sustainable solutions to emerge.

The actions outlined in the Anatomy of Action are the top-level actions any individual can take to help support the global shift toward a more sustainable and regenerative future. No matter who you are, every action you take has an impact. By taking these more considered actions, you can contribute to a global movement for a more sustainable future. There are many other things you can do; this list is by no means an exhaustive account of all the aspects of our lives where we need to tackle to meet the SDGs. But it’s a starter list that any individual, anywhere can take action on to help make a positive future for all of us! 

Anatomy of Action: Thumbs up for Food!

Food! Delicious, terrible, gross, amazing —  everyone loves it, we all need it, Instagram is filled with it, and it's the biggest impact of our daily lives, which is exactly why we chose it as the first action in our Anatomy of Action (AoA) set. Let’s take a look at the issues and opportunities that we all have with the food in our life, via the three action areas that we set out in the AoA: protein swaps, using all your food, and growing your own. Then pick and action and get started!

ACTION 1: PROTEIN SWAP 

If you’re at all into sustainability, then you’ve surely heard that reducing meat consumption — which we have coined as “Protein Swaps” in the AoA to have a more positive, inclusive impact —  has a tremendously positive impact on the planet’s health and the well-being of billions of animals and people. But before narrowing down on that, it’s important to point out that the staggering increase in meat production that we have all experienced in our lifetimes is a brand new phenomenon — never before in human history have we humans eaten so much meat. Experts estimate that total meat production has increased 4-5 fold since 1961, and in order to meet the demand, over 70% of the world’s farm animals are now factory farmed (including 99% of the animals in the US!). This massive uptick in meat production is accompanied by a massive uptick in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (and a huge freshwater footprint), with livestock and their byproducts accounting for at least 32,564 million tons of CO2e per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions. Which all makes sense when you discover that every year in the US alone, according to the US Meat Institute 9 billion chickens (yes that’s a B), 32.2 million cattle and calves, 241.7 million turkeys, 2.2 million sheep and lambs, and 121 million hogs are killed for meat consumption (here is a creepy real time kill clock).  

Given the astounding snapshot of just how pervasive factory farmed meat is, there are, of course, many health and planet impacts that we are often blind to. Without going too much into the details, mass produced meat-based proteins contribute to desertification, deforestation, and nutrification (as well as the development of oceanic dead zones), all while subjecting factory-confined animals to heaps of animal cruelty issues.

It’s no surprise then that various governments around the world are encouraging citizens to adopt a more plant-based diet. For example, Canada released a new national food guide in 2019 that focused on plant-based eating, whereas the UK and the Chinese lawmakers have made statements about the benefits of reducing meat consumption. Similarly, New Zealand’s 2019 Sustainability Report also urges citizens to begin eating more plants, less meat, as did the popular EAT-Lancet Commission Report released earlier in 2019. The US, one of the worlds biggest meat consumers, is also seeing a change in consumer preferencing, with more people opting for plant-centric eating. 

Swapping meat-centric food habits for meals with different protein sources is good for your health and for the environment. In many parts of the world this is already a way of life. The best way to re-shape our global food systems is for people to swap meat to plant based options. By making the switch to a more vegetable-friendly diet and being more selective in where your meat comes from (adopt a flexitarian or reducetarian diet!), you can improve your health, lower GHG emissions and reduce biodiversity loss. 

#ProteinSwaps Everyday Actions

1. Swap animal protein for more plant-based proteins 

2. Diversify your diet and cook more at home

3. Eat what is seasonally available 

4. Opt for locally-produced foods; seek out local farmers and markets that offer sustainable produce

5. Talk with your friends and family about healthy and sustainable food options to encourage them to swap their diets too 

6. Become an everyday/weekday vegetarian, vegan, or flexitarian 

7. Try to have a rainbow of vegetables on your plate in every meal

ACTION 2: USE ALL YOUR FOOD

Another enormous problem within our food systems that we examined through the AoA is the issue of prolific food waste — 1.3 billion tons are wasted each year, which is an incredible one-third of all food produced globally for human consumption. This isn’t just an ironic issue in the face of widespread world hunger; it also means that “huge amounts of the resources used in food production are used in vain, and that the greenhouse gas emissions caused by production of food that gets lost or wasted are also emissions in vain." And what about the end-of-life for this wasted food in landfills? Given that on average, the carbon footprint of food wastage is around 500 kg CO2 eq. per capita and per year, there are enormous environmental and fiscal opportunities in reducing food waste. In fact, it’s estimated by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that the U.K. could save “USD 1.1 billion a year on landfill cost by keeping organic food waste out of landfills—this would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.4 million tonnes p.a. and could deliver up to 2 GWh worth of electricity and provide much-needed soil restoration and specialty chemicals.” For these reasons and more, the second action area focus of our AoA food exploration is all about using all your food. 

Using all your food helps reduce food waste which, in trash heaps and landfills, leads to releases of leachates and methane (which is 30x times more potent than CO2). Food scraps and stale bread are not trash at all! They are filled with the building blocks of life-nutrients, which your body and soil can use (replacing fertilizers and chemicals). So, by getting organics out of open dumps and landfills, we can reduce emissions released into the air and give nutrients back to the soil to produce healthier and tastier plants.

#UseAllYourFood Everyday Actions

1. Design your meals to use up the entire food product

2. Buy only what you can finish or save — don’t waste food after all you paid for it. If you throw it away, you are tossing your money in the trash 

3. When buying foods, avoid excessive packaging and take your own produce bags

4. Seek out "ugly" fruit and vegetables to give them a life in your meal

5. Manage how you store food to maximize freshness, such as using sealed containers in your fridge and pantry 

6. Get (more) into canning, preserves, and freezing to extend food life 

7. Make stock out of food scraps 

8. Compost your food scraps 

9. Share excess food to help ensure everyone has enough (there are many apps that help with this)

10. Find out what’s available in your neighborhood and advocate for communal composting and organic waste processing solutions 

ACTION 3: GROW YOUR OWN

Of course there are many food options for a healthy person and planet, but our 3rd one for the AoA supports you growing your own food and connecting to where it comes from in order to save money and to reduce transport, packaging, and food waste. While we hear a lot of conversation about plastic water bottles and plastic bags — especially when talking about plastic bans — the lesser known truth is that food’s plastic packaging accounts for nearly 50% of plastic waste (!) as waste is generated along the entire life cycle of food products, from the growing practices through to the supermarket and home wastage.

By growing your own food, even if it only replaces just some of what you would otherwise buy, you can connect better to what you eat and reduce the impacts that occur from the growing, packaging, transport, retail practices and food waste. Producing some of your own food has multiple benefits so even a small amount of home grown produce is a great way to start.

Access to land and time to garden of course varies, so if you can’t grow your own food, consider finding local farmers and support them or join a farmers cooperative. There are many benefits to small scale community agriculture — better food, more nutrients, higher air and soil quality, pollinator plants for bees and inspects, and an enhanced sense of community.

#GrowYourOwn Everyday Actions

1. Farm, plant, and grow whatever you can, wherever you can 

2. Start or join an urban school or kitchen garden

3. Connect with your food: find out where your food comes from and how it is produced  

4. Regrow vegetables like leeks, carrots, and beets in your house in a glass of water instead of discarding them 

5. If you can’t grow food yourself, support a local sustainable farmer or shop at farmers markets 

6. Promote, develop, and support initiatives in your building, street, or  community that increases your access to food-growing space 

FOOD!

There are no simple solutions to complex problems, and the food issues we face are indeed complex. While the global environmental issues are big and sometimes overwhelming, they are the outcomes of many individual actions, and of course the decisions made by governments and industry as well. Food is certainly a vital area for progress and change which can start with us exerting our influence over the demand side of the system.

So, the choices we make as individuals, as workers, and as members of societies have the potential to reinforce undesirable actions or to create the opportunity for new, more sustainable solutions.

The actions outlined in the Anatomy of Action are the top-level actions an individual can do to help support the global shift toward shared good-life goals (check out the AoA action validation report to discover more). No matter who you are, every action you take has an impact.

By taking these more considered lifestyle choices, you can contribute to a global movement for a more sustainable future. There are many other things you can do; this list is by no means an exhaustive account of all the aspects of our lives where we need to tackle to meet the SDGs. But it’s a starter list that any individual, anywhere can take action on to help make a positive future for all of us! 

Introducing our UNEP collaboration: The Anatomy of Action

By Leyla Acaroglu

Over the last year, the UnSchool team and I have been working on an exciting project in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to activate sustainable living and lifestyles.

The outcome is the Anatomy of Action, and this week, we are launching it into the world!

Here are the how’s and why’s of this exciting new initiative. 

When I talk about sustainability, a topic I have spoken about a lot over the last 15 years of my career, people often react in one of three ways: 1. they are really into the idea but don’t know what to do about it; 2. they are openly hostile about it, usually because they have had a bad experience with some form of environmentally-motivated actions/product etc; or, 3. they are confused by what it actually means and whether it is achievable, which makes them feel overwhelmed by it.

I try to remind people that sustainability is about the social, economic, and environmental considerations of what we do in our personal lives, the way we do business, and the government decisions that our elected representatives make on our behalf so that we can sustain the systems (such as food, air, and water) that every single living thing on Earth needs to survive and thrive. What it is not is a hippy-dippy, tree-hugging, wishy washy, anti-business concept that means you have to give up a lot and go back to the ‘dark ages,’ which is literally what some people who fall into the openly-hostile category have said to me. By being human, you need the planet, and as a result of our collective actions, the planet now needs us to alter damaging practices and replace them with more sustainable and regenerative ones. 

I will be the first to admit that we have a whole bunch of historical legacy issues to overcome when it comes to sustainability, as, in the past, actions by environmental movements and organizations have accidentally pigeon-holed the ways in which people view and care about the planet. Whilst often very good intentioned, the use of fear and shaming have been two well-executed tools in a space that often ends up being polarized between people who ‘care’ about the planet and those who ‘don’t’ — which is very strange when all people need the planet to live and thus don’t really have the option to not care about it. 

There are also many issues with the boom in greenwashing that we are still trying to shake off from industries who spend more money on marketing green credentials rather than doing them, and thus the resulting consumer cynicism from people who feel they were duped into buying crappy, often more expensive, so-called ‘green’ products. 

Now, though, we are in a more sophisticated era of understanding the ways in which we can design products and services that meet human needs but don’t destroy the systems that sustain us all. That's really what the core of sustainability as a practice is — a better understanding of systems and how we participate in them, which then leads to more informed and creative decision-making around how we all live well on this shared planet. And by shared, I mean not just with all the 7.5 billion other humans, but also the biological miracle that is the diversity of all the different species that make Earth the only known life-sustaining plant in the universe.

The current trend toward circularizing the economy is, in part, a reaction to the phenomenal waste crisis that we have designed ourselves into. The sad reality is that yes, recycling is broken, and we have global supply chains churning out stuff designed for the dump every second of every day. With many people profiting off this linear system, it does seem hard to turn the tides on such a well-oiled production-to-waste machine.

But now, many of us humans are seeing the feedback loops from this by way of mounds of ocean plastic waste and air pollution, which is one of the world’s biggest killers. In fact, cities around the world regularly peak above the WHO safe living index, and recent studies have shown the link between air pollution and all sorts of cognitive issues like Alzheimer’s disease. And then there is the climate crisis, a massive, scary, overwhelming concept that is freaking many people out. So, what in all of this mess and chaos is one individual to do about this, when we are presented with so many issues in need of solutions like the 17 in the Sustainable Development Goals? How do we overcome the inertia felt by the magnitude of the issues at hand, when we see there are just so many things that need to be addressed and we are just individuals trying to live a good life? How on Earth do we do anything that has any impact at all? 

Every issue holds its own solution, and that’s the case here. We each make up the world by the actions we take; the planet is in the state it's in not because we exist, but because we do the things we do each day. Sure, many choices are taken out of our hands and all industries and governments have a lot to answer for when it comes to obtaining a sustainable and positive future. But for each of us, we hold in our own two hands the opportunities to change the economy, as it is made up of all our individual actions accumulated as an economic outcome.

If you have ever worked for a company that sells goods or services, you will know that the trends in consumer behavior are the things that dictate the next steps for the company. So, let’s say you work for a large supermarket chain, and suddenly, people start avoiding overly-packaged products. When you look into why, you discover it's because of the concerns about ocean plastic waste and that there is a trend toward package-free products. So then, you make a case to your boss to have package-free options that meets the rising trend in consumer preferences. That is how the market works — actions breed reactions in the market — so if we want to be a part of designing a future that works better than today, then we need to redesign our lives to mimic the kind of future we want to live in. 

The complexity of sustainability is in the fact that we don’t really have all the answers yet. There is much work to do on the technical solutions to meeting our needs in more regenerative and planet-positive ways, like how do we mass-produce carbon-free energy and provide power for transport devices as large as airplanes? But, the very fact that we discovered how to fly was a miracle not too long ago, so the future will result is these issues being addressed, once we have a more widespread acceptance of the base reality that all humans need the planet and that our actions have negative impacts on it that, in turn, negatively impact us all. There is absolutely no escaping this, no matter how much power or wealth you may have. 

But, there are many things we can do, and I want to make it really clear that we each have agency and some kind of control over the future we create, even if it doesn’t seem like it at times. We make up the economy through our actions, and in turn, the economic system dictates what we value and how we live our lives. So, we are in a dynamic relationship that often feels as though the way things are is the way things have and will always be. But 10 years ago, smartphones were a brand new thing, and 20 years ago, we all had to plug our desktop computers into a phone line to access this new thing called the Internet. As such, in 10 or 20 years, the future will be very different from today, and I, for one, will be working to ensure that the kind of future we end up in is more equitable, sustainable, and regenerative than today. 

This is my very long introduction to a project we have been working on with the United Nations Environment Program’s economic division. For the last year, we have been exploring what types of actions individuals can take that will actually have an impact, if replicated and normalized, as part of people's everyday lifestyle actions. The outcome is the Anatomy of Action, an initiative we will launch this week at UNESCO in Paris. We wanted to not only design something that supports lifestyle changes for sustainable living, but also base it on a deeper understanding of what is working, along with why and how to amplify it so that we get new types of behavioral normals that encourage positive shifts within the economy. 

In 2016, I was awarded Champion of the Earth by the UNEP for my work with the UnSchool and my creative products that bring a science-based, innovative approach to sustainability. So it was fitting that we would find a way to collaborate on the complex and fascinating topic of sustainable lifestyles and how to activate more of them. 

For this collaboration, my team and I started by shining a light on all the bright spots of organically-growing cultural movements that exist outside of the traditional sustainability or environmental movements — things like zero waste, minimalism, guerilla gardening, ride sharing, etc. We identified over 80 movements, categorized them into which everyday lifestyle areas they were addressing, and then dissected the actions that these movements were identifying and taking. Next, we searched for the last five years of peer-reviewed academic papers and studies to see which of these hundreds of identified actions have positive impacts if amplified out among more people.

This helped us refine the list of actions down into a more detailed action heat map, and from that, we developed the five themes that make up the Anatomy of Action: food, stuff, movement, money, and fun. Experts within the UN system then reviewed the long lists of validated actions and confirmed the high-level ones that we could share as significant actions that anyone can take to have a positive impact in their daily lives.

The resulting 15 sub-actions are all positively framed; for example, we are not asking everyone to go vegan (which is shown will have significantly positive impacts) but instead to ‘protein swap’, which everyone can do a few meals a week. We chose this intentional language because we know that globally, food options are very different, and health conceptions as well as cultural conventions are also very diverse. For me, a protein swap is achievable, and if we get more people doing this, it will encourage meat producers to move away from intensive factory farming and instead, produce high quality, ethical, grass-fed meat, which will result in a better place with many environmental impacts. 

The action set presented in the Anatomy of Action shows everyday lifestyle swaps that fit easily into daily lifestyle choices. I drew heavily on behavioral and cognitive sciences to gain an insight into how to frame these actions as opportunities rather than losses, as the reality with sustainability is that it is a massive opportunity! For example, the benefits in swapping your car drive for human-powered transport are massive. Not only do you get exercise, but also the less cars we have in urban environments, the better air quality we get. Additionally, there is a lot of research as to when people disrupt their daily habits and rituals — usually when there are already in an altered life state, such as going on vacation, having a baby, or moving houses. This struck me as fascinating, as we often fall into rutted ways of doing things, and as the old adage goes, “A change is as good as a holiday,” because change often brings positive results for us. 

• Part of the Anatomy of Action asset set, Illustrations by Emma Segal. See all assets here

In designing and making the Anatomy of Action, I wanted to create a memorable, but simple memetic tool that reminds us all of the choices we make everyday. Nearly everyone has hands and we see them in front of us everyday, doing the things that make up our lives, so this reference is easy to remember when taking actions. But the critical thing is taking action! So to launch the initiative, we are challenging everyone to pick one of the actions, swap to it, and then share your habit disruptions on social media, tagging three friends to challenge them to get started too. Then repeat! For example, I personally moved banks for the UnSchool and started to move over other banks for my personal life because part of the research showed that divestment from banks and energy providers that are relying on the old carbon-producing industries could be done pretty easily. It takes time, for sure, but the outcome is investing in the kind of companies I want to see more of and divesting from the ones that need to change. 

Keep in mind that, due to the need to reach a diverse range of humans around the globe who live among different circumstances, the final action set is simply a chunk of things you can start doing now, but there are MANY things you can do and that need to be done. The next stage in our progress toward a sustainable future is discovering the things that we have impact on, both in negative and positive ways, and then designing these so that they are more effective and efficient. That's exactly what we're doing with sustainability — we are researching and working to figure out where the impacts are and what we can each do to address these, in our lives, in our businesses, and through the actions we take everyday that have an impact on the economy. 

We need many approaches to communicating, engaging, and activating a sustainable, circular, regenerative future. The Anatomy of Action is just one, but I hope it inspires you to reconsider some of the daily lifestyle choices you make, as well as how we each impact the economy and how, in turn, it impacts us, because the future is made up of our actions today. In doing so, we can all, over time, work to change the narrative of sustainability and design a future that works better than today.