The Covid-fueled plastic waste crisis unfolding

By Leyla Acaroglu

What a conundrum: we are in the middle of Plastic Free July, whilst also being in the middle of a global pandemic that, due to the increased concerns around safety and hygiene, is demanding the increased use of disposable single-use products. 

In the weeks after the start of the lockdown, Thailand reported a 62% increase in the discarding of disposable plastic products as a result of the pandemic. This is for a country, like many others, who in January had announced progressive approaches to reducing plastic waste. Some recent stats estimate that 13 million tons of plastic waste pre-pandemic would end up in the ocean each year, and now no one knows what the true cost of this surging use in disposable products will have on this global waste crisis. Based on our current trajectory though, it is estimated that by 2040, plastic pollution will weigh 1.3 billion tons. The numbers of disposable personal protective equipment (PPE) being ordered by governments are staggering alone. The UK 28 billion, France 2 billion — and China’s daily production of face masks in February soared to 116 million, which was 12 times higher than the previous month. What will become of all of this disposable plastic waste? 

For every month that we face the Covid-19 pandemic, it is estimated that globally, we will use and dispose of 129 billion face masks and 65 billion plastic gloves. You don't have to go far these days to see the discards of someone else's safety concerns — a dark blue disposable glove lying at the base of a city tree, a light blue disposable face-mask by the side of a trash can, or even worse, various supplies laying limply in the gutter, just waiting to be washed out into the ocean as the street cleaners come and wash it away. 

Before the pandemic, we already had a global waste crisis on our hands, and then the global shutdowns put a halt on progressive action to reduce the reliance on single-use disposable products like disposable food packaging. Given that millions of people are swapping from in-restaurant dining to ordering take-out, we have seen a surge in use of convenience packaging. Add in all the medical supplies, hygiene supplies, and PPE, and all of this has given rise to single-use products skyrocketing at a time when recycling can’t keep up. 

Financial Times called this a “toxic pandemic waste-crisis,” reporting this week that, “A study published on Thursday forecasts that the flow of plastic into oceans would nearly treble by 2040 to 29m tonnes per year if much greater action was not taken by governments and industry.” WHO has said that a 40% increase in PPE production will be needed to meet the growing global demand. 

California has announced they will put their plastic bans on hold due to Covid-19. Wired reports “Even if the industry could handle this crush of ‘recyclables,’ and even if it were economically feasible to process all the stuff, many recyclers have shut down in response to the pandemic. Curbside recycling programs have been suspended by dozens of county and local governments, from Miami to Los Angeles County, according to the trade publication Waste Dive. Recycling facilities are struggling to figure out how to protect their workers, who are concerned about virus exposure from handling materials.” Furthermore, the World Economic Forum states that in the United Kingdom, illegal waste dumping has risen 300% since the pandemic started. 

Most disposable masks are made from finely woven plastic fibers that are not recyclable, but even if they could be recycled, it’s very unlikely that they would, given the issues with recycling medical waste, especially in a time of a highly infectious virus. But there are reports of people wishcycling their masks by popping them in the recycling bin, which in turn, puts sanitation and waste workers at risk. To be clear, right now, unless you find a designated bin that is marked for face masks, they are not recyclable. And, as I have reported on before, recycling validates waste. Given that we are in a global recycling crisis, it is not good enough to rely on recycling as the solution to the complex disposability problem. 

So yes, we are indeed in a conundrum, considering the need for personal safety in the face of a deadly virus as well as planetary protection for current and future generations. More so than ever before, we need ways of meeting these needs through sustainable and circular solutions. 

We need to design our way out of this by creating new products that meet these needs and support the adaptation of these new approaches. 

WHERE CAN WE START?

We know that masks are extremely important for collective safety, and for many people, dining in restaurants is still not possible. Here are 8 ways you can avoid disposable, single-use products: 

1. Get a couple of reusable, washable masks. Wash and rotate them to avoid using single-use ones. (Consider taking up a new hobby by making your own! There are many useful tutorials online.)

2. Encourage your friends and co-workers to do the same with their masks. Consider asking your employer to bulk purchase reusable masks (and even get them branded, if that helps justify the additional costs!).

3. Reuse take-out containers at home for storing other items if you get food to go. 

4. Search out restaurants and delivery services who are making the effort to reduce unnecessary waste and who are selecting lower-impact materials. 

5. Learn to cook new things at home. 

6. If you have to use disposable, store it so that you can reuse it the full number of recommended times, and consider using Terracycle for PPE recycling. 

7. Check this article for more advice on how to stay sustainable during the pandemic. 

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At the UnSchool we are dedicated to helping create a more sustainable and circular world by design. We run programs, develop tools and support thousands of people in developing their skills, ideas and projects for activating positive change, If you are interested in designing solutions for a sustainable world, then apply to join our upcoming 1 month live masterclass or check out our online programs here. 

8 Ways to Make Online Education Engaging and Interactive

By Leyla Acaroglu

Since we are all now suddenly spending a significant amount of time in online learning environments and digital meetings, and I have been running programs online for several years pre-pandemic, I have been reflecting on what does and does not make online learning work.

Here I have compiled a list of things that I think help make digital learning experiences more effective, as well as things to avoid if you want your participants to be more engaged and motivated through the somewhat more complex 2D world of online learning —  be it in a workshop or even just an online meeting. 

I usually run live online one-month intensive training programs that mirror the core content we teach at any of the UnSchool in-person programs. We started offering these types of intensive online programs a few years back after it was obvious that for some people, getting to a physical location was challenging especially with family responsibilities etc.

Given that we are very committed to equitable access, we started offering a one-month, live, small-group program on the Disruptive Design Method, Systems Change and the Circular Economy and I was fascinated to see how effective these could still be for effective learning and creative change outcomes. 

Since the Covid crises, like many others, we had to suspend all our in-person programs and convert to online. Each time I have now run one of these intensive masterclasses online, the group really amazes me, and I am just as inspired and educated as they are after the program is complete! 

8 ways to stay engaged

Here are eight of the things I have discovered help make online education more effective: 

1. Always get people to introduce themselves in a way that helps the rest of the group be excited about working with them. At the start I give people 2-5 minutes to share who they are and why they are taking the program, along with something weird or wonderful about themselves — the latter always helps break things up and give us a giggle. Laughing is so important for human bonding, and it helps to ease any tensions some participants might have at the start. 

2. Ensure everyone keeps their video on so that everyone can see that everyone else is engaged. Of course, offer people the opportunity to switch it off if they have to pop out, but if you are in a one-hour session, then most people should be visible to help get the benefits of social visual interaction, like mirror neurons. 

3. Break people up into groups and get them talking. If you use Zoom (which we have for years), you can pop people into breakout rooms. It's an amazing feature, as it sends your participants into however many rooms you want for a smaller conversation. So say you can have a group of 10; you can put them in 5 rooms to have one-on-one time or in 3 rooms to have a bit more of a group discussion. You can’t see them unless you pop into a room, and you can call them back at any time to the main room. This helps people process new information, connect with their peers and ensure that they all can participate.

4. Get people doing things. I always pick someone and ask them for an example or to respond to a question, or I get them to write a list of reflections for 2 minutes, or break out into a room and discuss the activity they just did. I also give homework tasks too, then at the start of each session, two or three people share their actions and reflections on the homework task. Interactivity, online or off, is key to cognitive engagement and seeing how others respond to tasks is a very effective peer learning tool. 

5. Keep on time, as it helps respect all people in the group. Especially in a digital environment, people often have to leave right at the end time, and it is always awkward if some pop out before you have finished. So, I work really hard to keep on exactly the time we agreed, and if I have to go over, I make a quick offer for people to pop out if they need and then watch the recorded video later. But I think it's super important to respect the group dynamics by ensuring everyone can be there from start to finish together and say a nice goodbye before rushing off to whatever they have on next! 

6. Use time well. I always plan out my session in chunks of time and make sure I break up any direct instruction so that there is some interactivity. Maybe at the start, middle or end during a lecture session, I will get the participants time to respond or go to a breakout room and do something. In a workshop session, I design several activities around the core learning goals for that session to do alongside the presentation. I often use time restrictions to ensure that when a breakout room happens, they know that they have to be efficient to get the outcomes and then report back when the group reconvenes. 

7. Be understanding. Online learning can be tough for some, as there may be distractions around them or on their computer with seeing messages or emails come in. I understand that kids might start crying or the postman arrives, so let people know that you get it so that if these types of things happen, they don't feel awkward when they have to respond to them. The goal should be that these humans connected via the internet beamed into their homes are supporting each other, gaining the knowledge and experiences that they need from both the instructor and one another and that there is an acceptance that this is not the same experience as being in a room together with the outside world disconnected from our inside learning experience. 

8. Tell stories. This is a good engagement for any type of learning, and the more narrative base information you give, the more likely people are to retain the information that you are sharing. 

3 Things to Avoid

Here are three of the things that I feel reduce the potential for effective digital learning: 

1. Don’t assume that people will be engaged just because they are online; especially now, our attention is often split between many different things. The responsibility of the instructor is to design experiences that are engaging and that motivate participation. Just because someone is in your Zoom room doesn't mean that their mind is present with you, so find ways of ensuring that they are present. I like to see my role as a preforming of exciting learning experiences.

2. Don't get annoyed at people for being late or having not completed a task you asked of them. Online learning is very different from in-person learning when it comes to social pressure, and it can take a bit of time for people to find the motivation to do the work independently instead of in a group dynamic. So, be a bit empathetic to this and give people the opportunity to still contribute, perhaps by emailing it to you later that week for feedback. 

3. It may be that you lose a few people. Given that there are so many different types of learning systems, it's inevitable that one or two people in your group may find online learning just doesn't work for them. We always check on people if they don't show up to a session and try and find out what we can do to help them with their learning journey.  

To be fair, I teach adults and so these ideas apply to adult learning. I think kids and teenagers would have an entirely different set of success features that educators need to bring into their repertoire. I know from my own experience of going from mainly teaching in rooms with humans that the transition can be a bit awkward at first, but for me, the joy in teaching this way is in being able to connect with people all over the world and to have them learn from each other.

When designed well, online learning can have just as profound of an impact as face-to-face programs, ensuring that people have the space to engage and connect with each other and that you, as the instructor, are tracking your content to the learning needs of your group. 

This year, I have already run two month-long programs, and we have a third one coming up this September. I have been so inspired and energized by the outcomes that I am really committed to continuing to find ways of ensuring more people can successfully learn this way.

I don't think digital should replace in-person learning and engagement, as there is just so much cognitive benefit from being with other like-minded humans while trying to solve and uncover complex things. But for now, this is a great way to ride out lockdowns and uncertainty with a group of other humans who care about the same things as you and who are self-selecting into a digital space dedicated to learning how to make positive change. 

If you are interested in joining my next program, the September Circular Systems Design Masterclass, there are still a few places left. Apply here >

Quick Guide to the Disruptive Design Method

By Leyla Acaroglu, Originally published on Medium

The Disruptive Design Method (DDM) is a systems-based approach to creative problem solving for tackling complex social and environmental issues. It combines sociological inquiry methods (mining) with systems explorations (landscaping) and design and creativity (building) approaches. The method is built on systems, sustainability and design, allowing for a three-dimensional perspective shift of a problem arena to ensure that interventions create positive change. Here we cover a quick guide to the DDM. 

We live in a complex interconnected world riddled with dynamic and often chaotic problems that requires a mindset and skillset shift in order for us to address them at a systemic level. 

The Disruptive Design Method is an approach to problem-solving that helps develop a three-dimensional perspective of the way the world works, and provides a unique way of exploring, identifying, and creating tactical interventions that leverage systems change for positive social and environmental outcomes.

The three-phase process of Mining, Landscaping, and Building (MLB) is cycled through to create outcomes that are creative and sustainability-focused. This approach offers a micro-to-macro-and-back-again perspective of the problem arena in which you wish to create positive change within and supports the development of a more three-dimensional worldview. 

The three phases of the Disruptive Design Method: Mining, Landscaping and Building

In this quick guide, I explain the what, why, and how of the DDM, along with ways it can help create non-conventional approaches to addressing complex problems, such as those presented by the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

We use systems boundaries to define the spaces we wish to explore, and then find connection points perfect for a tactical intervene (which is often not where you would intuitively think, based on your starting knowledge in the problems arena). Then, because we have all this new knowledge from mining and landscaping, we can rapidly develop divergent and creative approaches to intervening in the systems the create change.

Any problem from small, hyper-local concerns to massive global issues can be explored and evolved through this method, and because it’s a thinking and doing practice, it can be adapted and evolved based on the problem. The core of the approach is always systems, sustainability, and design.

POSITIVELY DISRUPTIVE BY DESIGN 

Design is an incredibly powerful tool that changes the world. Everything around us has been constructed to meet the needs of our advanced human society, and in turn, our individual experiences of the world are influenced dramatically by the designed world we inhabit. 

We are each citizen designers of the future through the actions we take every day, which is why I developed the DDM as a systems-based creative intervention design method for exploring and actively participating in the design of a future that works better for us all. 

Intended as a way for creatives and non-creatives alike to develop the mental tools needed to activate positive change, the DDM approaches creative problem solving by mining through problems and employing a divergent array of research approaches, moving through to landscaping the systems at play and identifying the connections and relationship dynamics that reinforce the elements of the system, and then ideating opportunities for systems interventions that amplify positive impact by building new ideas that shift the status quo of the problem at a systems level. This is then cycled through in an iterative way until the outcome is tangible and effective at altering the state of the issue at hand. 

The DDM is an iterative process

As Buckminster Fuller teaches, often the smallest part of the system has the capacity to make the biggest change — and that’s one of the fundamental approaches that the DDM enables: identify the part within the system that you have agency and ability to impact.

Instead of avoiding or ignoring problems, we teach you how to be problem lovers who dive right into the sticky center of the issue; then, you will get busy designing divergent solutions that build on your unique individual sphere of influence, which is the space we can all curate to affect change on the people or things around us. Your personal sphere of influence will grow and ebb and flow over time.

Additionally, the DDM includes a 12-part knowledge set that, when explored as a whole, equips anyone with the thinking and doing tools to be a more aware and intentional agent for positive change. It also has the tools to cycle through the issues and seek out the non-obvious opportunities, designing divergent interventions and solutions that build on your unique individual sphere of influence. These are topics of self-development explored in my latest handbook Design Systems Change and through my 30-day Challenge. 

Perhaps most importantly though, instead of avoiding or ignoring problems, this method offers up tools for shifting perspectives that enable one to become a problem lover with the ability to dive right under the obvious parts of the issue at hand, avoid laying blame, and instead, identify and uncover the parts of the system that reinforce the issue so that change can be created. 

In a world where many people see and feel problematic impacts with intensity — the social, environmental, and political issues especially — and then become overwhelmed or disabled by this complexity, we see good-intentioned people disengage from taking action. Thus, I can not understate how powerful seeing problems through the lens of opportunity, optimism, and yes, even a bit of love can be for someone. I want to provide an agentizing effect, a set of tools that enable people to move from overwhelming problems to possible actions; after all, the world is made up of the accumulation of individual actions of many, you and me included.

Problem loving is the DDM mindset

THE ORIGINS OF THE DDM

When I first started to develop the Disruptive Design Method, it was in part a reaction to the one-dimensional problem-solving techniques that I had been taught through my years of traditional education. Back in 2014, as I was finishing my PhD and preparing to launch the UnSchool of Disruptive Design, I knew that there needed to be a scaffolding that would support all the content I wanted to fill this experimental knowledge lab with. Drawing on the years of professional experience and research I had to date, I went about iteratively developing and refining the modules from 20+ down to 12 core components of the Disruptive Design Methodology set, a learning system that, once fully engaged with, fits together to create the DDM.

The 12 core modules of the Disruptive Design Methodology

It’s a ‘scaffolding’ because it’s not intended to be rigid and formulaic, but instead, it offers the support that one needs as they start to develop a more three-dimensional view of the world and adopt the skills of systems thinking, problem exploration, and creative intervention design. I personally use this approach in all the commissions and collaborations I do, like in designing learning systems for Finland and Thailand, and in creating sustainable living initiatives, like the Anatomy of Action with the UNEP.

A scaffolding is often used to create support around a building as it is going up — it’s the skeleton structure that enables the progression up into the air. This is the intention with the DDM, to offer support as a 3D worldview and mindset is developed to overcome reductive thinking and create a more robust set of tools that enable a problem-loving approach to solving complex real-world problems. 

I, along with my team, have taught the DDM and the core approaches of systems and life cycle thinking to thousands of people all over the world, from teenagers to CEOs, with hundreds of alumni completing our in-person programs and thousands enrolled in our online school. We have seen many different incarnations of the DDM and its tools in action throughout our five years of running the UnSchool and its various programs. 

The world needs more pioneers of positively disruptive change — people equipped with the thinking and doing skills that will enable them to understand and love complex systems and then be able to translate that into actual change. There are, of course, many tools and approaches for designing change, and the DDM is just one of a wide suite of tools out there. I am an appreciator of many of them, but for me, the reason why anyone should gain an overview of this approach is that it combines the three pillars of systems, sustainability, and design, of which I have not seen an approach yet to do the same. 

What this all boils down to is having a unique method on hand to positively intervene and disrupt the status quo of any problem arena to ensure that the outcome is more effective, equitable, circular and sustainable. That’s why we always offer equity access scholarships and ensure that people from all walks of life can gain access to these valuable perspective-shifting tools we offer at the UnSchool.

THE 3-PARTS OF DISRUPTIVE DESIGN METHOD

There are three distinct parts of the Disruptive Design Method — Mining, Landscaping, and Building (MLB) — each is enacted and cycled through in order to gain a granulated, refined outcome through iterative feedback loops.

The first part is Mining, where the mindset is one of curiosity and exploration. In this phase, we do deep participatory research, suspend the need to solve, avoid trying to impose order, and embrace the chaos of any complex system we are seeking to understand. The tools of this phase are: research, observation, exploration, curiosity, wonderment, participatory action, questioning, data collection, and insights. This can be described as diving under the iceberg and observing the divergent parts that enable us to understand a problem arena in more detail.

The second stage is Landscaping. This is where we take all the parts that we uncovered during the Mining phase and start to piece them together to form a landscaped view through systems mapping and exploration. Landscaping is the mindset of connection, where you see the world as a giant jigsaw puzzle that you are putting back together and creating a different perspective that enables a bird’s eye view of the problem arena. Insights are gathered, and locations of where to intervene in the system to leverage change are identified. The tools for this phase are: systems mapping (cluster, interconnected circles, etc.), dynamic systems exploration, synthesis, emergence, identification, insight gathering, and intervention identification.

The third part of is Building. This is the creative ideation phase that allows for the development of divergent design ideas that build on potential intervention points to leverage change within the system. The goal is not to solve but to evolve the problem arena you are working within so that the status quo is shifted. Here we use a diversity of ideation and prototyping tools to move through a design process to get to the best-fit outcome for your intervention.

The key to this entire approach is iteration and ‘cycling through’ the stages to get to a refined and ‘best-fit’ outcome. Why do we do this? Because problems are complex, knowledge builds over time, and experience gives us the tools to make change that sticks and grows. This cycling through approach draws upon the Action Research Cycle to create an iterative approach to exploring, understanding, and evolving the problem arena.

The three applied parts of the MLB Method are based on a more complex Methodology set. This set combines 12 divergent theory arenas to form the foundation of identifying, solving, and evolving complex problems, as well as helps develop a three-dimensional perspective of the way the world works. From cognitive sciences to gamification and systems interventions, the 12 units of the Disruptive Design Methodology are designed to fit together to form the foundations of a practice in creative change-making.

THE FOUNDATIONS: SYSTEMS, SUSTAINABILITY, AND DESIGN

The UnSchool is deeply rooted in a foundation of applied systems, sustainability, and design, forming three knowledge pillars that hold up all we do — including leveraging the Disruptive Design Method. 

The three pillars of the UnSchool and DDM

Whenever we teach a program, we always begin with systems thinking as the foundation, as it is one of the most powerful tools that we can use to address complex problems. It enables any practitioner to see how everything is interconnected, and systems can be viewed from multiple perspectives, allowing a shift from rigid to flexible mindsets. We also engage with the principles of sustainability through each phase, which for us, means doing more with less, understanding how the planet works so that we can work within its means, and evolving from an extraction-based society to a circular and regenerative one. 

Through the Mining phase, systems boundaries are used to define the problem arenas that one wants to explore. Through systems mapping, research techniques, observation and reflection, all the parts that make up a system and their connections are explored through the landscaping phase, laying the groundwork for exposing unique places to intervene (which is often not where you would intuitively think, based on your starting knowledge in the problem arena).

From this, new knowledge is built from the Mining and Landscaping phases, which forms the foundation for the Building phase — rapidly designing divergent and creative ideas to intervening in the problem arena. Any problem from small, hyper-local concerns to massive global issues can be explored and evolved through this MLB Method. And, because it’s equally a thinking and doing practice, it can be adapted and evolved based on any problem. The core of the approach is always systems, sustainability, and design. 

HOW THE DISRUPTIVE DESIGN METHOD HELPS MAKE POSITIVE CHANGE

LOVING THE PROBLEM

Many people avoid problems, which means that they never truly understand them. By learning to love problems and see them as opportunities in disguise, you will develop an open mind that thinks differently. This is all about being curious and trying to understand something before you attempt to solve it! The more curiosity you can foster, the more things you will uncover about the world around you.

SEEING RELATIONSHIPS

Everything is interconnected, and actions create reactions. Being able to see the relationships that make up cause and effect are part of any good problem solvers tool belt. The content of the DDM is designed to foster systems perspectives as well as deep identification with cause and effect relationships.

PERSPECTIVE SHIFTING

The ability to see the world through other people’s eyes is critical to building resilience, empathy, and leadership skills. You will uncover how to constantly reflect and explore the world from diverse perspectives, overcome biases and be able to put yourself in the shoes of others to understand why people think or behave differently to you based on their own life and learning experiences.

COLLABORATION

Respectfully and successfully working with others, despite differences, is critical to creativity and leadership skills. The goal is to encourage people to see that diversity in collaboration is just as important as agreement, and that coming to a consensus can be achieved in many different ways. Many of the tools we teach, such as systems mapping, can be used as brilliant collaboration tools, so you gain incredible opportunities to foster effective collaboration.

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At the UnSchool, we approach making change as a state of being; we believe that being change-centric is a way of defining a life agenda, finding purpose, and setting the tone for how you live and contribute through your life and work. We all have the power to affect positive social and environmental change in and through everything we do, from the things we buy to the conversations we have and the kind of work we do. This change-centric approach is by all means a cultivated one in which you have to work at wanting to make change. Because truly, it’s not always easy; in fact, trying to make change can definitely hurt sometimes — and frankly, it often requires some measure of failure along the way. How would we have evolved as a species had we not experienced millions of years of failure and accidents? Allowing the space for failing early on creates better, stronger results later. In saying this, it should also be noted that change is one of the easiest things to make happen… if you have the right tools and resources, which are built into the DDM.

You can take the full program at your own pace via our online school here, or if you do a certification track, you get access to the full 12 modules, plus loads of extra content on activating and facilitating change. 

Quick Guide to Circular Economy Business Strategies

By Leyla Acaroglu, Originally published on Medium

The Circular Economy is all about the transformation of the way we do business, create goods and services, organize society and ultimately respect and cherish the world around us. Moving from a linear to a circular economy requires a reconfiguration of nearly all business structures, which is where circular business strategies come into play.

In my quick guide series, I am providing an overview of the different decision making support tools that enable the transformation to a circular and sustainable society. We are all consumers in the current linear economy, but as we transition to one that massively reduces waste and instead promotes a variety of reuse approaches, we will each become shareholders in the delivery and cycling of goods and services throughout the economy. This requires a redesign of nearly everything, and the sustainable design decisions I outlined already cross over with these sustainable business strategies as they interlock to provide a pathway form linear to circular. Like any strategy, there is no one size fits all solution and there are new ideas and approaches being designed and tested in more detail as we see the advancement of this transformation.

As individuals, as governments and as organizations, we already encourage or discourage industries, services and products based on what we invest in and thus support, in our time, energy and money. If you are someone who works for a company and makes decisions, then you definitely need to understand how the economy is currently transforming and what the new types of business models are evolving to service the in-demand need for a resource-efficient, equitable, sustainable and circular world.

As we enter into this new green recovery stage, there are many businesses in need of reconfiguration, pivots and performance changes, where the standard business models, policies, products, and services just don't fit any longer. In order to meet the growing demand for sustainable and circular products and the political shifts towards equitable industries, companies need to come to terms with these new approaches to making money whilst also making good.

“Circular business models modify the pattern of product and material flows through the economy.” — OECD Business Model for Circular Economy Report

Within a circular economy, goods cycle through two main types of metabolism flows. One is the technical system, which includes all the human-made, technically-altered goods, and these must be designed to be recaptured, reused, repaired, remanufactured and where appropriate recycled, in order to ensure material values are maximized and technical products don't escape into the natural environment — which leads us to the other main metabolism, the biological one. This encompasses all the goods and materials that are biologically based and can easily and benignly be metabolized back into nature. All food products, for example, are biological, while all food packaging that has any technical additions like plastic is in the technical stream.

Many of the ecological impacts, the externalities that we see in the economy, have come about as a result of supply chain relationships — not just the end-of- life destination where things end up. Yet, much of our investment and activation for change thus far has been around waste management, rather than on designing out waste from the system right from the start. In part, the circular economy is trying to address this by providing pathways for full systems redesign, rather than just end-of-life tweaks.

The global economy is designed around the consumption of goods and services, so much so that the measurement tool we use to determine the success of nations, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), only measures the things produced and sold in a country. It ignores the losses from the systems that it takes from, such as nature, ignores any activities that have no economic aspect to them and ultimately creates a very narrow view of value and wealth. GDP is a massive system failure as it externalizes all ecological impacts. This way of measuring the economy is only 70 years old, and it has helped to create many of the environmental issues that plague us today.

GDP is one of the driving forces that created the global linear economy, whereby every day millions of tons of raw materials are extracted from nature (through mining, harvesting, cropping, etc.); these are mechanically processed into usable goods in factories, shipped around the world, and then purchased, used up, and thrown out. When things are discarded, they often end up in landfills, incinerators or dumps, or worse they escape back into nature in harmful ways because they were only ever designed to maximize the benefits to the producers and not to consider the full life cycle impacts that they may have. Waste in all its forms is a byproduct of this linear system, whereas in nature, there is no such thing as waste; our species has created pollution of all sorts. This has created a huge strain on the waste and recycling systems, of which are currently broken, resulting in many ecological, equity and health implications, and created the demand for transforming the way we do business, meet human needs and structure the entire economy.

As we progress to the normalization and integration of the circular approaches, pioneering leadership is required from governments and CEOs, as well as the creative thinkers who can help shift the status quo through designing new things that make the old polluting, degrading, inequitable systems obsolete. We are starting to see this, with many of the world's biggest companies committing to adopting circularity, carbon reduction, and sustainable design strategies.

We can speed up the needed change by incentivizing producers to approach product and business design differently — to use sustainable design approaches and life cycle assessment to help green supply chains and find unique ways of shifting the status quo on hyper-consumerism through the implementation of closed-loop product delivery models.

“Circular business models are special in the sense that they look for value creation in places usually of little interest to companies that operate in the traditional linear production paradigm”. — Guldmann, Best Practice Examples of Circular Business Models

The future is circular, not just in the wider economy, but also in our daily lives. As we become more aware of the impact of our actions, we are more incentivized and agentized to make informed and effective decisions. We can no longer avoid the reality that our planet is in need of better care. The linear economy has helped us advance to this incredible point in time, but the advancement has come at major costs to the ecological systems that sustain life on Earth, which in turn affects our health and quality of life as we battle climate change, air pollution, global pandemics and loss of biodiversity. These issues are all interconnected, and until we change the way we do things, we will continue to be the victims of our own poor decisions.

The circular economy is seeking to remedy this through shifts in the way we arrange society, the way we produce goods and services, and the way we all consume, in order to ultimately design the kind of future we want to live in. One that is equitable, sustainable and regenerative by design.

Before we dive into the business models that are part of this transformation, let’s quickly cover some of the key concepts that are central to the circular shift.

Circular Economy Core Concepts

It's important to know that the movement for the transformation to a closed-loop circular economy has been well underway for several decades. Work at multiple levels of research, industry and government has been ongoing to advance the idea of product stewardship, cleaner production and extended producer responsibility. Here are the main overarching concepts that fit within the circular economy:

• Product Stewardship: The parent company of the design, production and sales takes full responsibility for reducing the environmental impact of the product they create throughout the entire life cycle of the product, ensuring that there are appropriate end-of-life options and that these are managed by the parent company.

• Extended Producer Responsibility: A policy approach whereby all of the full life-cycle environmental costs associated with a product are added to the final sale price, and this extra revenue is used to manage the product stewardship of the product.

• Eco Design: Approaches to designing products so that they last longer and have a limited impact on the environment across their full life cycle. This is also called sustainable design, and I have a quick guide to this here too.

• Cleaner Producer: A preventative measure by companies to reduce the waste and pollution associated with the production of goods.

• Industrial Ecology: Ways of remodelling industrial systems to perform more like ecological ones and maximize value exchange.

• Industrial Symbiosis: Part of industrial ecology, a network of diverse organizations collaborate to ensure that resources are used efficiently and value is cycled between them.

• Waste Equals Food: An approach where all ‘waste’ becomes a nutrient to something else in the system.

• Non-Fossil Energy: Energy derived from renewable resources.

• True-Cost Accounting: A type of accounting that takes into consideration the full externalities and costs associated with delving a service, doing business, or creating a product.

• Cradle to cradle: A concept of ensuring that the full life of a product is managed in a sustainable way that was made popular in a book of the same name and has a certification system for products.

• Biomimicry: An approach to creating products and services that mimic the way nature works by studying and replicating the solutions found in the natural world.

• Regenerative Design: A whole systems approach to creating solutions that offer back more than is taken in their creation by exploring the way natural systems solve problems and creating things that are interconnected with natural systems.

• Post Disposable: A movement to make waste obsolete by designing solutions that move beyond waste as a socially acceptable concept.

• Life Cycle Thinking: A framework that takes into consideration the whole of life environmental impacts of a product or service by looking at the impacts that actions in the economy have on natural systems by looking from the cradle to grave. I have a guide to this here.

• Disruptive Design: Disruptive Design is a way for creatives and non-creatives alike to develop the mental tools to activate positive change by mining through problems, employing a divergent array of research approaches, moving through systems thinking, and then ideating opportunities for systems interventions that amplify positive impact.

• Systems Thinking: Systems thinking is a holistic approach to understanding the way parts fit together in dynamic relationships to make up a whole system. It’s the opposite of reductive or linear thinking and involves a series of practical approaches and mental models that enable a more complex view of the world, focusing on relationships and synthesis.

• Closing the loop: This Is a concept promoted by some businesses as a solution to waste generation and in support of the circular economy. By closing the loop on the end-of-life impacts of a product from the design stage, the business can be redesigned to support end- to-end integrated systems.

• Technical nutrients: Materials or stocks that are manipulated by humans and cannot be easily re-integrated into nature (for example, plastics).

• Biological nutrients: Materials or stocks that can be easily absorbed or digested by natural systems in a benign way (unbleached paper or food).

• Metabolism rate: The ability for things to be reabsorbed or integrated into a system — food waste, for example, can be easily metabolized in a compost bin or biodigester, whereas it does not get effectively metabolized in a landfill.

• Zero waste: This is a strategy and movement to go beyond waste reduction and remove all disposable products from a place, company or lifestyle by embracing a set of strategies that eliminate waste completely. The goal is to avoid sending any waste to a landfill or incinerator.

(There are many more! I have a class that covers all of this in way more detail coming out soon, and we also have a gamified toolkit that asks these questions and helps you get to a sustainable outcome — see here)

Circular Economy Business Models

The types of business model transformations that are underway and will become more prevalent in the near future include different approaches to closing the loop so that end-to-end material flows are managed by the producers. The burden of waste is not transferred to the end-user, but instead, the company has stewardship over their products for its full life cycle and designs products to be recaptured to ensure that the values of the materials and embodied impacts are maximized.

Every industry and product category will need a different combination of business and design approaches, as some materials are easily re-metabolized and some aren't, some product categories are much simpler than others, etc. The fundamental shift here is how we design goods to flow through the economy and the responsibility that producers take of their goods, enabling customers to return, reuse, or repair to ensure that value is continually increased.

REPAIR

Designing products to have extended life spans by providing repair services and maximizing likelihood of repair during use and end of life phases.

REMANUFACTURE

Creating within a closed-loop system where products are intentionally intended to be taken back, reconditioned or fed back into the production cycle to create new high value products.

RESELL

The resale or buyback of products are encouraged, supporting the continuation of the functionality and increasing the usable life span.

SHARING PLATFORMS

The creation of service provisions within a product context to maximize the reuse and shareability of the goods.

WASTE AS A RESOURCE

Products are designed to intentionally use others’ byproducts or to ensure that their own byproducts are absorbed into a new system.

PRODUCT AS SERVICE MODEL

Products are reimagined into service delivery models, and long-term relationships are built with the customers. Products are always owned by the producer and leased to the customer thus they can be made of higher value and managed across their entire life.

CIRCULAR SUPPLIES

Products are part of the supply model, and consumers collaborate to share resources and ensure that circular products are available on the market.

RESOURCE RECOVERY

Mining landfills or extracting materials back from the economy to ensure that they are circulated back into the system. This could be a third party provided system.

PRODUCT LIFE EXTENSION

Challenging the traditional model of lots of customers buying individual units by offering higher value longer-term products and ensuring they are utilized. Perhaps with a pay per use model of another way of ensuring that materials stay in the economy longer.

But wait, there are more strategies!

There are actually many more considerations and opportunities that apply to different stages, product categories and the level of change you are at. I have created a free toolkit for circular redesign to walk you through a quick creative process.

If you want to learn more about this, we have an introductory class on the circular economy, many resources and several handbooks on Circular Systems Design that dive into this in more detail. I also host a group on LinkedIn for people working in systems change. Additionally, we are launching an extensive set of programs and services for businesses interested in advancing their skills in this arena as part of a new set of programs and masterclasses designed for business transformation.

Racial Equity Tools and Resources

Racism the world over is a designed system of oppression. The system we live within, the one that allows for humans of certain skin colors, religious identities or sexual orientations to be oppressed to the point of literal and figurative suffocation is by design.

The system is not ‘broken’ per se; it was designed to serve a purpose and it is achieving that end goal, that being an economic and cultural system based on exploitation and extraction that enables some to get rich and live particular lifestyles at the expense of others.

This is one of the fundamental issues with power: once you have it - given by birth or earned through merit - you will fight pretty hard to keep it, as the cognitive impact is one of being entitled to the privileges that having that power enables you to hold.

One of the first steps to change is understanding the origins of the problem, the role we play within it, and then activating your unique agency to help overcome it. Complacency reinforces the system of oppression, so we all must find our way of contributing to the needed systems-level change.

There are many resources out there for both knowledge, action and skill development. We offer a starter selection here; however, it by no means complete (and mostly offers North American resources in English), and it is up to each of us to continue to be curious, self-educate and take actions to support a greater understanding of our shared global history of inequity and oppression to support moving towards the critical systems change.

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TOOLKITS

RACIAL EQUITY TOOLS
This racial equity tool set provides powerful and important content to educate yourself and those around you about the structural and systemic racism that permeates all aspects of our societies.

NEW ERA OF PUBLIC SAFETY TOOLKIT
The result of a task force set up by President Obama after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, this toolkit focuses on specific policy change and actions for a more fair and safe policing.

GARE RACIAL EQUITY TOOLKIT
This toolkit is intended for staff who work in government, elected officials, and community groups who work with the government. There are many city specific toolkits out there, which you can search for online to see specific kits to your region.

CAMPAIGN ZERO TRACKER
Use this tool to track legislation by US state, find representatives to email, research data and reports, also provides downloadable graphics to share and amplify specific actions.

EUROPEAN COALITION FOR CITIES AGAINST RACISM
This series of toolkits is available in 6 languages: German, English, Spanish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian and Swedish.

NAPPY & HUMAAANS
If you are creating a campaign, you need images. Find free high res stock photos of Black and Brown people at Nappy and customizable open source illustrations of humans at Humaaans. If you’re looking for a 3D model, check out this Characters of Color series for games and film.

RACE FORWARD KITS
Race Forward focuses on impact and systems change, and it offers many free toolkits from impact assessments, to restaurant workers, as well as online training with sliding scale prices.

COLOR OF CHANGE CAMPAIGN KIT
This is a resource of ongoing campaigns, and how-to resource for creating your own, curated by colorofchange.org.

BRAVE ABOUT RACE
Here is a series of action guides for parents in raising racially literate kids.

MANDATORY SENTENCING TOOLKITS
These are tools to support and take action on reforming the justice system (watch the 13th on Netflix for more on why this is critical).

ORGANIZATIONAL RACE EQUITY TOOLKIT
This is a toolkit to build robust non-performative policies and processes for equity in organizations and corporations from JustLead Washington. Samples of org mission statements are here from Durham County, and if those seem too diplomatic, check out Ben & Jerry’s.

ASIAN AMERICAN RACIAL JUSTICE TOOLKIT
Series of x15 small group training workshops with step by step plans.

NATIVE LAND
Native Land is an interactive map and accompanying educator’s guide on tracing the roots of colonialism, First Nations and Indigenous land acknowledgment, treaties and territories across the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and continually adding more.

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RESOURCES

10 STEPS TO NON-OPTICAL ALLYSHIP
Created by Mireille Cassandra Harper as a starter kit to go beyond posting and likes.

SUMMER SKOOL
@ckyourprivilege is offering a 12 week summer school via Instagram live with sessions every day at 1pm pst, archived on IGTV.

BLACK LIVES MATTER CARRD
Carrd is a simple one-page site that many people are using to group information together in easily clickable format. There are many out there; this one includes maps of the protests, resources for protestors and petitions and is a good starting point.

BLACK LIVES MATTER CARRD CANADA
Canada shares the longest undefended border in the world with the United States, and along with it, systemic inequities and a shared history of colonization and oppression. Here are some resources that are specific to the Canadian context, including some mental health links.

75 THINGS WHITE PEOPLE CAN DO FOR RACIAL JUSTICE
Organizations to donate to, actions to take, things to read — there is something for everyone on this long list.

DIVEST
Climate change disproportionately and negatively affects POC communities around the world. Divest from institutions that uphold the fossil fuel industry, and use this financial institution report as a start to see where your bank stands, let them know where you stand, and swap where you keep your money.

MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLNESS RESOURCES FOR STUDENTS OF COLOR
Since “recent research has found major disparities in mental health treatment for students across races and ethnic backgrounds,” this resource guide provides a directory of mental health resources for students of color.

LOVELAND THERAPY FUND
Mental health resources for Black women and girls across the United States, with financial assistance available supported through Rachel Cargle’s Loveland partnerships. Apply for mental health support, or donate to the foundation. Also check out this mental health context doc and resource list from Sunshine Health, this guide on traumatization from watching films, and this list of mental health resources.

RACHEL CARGLE'S LIST
From a 30 day free email course, to articles to read, books, templates, Rachel Cargle’s extensive list of resources offers comprehensive and varied ways to upskill and act from template letters to employers and academic institutions, lectures, mental health resources and her Tedx Talk.

INTERACTION INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
Group and organizational training and workshops for social change within organizations, as well as facilitation training.

HOW TO TALK TO YOUR FAMILY ABOUT RACISM
Written by Rachel Cargle, common questions that may come up around the dinner table and how to respond and facilitate conversation.

BLACK TO THE FUTURE
The Black Futures Lab focuses on public policy and voting rights and is taking applications for their leadership training fellowship in progressive race-forward policy governance.

BAIL FUNDS & PETITIONS
One of the many masterlists of bail relief funds, petitions, and other resources for supporting community efforts. On the same topic, divest from companies that profit off prison labour.

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UNSCHOOLERS WITH EQUITY RELATED INITIATIVES

IF YOU ARE NOT ON THIS LIST AND HAVE A PROJECT YOU WANT TO SHARE, GET IN TOUCH AND LET US KNOW!

SAFE JOHNSON CITY, TN
UnSchool editor, Jamie Ferrell, has organized a campaign to create SAFE (Supporting Acceptance For Everyone) local business resources in her own community.

VANESSA FALOYE
Vanessa is a social justice educator who joined us as a facilitator on on our Cape Town Fellowship and Portugal Educator training. She offers group and organizational training for anti-oppression educational programs.

THE SCHOOL OF PRESSURE
Wisaal Abrahams joined us a facilitator on our Cape Town Fellowship where she lives, and she offers educational workshops on dismantling systems of oppression to academic institutions, corporations and groups.

ROOT CAUSE RESEARCH CENTER
San Fran Fellowship alumni Jessica Bellamy is an information designer and community organizer at this participatory and community based research organization addressing systemic oppression.

CODE TENDERLOIN
Founded by the “Mayor of the Tenderloin” district of San Fran, Del Seymour leads tours around the area and provides free programs for job readiness and coding in the Bay area. Del lead us through the Tenderloin on our San Fran Fellowship.

CREATIVE REACTION LAB
Workshops and programs for youth and educators for racial equity and civic leadership design, founded by Antionette Carroll. Antionette joined us as a mentor during the San Fran UnSchool Fellowship.

ELIMIN8HATE
San Fran Fellowship alumni Ellen Moon’s project for reporting and acting on incidents of anti-Asian racism, hate and violence, mental health resources and community created PSA videos.

QUIRKY30
An NFP school in Cape Town tackling the up to 70% youth unemployment rate by teaching coding for the 4th industrial revolution. Founder Sihle Tshabalala joined us as a mentor during the Cape Town Fellowship.

HEAL THE HOOD
Founder Emile YX equips youth through hip hop culture, dance and entrepreneurship to gain the skills to navigate social systems. Emile joined us as a mentor during the Cape Town Fellowship.

MOKENA MAKEKA
Mokena is an architect (among other things) who designs building to effect social change, from police stations to conventions centers, and joined us an a mentor during Cape Town on the Fellowship.

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WATCH

Some of the movies and docs are available on subscription services, but if you have chosen to divest from them, or those services are not available in your region, PBS and the Criterion Collection have titles for free, as do libraries, some of which are also available for online streaming like at the New York Public Library. Some of the big movie companies are also making racial equity movies free to watch this month.

MOVIES & DOCS

• American Son (2019)

• See You Yesterday (2019)

• When They See Us (2019)

• Just Mercy (2019)

• The Hate You Give (2018)

• If Beale St Could Talk (2018)

• King in the Wilderness (2018)

• Dear White People (2017)

• Whose Streets? (2017)

• 13th (2016)

• I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

• Selma (2014)

• 16 Shots (2014)

• The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011)

• Malcolm X (1992)

• Mississippi Masala (1991)

• Do The Right Thing (1989)

ONLINE VIDEOS & TALKS

• Neil deGrasse Tyson on Being Black

• LeVar Burton on Being Pulled Over

• LeVar Burton: This is My Story Video Series on Being Black in America

• Racism - what will it take to end it? | Cynthia Silva Parker | TEDxSarasota (Systems of Racism)

• The Sky Didn't Fall: How I Learned to Call Out Racism | Susan Naimark | TEDxJamaicaPlain

• Implicit Bias - how it effects us and how we push through | Melanie Funchess | TEDxFlourCity

• Designing for a more equitable world | Antionette Carroll

• Justice by Design | Antionette Carroll | TEDxHerndon

• My Transformational Journey | Del Seymour | TEDxMoreauCatholicHS

• NPR: So many great podcasts including Code Switch, Invisibilia, and Hidden Brain

• Today Explained: a quick 20min overview updated every day from Vox to explain what just happened, and what does it mean

• Revisionist History (Malcolm Gladwell) Podcast on Black education for Black children and why this is critical

• Resmaa Menakem (therapist and trauma specialist) on the physical impacts of intergenerational trauma

• TEDTalk's playlist about racism in the United States

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READ

A quick internet search will find many lists of books to read. Bookshop will find and connect you to local independent bookstores so you can divest your retail dollars from Amazon (read about why VP Tim Bray quit over the '“vein of toxicity” that led to leaving his $1million/yr job).

• How To Be An Antiracist (Ibram X. Kendi)

• The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander)

• This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Cherrie Moraga)

• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Robin DiAngelo, Ph.D.)

• I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness (Austin Channing Brown)

• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (Richard Rothstein)

• 'White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide' (Carol Anderson, Ph.D.)

• Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America (Jennifer Harvey, Ph.D.)

• More titles at DiverseBooks.org, along with links to black owned bookstores, articles, and further resources.

• A curated list from editor and writer Dianca London Potts

• A curated list from Rachel Cargle

• A curated list for kids from the NYT by age bracket from 0-12. There are many other lists of books for kids, which you can search online for.

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FOLLOW

A handful of hashtags and accounts to follow, learn, listen, amplify and expand. There are thousands of industry and city/country specific accounts and tags to discover, from writers, designers, educators, outdoor recreation, sports, health, etc, etc.

#blacklivesmatter
#diversifyyourfeed
#melanated
#amplifymelanatedvoices
#amplifymelanatedvoiceschallenge
#saytheirnames
#blackvoices
#blackleaders

Some examples of hashtag impact here, here and here, along with a short article on the pros and cons (TLDR: good start, but don’t stop there).

@blacklivesmatter
@rachelcargle
@laylafsaad
@yourrightscamp
@ibramxk
@aclu_nationwide
@goodgoodgood
@ethelsclub
@crxlab
@speakoutspeakers
@blackfutureslab
@naacp_ldf

25 more accounts to check out

A year of Activating Change

It’s Week 52, which means we have officially spent an entire year writing and sharing new insights and ideas about how to make a positive impact on the world around us! What a year it has been — from hosting a Fellowship in Malaysia, to collaborating with the UNEP in creating our Anatomy of Action campaign, through to this moment in time, in which we’re hunkering down and figuring out new ways to support and activate positive change in the midst of a global pandemic. So this week we decided to put together a list of highlights of all the cool, creative changemaking things that we’ve talked about and experienced in the last year to get us all motivated for another 52 weeks of making positive world-changing change!

Week 1: One Person Can’t Save the World, But Everyone Can Change It

Global Climate Strike 09-20-2019 (photo by Markus Spiske via Unsplash.com)

In this inaugural article that launched the UnSchool Journal, our founder Leyla Acaroglu lays the groundwork for how we can start seeing the world’s problems as opportunities to activate our agency and make positive change — because intentionally or not, all of our actions already are changing the world around us: The power to make change lies in our personal ability to see our own agency and opportunity for for creative leadership and to then make intentional choices about how we will activate the influence we organically have on the world around us, while working on enhancing this to a point where we can actively make more positive systems change.  Read on >

Week 11: Yes, Recycling Is Broken

Photo: Vivianne Lemay via Unsplash.com

With plastic pollution totally out of control and systems in chaos following China’s decision to stop processing a large portion of the world’s recycling, we unmasked the harsh reality that recycling is a placebo that justifies and perpetuates waste: Recycling is a lovely idea when it works; in fact it's a fundamental part of the circular economy, after, of course, sharing services, remanufacturing and repair. But like any system that displaces the responsibility somewhere out of sight, the externalities come back around to bite us all in the ass eventually. Ocean plastic waste is just one of the massive unintended consequences of relying on a quick fix, which then, in turn, reinforces the problem you are trying to solve. Systems thinking 101: the easy way out often leads back in, and there are often no quick fixes to complex problems. Recycling as a solution has reinforced the problem, and now we are dealing with a ‘frankenproblem’. Read it >

Week 14: Systems Thinking 101

Creative problems solving requires a systems mindset, and that’s why systems thinking is one of the core pillars of the UnSchool’s core pillars. In this article, we dive into the foundations of systems thinking and share practical knowledge to help level up your systems mindset: A concept stuck in theory does little for the greater good. Understanding that everything is interconnected and being able to apply this knowledge as a tool for effecting change are two different things, and what’s most important is the practical experience plus the applied tools to turn theories into action. To move from ideas in the brain to practice in the real world, it helps to be equipped with the distilled and applicable knowledge about which tools can be used and how to apply these in ways that achieve the desired outcome — which in our case is always positive social & environmental change. Read it >

Week 18: Introducing our UNEP Collaboration: The Anatomy of Action

We were honored to collaborate with the United Nations Environmental Programme to create a project with the intention of activating sustainable living and lifestyles by 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. We launched the Anatomy of Action 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 behavior norms that encourage positive shifts within the economy: 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! Read it >

Week 28: The UnSchool Kuching Fellowship Recap

UnSchool Fellowships are nothing short of amazing, as we take a small group of creative changemakers on a weeklong, immersive adventure into activating positive change via systems thinking, sustainability, and design…as well as feast on exquisite local vegetarian cuisine, dive deep into our personal potential, and make lifelong friends. The Kuching Fellowship was the 10th (!) UnSchool Fellowship; it took place on the island of Borneo (Malaysia) in November, 2019. The Kuching cohort included seventeen fellows from nine different countries, and our Fellowship blog shares a day-by-day look at the adventures. Read it >

Week 41: Sneak Peek at the NEW Design Systems Change Handbook by Leyla

Leyla released her fifth handbook in her series on making change! Titled Design Systems Change, it’s packed with new insights and ideas on how to expand your sphere of influence and contribute to the transition to a circular, regenerative future. It’s also a workbook, complete with interactive reflections and actions to help expand your capacity to make change. This article includes a sneak peek at the introduction and first section on design: Just as it can accidentally make a mess, design can also be a catalyst for positive and significant change. This is because, at its core, design is about creative problem solving and forming something new that works better than the past version.  Read it >

Week 47: #StayPositive Brain-Boosting 30-Day Challenge

On April 1st, 2020, smack in the middle of COVID-19’s world takeover, we started our 30-Day Brain-Boosting Challenge to help get people motivated to stay positive, make change and develop their agency to get cool shit done for a positive, regenerative and sustainable future. And good news: you can still sign up! This article shares more details on how this challenge unfolds and helps you level up your changemaking abilities: Read it >

(BONUS COVID-related content: in Week 45, we took a look at how social distancing is doing some good for the planet!)

Week 49: Get More Vegetables in Your Life with our NEW Hero Veg Cookbook!

Join us in celebrating the hidden heroes of our lives, vegetables (yep!), in this fun journal article that announces the release of Leyla Acaroglu + Emma Segal’s co-authored plant-based cookbook. Hand illustrated by Emma and filled with recipes from their childhood and current cooking adventures, along with things Leyla has learnt on the CO Project Farm and collaborations from the kitchen, this cookbook guides you in the art of intuitive cooking based on a veg-centric philosophy. And hey, there’s even some recipes for you to try in a special preview of the book ;) Read it >

Thanks for taking a trip down memory lane with us in this year in review! We also had loads of amazing inspiring alumni profile spotlights; a 5-year birthday celebration and thoughts on 5 more years; thought-provoking reflections on greenwashing, plastic bans, and other changemaking topics; an exploration of our digital footprint that includes a full audit report; zero waste party hacks and lots, lots more!

What should we write about this year?

Leave us a comment and let us know what kind of content you’d like to see next!

Perspectives on Earth Day 50

By Leyla Acaroglu, originally published here

Last week, on Wednesday, April 22, it was the 50th celebration of Earth Day, a single day marked in the 365/6 days in a human-described calendar year that is dedicated to remembering or celebrating that we all need the Earth to survive. In my opinion, that should be inverted, and every day should be Earth Day, given we all live here, on the only known life-sustaining planet in the universe — yet we have, in the last 50 years, managed to make a complete mess of things. 

In 1968, astronauts headed toward the moon snapped a photo of the Earth from space, and this was beamed back to the millions of humans watching the Apollo 8 mission. For the first time in the history of humanity, we saw our home in all its fragile beauty from space, rising above the infinite black of the universe, and it changed the way the world saw our home, planet Earth. The image, etched into the psyche of all who have come since, is called Earthrise, and it helped spur on the burgeoning environmental movement. Maj. Gen. William A. Anders, the astronaut who took the photo, said that it changed the world: "We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." 

Earthrise Photo: NASA taken by Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders on December 24, 1968, at mission time 075:49:07

In the preceding years, the EPA was set up and the Clean Air Act passed in the USA. There were huge protests and some changes, there were clean ups and crack downs. But there was never a change in the way we do things, really. 

Now we have high definition, full color detailed satellite photos of every inch of our Earth — we can zoom in to see ice caps melting and rainforests on fire (remember when in 2019 it was a thing in Malaysia and Brazil to intentionally burn down rainforests to create farmland? Can you recall the devastating fires that ravaged Australia?). We know what we have, what we had, what we are losing...but do we know the cost? Back in the 1970s, “Americans had become increasingly aware that the same industrialization that had made the country wealthy was having an impact on the environment and their own health,” according to a reflection published in Scientific America this week. The article goes on to show all the exponentially growing graphs of ecological decay that have occurred since that day 50 years ago, when hundreds of thousands of Americans marched for planet protection, many of them now probably reaping the benefits of the industries that have gone on to pollute indiscriminately. This, of course, is not new to Earth System Scientists, as it was in the early 2000s when they first published these profound “Great Acceleration” graphs. They show the recurring hockey stick curves skyrocketing up into uncharted territories across many human socio-cultural changes and natural system impacts, all starting in 1950. 

The Great Acceleration Graphs, 2004, International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, Image Source

“It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In a single lifetime humanity has become a planetary-scale geological force,” — Professor Will Steffen, International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

The last 70 years have seen some incredible changes to our societies, culture, technology and all the planetary systems. We now live in a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene, where every centimeter of this planet has been changed by humans in some way. For the last 10,000 years, we have lived in the climate-stable Holocene period, allowing our species to grow ourselves, crops and our seemingly endless desire for natural systems destruction. Since the 1950s, however, we have entered into the Anthropoecene’s man-made era of ecological decay, and we are suffering the costs on many fronts. 

Nature is magic, yet we do unimaginable things to it for our own collective benefits, irrespective of all the other systems and species that contribute to the life-giving interplay that makes life on Earth possible. 

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

We don’t have direct evidence that climate change is influencing the spread of COVID-19, but we do know that climate change alters how we relate to other species on Earth and that matters to our health and our risk for infections. As the planet heats up, animals big and small, on land and in the sea, are headed to the poles to get out of the heat. That means animals are coming into contact with other animals they normally wouldn’t, and that creates an opportunity for pathogens to get into new hosts. — Dr. Aaron Bernstein, interim director of Harvard University’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Source

Earth Day reminds some people —  but let's be honest, not that many, and probably not the ones who are at the forefront of the damage to begin with — that we have a debt to the damage we have done. But in the last 50 years of “celebrating” it, we have done far more destruction than protection. Locking nature up in parks, reserves and protected spaces does nothing to realign our species with the harsh and critical reality that without nature, we are nothing — without the complex interplay between all the systems around us, we have no food, no fresh water, no atmosphere, no oxygen, no culture, no stable operating environment for our species to inhabit. We are nature, we are the systems that we destroy, and as long as we only prioritize a single day to blink at this reality, we will continue to allow the decay of the most beautiful planet in the universe. 

As long as you live here, remember: every day is Earth Day. 

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Believe it or not, individual actions do have impacts. I have done several projects and initiatives that help us all take action, own the agency that we have in this system and make positive change:

• Anatomy of Action, a sustainable lifestyle initiative we collaborated with the UN to create 

• The Post Disposable Activation Kit 

• The Circular Classroom, free educational toolkit on sustainability  

• Superpower activation kit 

• 30-day brain activating #staypositive challenge 

• The Hero Veg Cookbook

Activating Change for the Circular Economy

By Leyla Acaroglu

ACTIVATING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Every time we purchase something, we are essentially voting for the kinds of things we want in the world. It’s through our purchase preferences, as individuals, as governments and as organizations, that we can encourage or discourage industries, services and products based on what we want to see continue. This is where there is great opportunity for change, as many of the products and services that fill our economy today have huge impacts on the planet, offer up many inequities along the supply chain and are designed to break.

We already have so much of the knowledge on what needs to be done to change this status quo. Scientists in the fields of life cycle assessment, environmental impact assessment, systems dynamics and consequential impact assessment have been knowledge building for years, contributing to the rising shift toward a circular economy movement. A change in the way we design and deliver everything.

Thanks to all this work, we now have a much stronger understanding of the potential negative outcomes of our actions before we even take them, and we can avoid unintended consequences if we approach problem solving through systems and life cycle thinking.

Gaining this foresight allows us to integrate sustainability into design products and across business models, policies and services. What we need right now is the normalization and integration of these approaches into the things that make up our economy. We have an incredible opportunity right now to catalyze this change, and this requires pioneering leadership from governments and CEOs, as well as the creative thinkers who can help shift the status quo.

We can speed up the change by offering up new ideas, incentivizing producers to approach product design differently and encouraging policymakers to change the dominant linear system. We can amplify sustainable design approaches and life cycle assessment in order to help green supply chains and find unique ways of shifting the status quo on hyper-consumerism through the implementation of product service system models.

Small choices, replicated many times, contribute to big impacts. This applies to all of our choices. Our world is made up of individuals operating as a collective whole. Through systems thinking, we understand the macro and the micro, the parts and the wholes. This thinking helps us gain a deeper understanding of our impacts and the power of influence that we all possess.

Many of the ecological impacts, the externalities that we see in the economy, have come about as a result of supply chain relationships — not just the end of life destination where things end up. Yet, much of our investment and activation is around waste management, rather than on designing out waste from the start.

Recently I released a new handbook called Design Systems Change where I lay out the opportunities for activating our own agency to effect positive change. In the past I have written Circular Systems Design and the Disruptive Design Method Handbooks, all designed to support people in the transition to a circular, regenerative and sustainable economy by design. In thinking deeply about these issues for many years, I have come up with a new proposition, one where the interaction of new value propositions is prioritized in the decision making process.

Integrating value into the circular economy From the Design Systems Change Handbook

Designing Change

We should (and can) be designing products, services and systems that embed the avoidance of waste through their design, instead of designing things with no regard for their consequences and then trying to design services to deal with the waste and impacts they’ll cause.

We need to move rapidly to a post disposable society. The circular economy is helping to make this happen, influencing shifts in the finance sector and in the design of products and services we all rely on. Big players in industry and government are pioneering product-system services that will help to move us away from single-use products and systems to closed loop ones.

I hope and predict that within 5 years, the pioneering companies at the forefront of this shift will have transitioned away from single-use products toward more integrated closed-loop systems that maintain and increase value throughout the system and are designed to dramatically reduce the environmental and social burden that disposability results in.

Not only is this good for the planet, but also it makes good business sense. In an increasingly resource-constrained environment, we have to find ways of reducing supply chain costs, and there are many creative ways to do this while benefiting the planet. 

The opportunities are on the horizon — we just need more activated minds willing to pioneer capturing them. In order to support people in pioneering this transition, I developed the Disruptive Design Method as a scaffolding support tool that guides decision makers through the process of understanding a complex problem, exploring the systems dynamics and then building creative interventions to design positive change.

Embracing Change

Think for a moment of all the ways change occurs in our day-to-day lives. We change our addresses, our music tastes, locations, underwear, ideas, partners, schools, nationalities, cars, governments, jobs, clothes, perspectives, money, the subject... and our minds. We change and reinvent ourselves constantly. We change the world around us and ultimately, we change the planet through the things that we choose to do, and perhaps more importantly, the things that we choose not to do. 

Many of these changes are brought about somewhat organically, even unconsciously, with life events and individual circumstances dictating many of the changes that we make. This approach is no longer enough. 

Conscious observers everywhere are noticing that an individualistic approach to change has dangerous consequences. We see the evidence of this culminating in the major issues at the forefront of global conversations: climate change, renewable energy, refugee crises, to name just a few. 

So how do you go about it when you want to intentionally, proactively affect change? How does that differ from our natural evolution… and where do you even begin in a change making practice? 

Change is everywhere - and always has been

In 500 BC, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus proposed that “the only constant in life is change,” that “stability is an illusion,” and, in his opinion, “there is a constant universal flux.” If, as Heraclitus says, change is constant, then it is also chaotic – “an inescapable paradox, yet a beautiful necessity, critical to all life.”  

We are all changing constantly, and the world is changing around, and with, us. The word change means to ‘make’ or to ‘become different,’ no matter if we’re talking about objects, people, or the natural world. Change encompasses all these, although they develop at varying speeds, be it constant, progressive, static, fast or slow.  

Failure Happens… and It’s a Good Thing!  

At the UnSchool, we approach making change as a state of being. We believe that being change-centric is a way of defining an agenda, the objective, and outcome to effect positive social change in and through the things that we do. 

This change-centric approach is a cultivated one, in which you have to work at wanting to make change. It’s not always easy; making change can definitely hurt sometimes and often requires some measure of failure along the way. How would we have evolved as a species, had we not experienced millions of years of failure and accidents? 

Failing hard and fast early on creates better, stronger results later. In saying this, it should also be noted that change is also one of the easiest things to make happen... if you have the right tools and resources, which you will receive when you engage in our classes, programs and content.  

Systems at Play in Change Making 

Everything is interconnected, so if we want to make change, we have to know how to understand those dynamics as a whole system and as parts of a whole system. When we look at the world through a change-centric lens, we first need to figure out if it’s structural or individual – is it personal or social forces that influence change? 

Social practice theory suggests that our agency for change lies in the influencers of social conditions. Anthony Giddens, one of the most prominent modern sociologists, proposed the theory of structuration. This theory explores the duality of structure where we continually make, and remake, ‘normal society’ through our routine actions and practices. 

Giddens suggests that social constructs influence the individual to a degree that choice is empowered by the practice, rather than the individual. Basically, we are influenced by social forces as well as personal choice-making. Behaviors are habits perpetuated through routine, which are either decided on consciously, or are subtly influenced by society at large. 

It boils down to this: in order to make change, one needs to consider the personal, social, and political systems at play and seek to intervene at different points.  

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JUNE 1ST-30TH, 2020

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#StayPositive: Social Distancing is Doing Some Good for the Planet!

How’s everyone holding up out there? No doubt with less physical things to do, and all that time saved from not being able to travel anywhere (not even to work!), you’ve likely seen the reports coming out about how social distancing is impacting the world in some surprisingly positive ways. From satellite images showing pollution drops over China and Italy, to clearer water running through the Venice Canal (and dolphins swimming through, albeit wishful thinking), it’s easy to see that limiting our non-essential activities, adopting work-from-home habits, and staying home more is giving our shared home, planet Earth, a much-needed breather as well.

So much so that in this article about plummeting emission and air pollution rates, scientists say that this year “by May, when CO2 emissions are at their peak thanks to the decomposition of leaves, the levels recorded might be the lowest since the financial crisis over a decade ago.” To be honest, we were also just fascinated by the contribution that decaying leaves have to CO2 emissions!

Additionally, NASA has released images showing the significant drop in air pollution above countries that have quarantines from COVID-19. 

Photo credit: NASA

Rebound effects

All of this has comes, though, with a secondary warning. When we do resume normal activities and people start to venture back out all over the world en mass, the carbon emissions and pollution levels could rise back up rapidly. This is not just because of the increase in transportation, but also because of a compensating attempt to ramp-up production and the desire to get back to “normal”, along with stimulus spending intended to jump-start the economy (which, as a reminder, is measured in GDP, a systems failure, because it doesn’t account for any impacts against Earth’s natural resources!). In fact, following the closure of many Chinese factories, and the recent reopening, air pollution levels are already on the rise again in China. This also matters a lot right now, as some scientists have said that air pollution could be one of the triggers for making the coronavirus worse.

Transport options matter when it comes to climate change

So, what if we start making the case now for actually continuing some of these social distancing practices that we expeditiously adopted during the past month? No, we’re not suggesting continuing on with full lock-down; freedom is vital — but what about changing the way we commute to work or run our businesses?

Individual Actions

There is an enormous opportunity for companies to widely adopt more work-from-home or flexible travel policies following this pandemic — and for individuals to advocate for it too. Take the fact that for most Americans, their transport biggest emissions impact is in their daily drive to work. Even if companies don’t go totally remote, it could make a substantial difference to implement more remote work policies and cut down on flights for meetings, conferences, trainings, etc. 

Pulling out some of the actions we’re all learning to adjust to right now may offer us some great new sustainable lifestyle and workplace options after we get through this chaos. 

Perhaps one of the most powerful amplification points here is in the illumination that yes, individual actions do collectively make a difference. If it’s every person overbuying loo roll, or baby carrots for that matter, everything we each do attributes to a bigger system wide impact. To be clear, this isn’t a scapegoat attempt to place the responsibility of creating a sustainable future solely on individuals (Leyla writes about this really well in her new handbook Design Systems Change), but more so encouragement to believe in the power of individual agency as it pertains to everyday actions. Even though it may seem that we currently have no control over the outcomes in relation to this pandemic, a quick mindset shift can showcase exactly how much control we do have over environmental impacts through the actions we do or do not take on a daily basis. This was the basis for our collaboration with the UNEP, the Anatomy of Action, in which we assessed the power lifestyle swaps across food, stuff, movement, money, and fun — all of which are being significantly disrupted by the current coronavirus outbreak.

Rethinking habits

In recent weeks and even days, you’ve likely had to rethink your daily eating habits as restaurants have shut down and many panicked shoppers cleared shelves of food. You have had to change the way you communicate with loved ones and colleagues. We’ve seen people rethink how to have fun and be social, how to care for others, with an uptick in spending time on personal hobbies and engaging in funny, creative video chats, dance parties, remote happy hours, yoga classes, and endless live streams on Instagram. Every area of our lives has experienced significant, rapid change — and we’re figuring out how to deal with that day by day. Imagine if we could do this for dealing with another existential threat — climate change! Or take this time to figure out the positive benefits that a slower world has on the systems that sustain us.

Discover more at online.unschools.co

So maybe, we can also take this rare pause from our usual busy hustle to take a long hard look at how out of alignment our current habits and global systems have been with the Earth’s systems that sustain us all. Instead of reacting to the next *insert catastrophic event here*, we can take a proactive approach to making the future work better for us all through shifts in our everyday habits.

One of the big things we always talk about at the UnSchool is that there is no failure — only opportunities to gain new knowledge that informs our actions for the future. That new knowledge is here, and it’s offering us the right set of circumstances to amplify our collective superpowers through the unstoppable force of individuals activating their agency.

What habits can you commit to continuing to help build a sustainable, regenerative future,  once “normal” life resumes?

Sneak Peek at the NEW Design Systems Change Handbook by Leyla Acaroglu

Have you read any of our handbooks on making change? Leyla has written one each year since she started the UnSchool in 2014. The series titles include Make Change: A Handbook for Creative Rebels and Change Agents, Tips & Tricks to Facilitating Change, Disruptive Design: A Method for Activating Positive Social Change by Design, Circular Systems Design: A Toolkit for the Circular Economy, and now the fifth one in the series, Design Systems Change: How to activate your career as a creative changemaker and help design a regenerative, circular future.

The new handbook will be released on March 16, 2020 and includes an in-depth exploration of agency-building tools for activating a career of creative changemaking. Packed with new insights and ideas on how to expand your sphere of influence and contribute to the transition to a circular, regenerative future, this handbook is also a workbook, complete with interactive reflections and actions to help expand your capacity to make change. 

The new Design Systems Change Handbook is out in March!

In the next few journal articles, we will share excerpts from the upcoming handbook from each of the three main sections (Design, Systems and Change), along with an extensive introduction to Taking Action.

This week, we dive into the introductory section on how to activate your agency by sharing with you one of our favorite parts. If you want to be one of the first to read the full 190+ pages, then you can pre-order it now, and it will be sent to your inbox in a digital format as soon as it's launched on March 16th! 

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Expert from, Design Systems Change, By Leyla Acaroglu

Introduction 

Design is a powerful social influencer that shapes and scripts our experience of the world; we now live in a time where each and every day we interact with a world entirely designed by humans, for humans. Scientists now argue that we have entered into a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene. One of the main drivers of this shift to a world where humans influence every other living thing on the planet is design — the design of technology, of consumer goods, of scientific discoveries, of our lives. Design is everywhere.  

The broader concept of design encompasses our planning and intent to dictate and control the way the world works. Humans have been doing this now for eons, but before the Industrial Revolution, where we unlocked the power of fossil fuels, change was confined to the slower changes that nature does organically. 

For example, the plants we eat today were adapted each generation by farmers selecting the best-performing ones and changing the way they bear fruit for us; these changes were painstakingly slow. But now we have accelerated the rate of change thanks to technological development, and in doing so, we have greatly accelerated the changes to the systems that sustain life on Earth. We have designed a world exclusively for human needs, and unless we design it better so that we work within the systems that nature provides all that we need to live, then we will end up designing ourselves out of here! 

Just as it can accidentally make a mess, design can also be a catalyst for positive and significant change. This is because, at its core, design is about creative problem solving and forming something new that works better than the past version. 

Currently, so much of what is created is done so without the understanding of the impacts or the intent to create outcomes that are mutually positive for us and the planet. As a result, we end up living with impacts in which the externalities are ignored and the consequences are often unintended, but nonetheless momentous. So much of what we do in the economy is not accounted for in any way. These are known as externalities, and we often have no idea of how things like pollution are embedded in anything, like a pair of socks or what social costs were paid by the farmers who helped get us our morning coffee. Giant problematic systems like waste and pollution are the products of poorly-designed human systems. 

There is no waste in nature; instead, the waste product from one system is the food and fuel for another. Everything is interconnected and optimized to thrive. 

It’s obvious to most that we live in a complex and chaotic world with constant technological and social changes. Humans have done an incredible job at creating an array of design and technology solutions to work around the chaos, make our lives more comfortable, increase convenience and ease of living and prolong our lives. Yet many of these designed solutions come with entangled, complicated consequences, most of which are invisible to the human mind. 

We consume things ignorant of the impacts their creation causes and are selectively blind to the impacts their subsequent waste will create. Design helps to sell us things that reinforce many of the problems that currently exist. We have created a linear production system with cheap efficient manufacturing where waste is a normal part of our lives now. This is what we need to redesign —  the way we meet our needs so that we get beautiful, elegant solutions that are regenerative rather than destructive. We need to design out waste as we know it.  

Collectively, we also rely on a linear thought process that fits within a linear world. This system of simplification allows for exploitation as the fundamental components of a successful economy. This is increasingly creating alarming and catastrophic outcomes, allowing us to see how we have designed ourselves into the current status quo, and thus providing a pathway for us to design ourselves out. Design can transcend linear function and provide an interwoven systems approach fundamental to inspiring and enacting change.  

Paradoxical to the environmental crises at hand, we live in one of the safest times in all of human history. By many metrics, we are better off as a species now than any generation before us, due to food security, global diplomacy, advances in medicine, mass agriculture and efforts to alleviate poverty. 

Yet despite this incredible progress, it comes at a significant cost to the future, as many people now maintain a stressed-out, negative perspective of the world, much of which the media reinforces that society and the planet as a whole are destined for a bleak future. Indeed, our fears will become a reflection of what we do today unless we all work to design a different trajectory. 

Ask yourself —  if not you, then who? 

The future is undefined; it is made up of all our actions today. 

And, yes, there are many complex problems at play in the world around us. And, yes, all of these complex problems need creative solutions from skilled people. And, yes, you are one of these people. 

Why is it that some will take action, contribute to activating change, question the status quo, be willing to be different and rebel against the things that they know to be wrong, and others will not? Why do some humans passively accept what is and blame others for the things they don’t like? 

There are many possible answers to these rhetorical questions. One is the cycle of inaction, whereby apathy leads to inaction. But courage, convocation, compassion, curiosity and sheer tenacity are some skills that we can all foster to overcome the apathy and activate our agency to participate in creating a future that overcomes the challenges of the past and ensure that the solutions we put in place today are not the problems of tomorrow. 

The Cycle of Inaction

From the climate catastrophe to homelessness, the plastic waste crisis, the opioid epidemic, the Sixth Great Extinction, deforestation, childhood obesity, and the Anthropocene, there are many significant challenges awaiting creative minds to contribute to changing them. We can live in a post-disposable world if we design out waste; we can break the cycle of addiction by creating social systems that enable support. Plastic can play a part in our lives and not pollute the planetary systems if we design higher value products and create closed-loop systems to capture them. These are endless systems change solutions just waiting to be uncovered and emerge new ideas. 

The reality and the magnitude of the problems at play can be overwhelming, especially to a mind unequipped with the tools for understanding the systems that create and sustain the problems to begin with. We live in a time of great technological change, where we can get information instantaneously and where that information can be tailored to us very specifically, playing on our fears, convincing us to consume, making it hard to escape the problem cycle. 

With all of these issues prominently on display through social and traditional media, it’s easy to get sucked into a negativity bias that disables our ability to act. We know that negative news sells and that pessimistic viewpoints drum up sensational headlines that get heartbeats pounding, fear flowing and people feeling paralyzed. 

With our emotional state being constantly milked day-in-day-out,  it’s no wonder human perception can quickly become filled with negativity, pessimism and inaction. 

This state of mind can easily reinforce apathy into inaction, which, in turn, reinforces the problems at play, as when people opt to not take part in changing the systems — this just enables the status quo to persist. We need to find ways of busting through the feedback loop of inaction! 

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Next week, we will share an excerpt from the Design section, so stay tuned!

This is really juicy brain food!

Great News On the Transition to Sustainability!

A massive shift is underway toward a sustainable, regenerative and circular future! To showcase how we’re in the midst of this exciting shift, we have compiled some of the recent changes we see as further demonstrating that the linear economy is on its way out, and a circular future is coming soon.

There is so much opportunity in reconfiguring the economy to evolve and solve some of our biggest threats, from ocean plastic waste to climate change. If you are inspired by these stories, then get yourself ready to take part in this great shift by joining us at the UnSchool and leveling up your changemaking skills!

IKEA and Microsoft go Carbon Positive

Two of the world’s biggest companies commit to not only be carbon neutral, but also take it a step farther to be carbon positive. Microsoft has announced they will ‘pay back’ all the carbon it has ever released into the atmosphere, and IKEA has developed a plan to make all their designs circular by 2030.

These climate carbon-‘positive’ initiatives mean that they plan, along with offset carbon credits, to transition from coal and oil sources, make raw material swaps and implement other supply chain initiatives to reduce the amount of emissions put into the atmosphere to less than what they input.

Circular Delivery Systems

The circular economy in getting into mainstream action through the delivery system LOOP, an initiative by Unilever and TerraCycle offering a delivery system for household goods in purposely-made reusable containers in the Northeast of the United States and Paris. They are planning on expanding throughout the United States and into Canada, UK, Germany and Japan.

World’s biggest investment firm won’t invest in climate negative companies

BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, with $7.4 trillion in their portfolio. In a letter this week from CEO Larry Fink to shareholders and CEOs, BlackRock has announced an exit strategy from companies that are not doing something about climate change, among other sustainability initiatives.

With a huge impact on global industries, this move is a strong positive statement in what is traditionally a fairly conservative and profit-oriented industry, independent of social and environmental impact.

China to ban single use plastics

China is one of the biggest consumers in the world, and it made the announcement last week to ban non-biodegradable plastic and bags by 2022, which is a huge step toward tackling the ocean plastic waste crisis.

The Yangtze river running through China is a one of the main contributors to plastic leaking into the ocean, and this move should help alleviate at least some of the source issue.

There is still much work to do to move us globally to a post-disposable future; however, steps like this do help advance us forward.

Yangtze River

An article discussing these announcements in Wired Magazine raises a good provocation around greenwashing. The author says, “Most targets used by businesses are not linked to specific operations, such as a supply chain or purchased energy. This means that net zero targets may ignore large parts of an organisation that are deemed too much of a problem to change.”

The World Circular Gap Report released at Davos announced that the world is at present “8.6% Circular”, which could be taken as exciting progress or distressing slowness, depending on how you look at things. The report shows the actions that different countries are making in detail and is well worth the read.

We talk about change all the time here at the UnSchool. The world is constantly changing in all sorts of directions, and these kinds of movements help us set the course toward a more sustainable and regenerative future.

There is always more work to do, and we are focused on upskilling as many people as possible with the tools to keep the momentum going forward!

Apply now for a 2020 program to join our global community of creative changemakers and contribute to forward motion >

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.

Discover The Disruptive Design Method

By Leyla Acaroglu

The Disruptive Design Method (DDM) is a holistic approach to creative problem solving for complex issues. It combines sociological inquiry methods with systems and design thinking approaches. The Method involves a three-phase process of Mining, Landscaping, and Building, and together, these phases create a tactical approach to creative problem solving for positive impact outcomes. In this week’s journal article, I explain the what, why, and how of the DDM, along with ways it can help create non-conventional approaches to complex problems. 

The Disruptive Design Method 

Design is an incredibly powerful tool that changes the world. Everything around us has been constructed to meet the needs of our advanced human society, and in turn, our individual experiences of the world are influenced dramatically by the designed world we inhabit.  We are each citizen designers of the future through the actions we take every day, which is why I developed a systems-based creative intervention design method for exploring and actively participating in the design of a future that works better for us all.  

The three-part process of Mining, Landscaping and Building (MLB) is designed to offer a micro-to-macro-and-back-again perspective of the problem arena in which you wish to create positive change within. 

The three phases of the Disruptive Design Method: Mining, Landscaping and Building

Created as a way for creatives and non-creatives alike to develop the mental tools needed to activate positive change, the DDM approaches creative problem solving by mining through problems and employing a divergent array of research approaches, moving through to landscaping the systems at play and identifying the connections that reinforce the elements of the system, and then ideating opportunities for systems interventions that amplify positive impact by building new ideas that shift the status quo of the problem. This is then cycled through in an iterative way until the outcome is tangible and effective at altering the state of the issue at hand. As Buckminster Fuller teaches, often the smallest part of the system has the capacity to make the biggest change —  and that’s one of the fundamental approaches that the DDM enables: identify the part within the system that you have agency and ability to impact. 

The DDM is an iterative process

 Additionally, the DDM includes a 12-part knowledge set that, when explored as a whole, equips anyone with the thinking and doing tools to be a more aware and intentional agent for change. It also has the tools to cycle through the issues and seek out the non-obvious opportunities, designing divergent solutions that build on your unique individual sphere of influence.  

But perhaps most importantly,  instead of avoiding or ignoring problems, this method offers up tools for shifting perspectives that enable one to become more of a problem lover with the ability to dive right under the obvious parts of the issue at hand, avoid laying blame, and instead, identify and uncover the parts of the system that reinforce the issue. In a world where many people see and feel problematic impacts with intensity — the social, environmental, and political issues especially — and then become overwhelmed or disabled by the complexity, we see good-intentioned people disengage from taking action. Thus, I can not understate how powerful seeing problems through the lens of opportunity, optimism, and yes, even a bit of love can be for someone. I want to provide an agentizing effect, a set of tools that enable people to move from overwhelming problems to possible actions; after all,  the world is made up of the accumulation of individual actions of many, you and me included. 

The Origins of the DDM 

When I first started to develop the Disruptive Design Method, it was in part a reaction to the one-dimensional problem solving techniques that I had been taught through my years of traditional education. Back in 2014, as I was finishing my PhD and preparing to launch the UnSchool of Disruptive Design, I knew that there needed to be a scaffolding that would support all the content I wanted to fill this experimental knowledge lab with. Drawing on the years of work experience and research I had to date, I went about iteratively developing and refining the modules from 20+ down to 12 core components of the Disruptive Design Methodology set, a learning system that, once fully engaged with, fits together to create the DDM. 

The 12 core modals of the Disruptive Design Methodology

It’s a ‘scaffolding’ because it's not intended to be rigid and formulaic, but instead it is the support that one needs as they start to develop a more three-dimensional view of the world and adopt the skills of systems thinking, problem exploration, and creative intervention design. I personally use this approach in all the commissions and collaborations we do, like in designing learning systems for Finland and Thailand, and in creating sustainable living initiatives, like the Anatomy of Action with the UNEP.

I, along with my team, have taught the DDM and the core approaches of systems and life cycle thinking to thousands of people all over the world, from teenagers to CEOs, with hundreds of alumni completing our in-person programs and thousands enrolled in our online school. We have seen many different incarnations of the DDM and its tools in action throughout our five years of running the UnSchool and its various programs, and this February, we’re adding another option, a live online training course in the DDM. 

The world needs more pioneers of positively disruptive change —  people equipped with the thinking and doing skills that will enable them to understand and love complex systems and then be able to translate that into actual change. There are, of course, many tools and approaches for designing change, and the DDM is just one of a wide suite of tools out there. I am an appreciator of many of them, but for me, the reason why anyone should gain an overview of this approach is that it combines the three pillars of systems, sustainability, and design, of which I have not seen an approach yet to do the same. What this all boils down to is having a unique method on hand to positively intervene and disrupt the status quo of any problem arena to ensure that the outcome is more effective, equitable, circular and sustainable. That’s why we always offer equity access scholarships and ensure that people from all walks of life can gain access to these valuable perspective shifting tools. 

Exploring the 3-Parts of Disruptive Design Method

There are three distinct parts of the Disruptive Design Method — Mining, Landscaping, and Building (MLB) — each is enacted and cycled through in order to gain a granulated, refined outcome through iterative feedback loops.

The first part is Mining, where the mindset is one of curiosity and exploration. In this phase, we do deep participatory research, suspend the need to solve, avoid trying to impose order, and embrace the chaos of any complex system we are seeking to understand. The tools of this phase are: research, observation, exploration, curiosity, wonderment, participatory action, questioning, data collection, and insights. This can be described as diving under the iceberg and observing the divergent parts that enable us to understand a problem arena in more detail. 

The second stage is Landscaping. This is where we take all the parts that we uncovered during the Mining phase and start to piece them together to form a landscaped view through systems mapping and exploration. Landscaping is the mindset of connection, where you see the world as a giant jigsaw puzzle that you are putting back together and creating a different perspective that enables a bird’s eye view of the problem arena. Insights are gathered, and locations of where to intervene in the system to leverage change are identified. The tools for this phase are: systems mapping (cluster, interconnected circles, etc.), dynamic systems exploration, synthesis, emergence, identification, insight gathering, and intervention identification.

The third part of is Building. This is the creative ideation phase that allows for the development of divergent design ideas that build on potential intervention points to leverage change within the system. The goal is not to solve but to evolve the problem arena you are working within so that the status quo is shifted. Here we use a diversity of ideation and prototyping tools to move through a design process to get to the best-fit outcome for your intervention.

The key to this entire approach is iteration and ‘cycling through’ the stages to get to a refined and ‘best-fit’ outcome. Why do we do this? Because problems are complex, knowledge builds over time, and experience gives us the tools to make change that sticks and grows. This cycling through approach draws upon the Action Research Cycle to create an iterative approach to exploring, understanding, and evolving the problem arena.

The 12-Part Methodology Set

The three applied parts of the MLB Method are based on a more complex Methodology set. This set combines 12 divergent theory arenas to form the foundation of identifying, solving, and evolving complex problems, as well as helps develop a three-dimensional perspective of the way the world works. From cognitive sciences to gamification and systems interventions, the 12 units of the Disruptive Design Methodology are designed to fit together to form the foundations of a practice in creative changemaking. 

You can take the full program at your own pace via our online school here, or if you were to do a certification track, you would get access to the full 12 modules, plus loads of extra content on activating and facilitating change. For the live online program taught by me in February 2020, participants will be learning the core approaches and tools, as well as getting live feedback on the application of it in real time. This makes the program perfect for people with real world projects that they want to activate right now. 

The Foundation: Systems, Sustainability, and Design

The UnSchool is deeply rooted in a foundation of applied systems, sustainability, and design, forming three knowledge pillars that hold up all we do — including leveraging the Disruptive Design Method.  Whenever we teach a program, we always begin with systems thinking as the foundation, as it is one of the most powerful tools that we can use address complex problems. It enables any practitioner to see how everything is interconnected, and systems can be viewed from multiple perspectives, allowing a shift from rigid to flexible mindsets. We also engage with the principles of sustainability through each phase, which for us, means doing more with less, understanding how the planet works so that we can work within its means, and evolving from an extraction-based society to a circular and regenerative one. 

Through the Mining phase, systems boundaries are used to define the problem arenas that one wants to explore. Through systems mapping, research techniques, observation and reflection, all the parts that make up a system and their connections are explored through the landscaping phase, laying the groundwork for exposing unique places to intervene (which is often not where you would intuitively think, based on your starting knowledge in the problem arena).

From this, new knowledge is built from the Mining and Landscaping phases, which forms the foundation for the Building phase — rapidly designing divergent and creative ideas to intervening in the problem arena. Any problem from small, hyper-local concerns to massive global issues can be explored and evolved through this MLB Method. And, because it’s equally a thinking and doing practice, it can be adapted and evolved based on any problem. The core of the approach is always systems, sustainability, and design.

Activating change 

At the UnSchool, we approach making change as a state of being; we believe that being change-centric is a way of defining a life agenda, finding purpose, and setting the tone for how you live and contribute through your life and work. We all have the power to affect positive social and environmental change in and through everything we do, from the things we buy to the conversations we have and the kind of work we do. This change-centric approach is by all means a cultivated one in which you have to work at wanting to make change. Because truly,  it’s not always easy; in fact, trying to make change can definitely hurt sometimes — and frankly, it often requires some measure of failure along the way. How would we have evolved as a species had we not experienced millions of years of failure and accidents? Allowing the space for failing early on creates better, stronger results later. In saying this, it should also be noted that change is one of the easiest things to make happen... if you have the right tools and resources, which are built into the DDM. 

So, if you are keen to learn this, then join our live online Masterclass in the Disruptive Method with me this February >

What you will learn from taking a Disruptive Design Workshop 

LOVING THE PROBLEM

Many people avoid problems, which means that they never truly understand them. By learning to love problems and see them as opportunities in disguise, you will develop an open mind that thinks differently. This is all about being curious and trying to understand something before you attempt to solve it! The more curiosity you can foster, the more things you will uncover about the world around you. 

SEEING RELATIONSHIPS 

Everything is interconnected, and actions create reactions. Being able to see the relationships that make up cause and effect are part of any good problem solvers tool belt.  The content of the DDM is designed to foster systems perspectives as well as deep identification with cause and effect relationships. 

PERSPECTIVE SHIFTING

The ability to see the world through other people's eyes is critical to building resilience, empathy, and leadership skills. We will uncover how to constantly reflect and explore the world from diverse perspectives, overcome biases and be able to put yourself in the shoes of others to understand why people think or behave differently to you based on their own life and learning experiences. 

COLLABORATION

Respectfully and successfully working with others, despite differences, is critical to creativity and leadership skills. The goal is to encourage people to see that diversity in collaboration is just as important as agreement, and that coming to a consensus can be achieved in many different ways. Many of the tools we teach, such as systems mapping can be used as brilliant collaboration tools, so you gain incredible opportunities to foster effective collaboration. 

Held online over 4 weeks in Feb 2020, with 2 classes per week, we have designed this small group live online training program to ensure you can fit this into your regular life and maximize your learning experience. This live online training is perfect for anyone wanting to gain valuable insights into activating systems change through the Disruptive Design Method, as well as learning tools of problem loving, circular systems design, systems interventions, and creative problem solving.

Places are limited, so apply now!

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! 

Five More Years! Five More Years!

By Leyla Acaroglu

5 years ago I started a school for adults to activate systems change and sustainability through design and creative problem solving. here is the 5 year birthday story, and what I hope happens next.  

It was around five and a half years ago that I sat bolt upright in bed from a flash of an idea that had just woken me up. I grabbed a pen and scribbled on an old receipt: “UN-SCHOOL OF DISRUPTIVE DESIGN”. By the time I had gotten out of the shower and dressed, I had the full concept formulated in my head. I spent the next few weeks obsessively sketching out a pitch deck in InDesign, and the following weeks shopping it around for seed funding to places like Autodesk. 

At the time, in late 2014, I was in the final stages of my PhD and the entire experience of doing it had somewhat scarred me on the reductive nature of adult education. This was combined with several years of experience in the ‘real world’ through running my first creative agency (Eco Innovators) and developing all sorts of design education tools and projects for advancing sustainability.

These experiences had taught me so much about just how broken the way we educate is, and I was also feeling pretty isolated in my personal goals of wanting to contribute to having a positive impact on the world around me. I had assumed that I was not the only one feeling this was, and perhaps that there were others out there who also wanted to activate creative ways of getting shit done in a positive way — so I set the intent to design something new that could have a global impact. That something turned into this, the UnSchool, and on September 5th we turn 5 years old.

I never did receive any seed funding, but I did channel all my energy, creativity and personal funds into building this crazy little intervention anyway. Today we celebrate many things —  mainly that we have made it here to this milestone and made some creative change along the way, and plan on making much more positively distribute change! 

Why start a school for adults? 

For several years I had been teaching sustainability at all different age levels, going into primary schools and running programs at Universities as well. The one thing that was blindingly obvious to me was that many people were confused or overwhelmed by sustainability, and these feelings created a lot of inertia and resistance —  mainly from the adults. The kids totally got it. 

A few years before I started the UnSchool, I had been doing a project back home in Melbourne, where I had been invited into primary schools to teach an introduction to sustainability and life cycle thinking. I had developed interactive games for six year olds to learn about life cycle thinking by printing images of the life cycle stages of fun things like chocolate chip cookies, and stuck them to little cards so that they could work together to map the life of a product. The kids got the concept really quickly and would make insightful comments like, “The factory uses energy, which releases gasses into the sky that makes the weather change,” — all unprompted, I might add. I think it was the third or fourth school in a row when as I was leaving the class, the teacher stopped me and said, “This is so interesting! I had no idea about any of this stuff.” Another one had just told me she was so grateful I had come because she was so swamped that she just didn't have the time to do the research to be able to teach the content that was now required in the curriculum. 

These experiences and many others I had been designing and running for young people became the inspiration for the creation of teacher support tools that were interactive and easy to use, like the Design Play Cards and The Secret Life of Things animations.

For years after this work, the teacher’s words still echoed in my head, and I kept thinking, If these people are teaching the young people, then who is teaching the teachers and the rest of the adults? After all, they are the ones with the power to make the changes that we need in order to bring about a sustainable and positive future. So, the idea of a school for adults, focused on experiential and immersive education that blew minds and supported rapid transformative change was born. The moment I finished the first draft of my thesis, I left Australia for the United States to start this crazy idea — which wasn’t really fully formed until that day I sat bolt upright in my bed (actually just an air mattress in a Brooklyn sublet). 

A quick side note: the Secret Life of Things project won a Melbourne Design Award, helped change the high school curriculum in Australia to include life cycle thinking and sustainability, and ended up in the Leonardo Di Vinci Museum in Milan and the National Gallery of Victoria. I had such a small budget that I did all the voiceovers (yes they are terrible!) and I even enlisted my little brother for this one the final in the series!

The Pain and Joy of Starting Something New

The process of starting anything new is a combination of sheer panic, adrenaline, and massive amounts of courage. When I went to register the name The ‘UnSchool of Disruptive Design’ in New York City, the lawyer called to tell me that it was rejected by some authority unless I could get an official letter from the United Nations saying that we could use ‘Un’ in front of school, in case people thought it was a brand impeachment on the United Nations! Five years ago, I was not in a position to just call up the UN and get that kind of thing. So instead, I registered a company called Disrupt Design and a couple weeks later, threw a party in a gallery on 5th Avenue that I had managed to convince someone to lend me.

We invited anyone I had heard of from the design and social innovation community in New York (of which none I knew), and 150 people showed up (I even hired some buskers from the subway who later become friends). It was really a fantastic way to launch this project into the world. I had concepts up all over the wall and a giant interactive find-a-word poster for all the types of things the UnSchool and Disrupt Design stood for. But of course, I had no idea how I was going to do all the aspirational things I wanted to accomplish from the UnSchool, like challenge the reductive education system, support systems change within the design community, or normalize sustainability in a new generation of creatives.

All I knew was that I wanted to make change and help others to make change too. 

Then mini program that we launched with in NYC in Sept 2014 (and the old website we had!)

I really was playing out the ‘fake it until you make it’ mantra of startups, accidentally as it was, but nonetheless, I had started this thing and had absolutely no idea how to make it work. Did I mention that since I had not obtained any start up funding, I only had a tiny bit of money that I had taken from my first company? The lack of funds was a pain, but also a great influence, as I had to be very creative and agile.

A couple years in,  the lack of funds coupled with my strong equity access ideals meant that I really did need to find a way to sustain the UnSchool. So, I started to look again for investments via the startup channels I had in NYC, and I quickly discovered just how perverse the startup world can be. I had been approached by a couple of people who had seen my TED talk and were interested in what I was doing. After a few months of making pitch decks and being rejected for being too idealistic, or even worse, getting hit on, I decided the startup world was just another way of exploiting people and turning good ideas into things to extract all the value for individual gains. So I then decided that I would prefer to make change rather than money from the UnSchool — and if that meant making money elsewhere from giving talks and doing creative projects and then reinvesting it back into an equitable and integrity-based project, then so be it. It also inspired us to diversify the way UnSchool earned money, from just in-person programs to building the UnSchool online. 

Early on the, we ran all sorts of provicational events to activate and explore the communities desire for positive change. This was for our Park Demolition Tea Party.

From day one, the most important thing that I needed was a space to host workshops and events, so I traded my time to set my school up in the Center for Social Innovation (CSI) in NYC. For the next six months, I spent two days a week as the “Innovator in Residence,” and the rest of the week I ran lunchtime classes on all sorts of topics I wanted to include in the Disruptive Design curriculum. I solicited feedback from the beautiful humans who showed up for them, and threw a bunch of random events and fun experiences to engage people with this concept of experiential, non-traditional educational and collaborative learning (not to mention sustainability, systems thinking, and design for creative interventions that make positive impacts). 

To name just a few things we did in those first couple years: secret dinner parties in construction sites, drink and design nights in tech company offices, verbal fight clubs in dive bars, and park demolition tea parties... in parks that were about to be demolished. Sometimes lots of people came, and other times not so many, but each time I learned what people were interested in and found inspiration for the next thing. It was certainly very stressful, as there was never really any money after we bought the beer in a keg that could be returned to the local brewery (and transported it on the subway!), as well as purchased 100 reusable vintage glasses that I lugged around NYC to stick to my no-disposables rule. But without all of this early community exploration and building, prototyping, and discovering, I would never have created the beautiful thing that is the UnSchool of today. In the end, hundreds of people came to these early community engagement events, and we now share these tools that were refined during those times with our alumni who run similar experiential programs with their communities of changemakers. 

Six months into building the UnSchool, I advertised our first Emerging Leaders Fellowship program to happen in NYC at CSI, where I was still the Innovator in Residence. I built the concept for this 7-day, adventure-based learning experience and popped it up online with very little explanation about what would actually going to happen, other than to call for all the creative rebels who wanted to activate their career in making change. Over 80 people applied from around the world! So many incredible people applied for that first program that I went from wanting 10 people to accepting 16, and that first Fellowship was magical.

Columbia University heard about it, came and interviewed me, and made a video as part of a research project on alternative education. Those 16 courageous people came to help build this thing, and every program since then, hundreds of people have come and helped build it even more, bringing their passion and curiosity and above all, their commitment to learning how to design a future that works better than today. The UnSchool is the sum of its parts —  the people — which makes it a beautiful complex whole of creative humans willing to activate themselves to contribute to a more positive and sustainable future. This is the shot of optimism that I get every time I run a program or meet an alumni. Despite how messed up the world appears to be, it’s also filled to the brim with humans wanting to help change the status quo and get to a more positive future. 

After that first successful fellowship in NYC, we went to Mexico City, then Melbourne, São Paulo, and then next was Berlin. During these first few Fellowships, I called on friends and previous creative colleagues to help produce these highly complicated programs. Then Christchurch, the sixth program, was produced by one of our alumni (at 7.5 months pregnant as well!), and from then on, so was San Francisco and Mumbai. Next, Cape Town, which was our ninth program, was run entirely without me! I cried when I watched the video of this magical thing being made by others.

This year in November it will be our 10th Fellowship in Kuching, Borneo, and it's our first non-major city Fellowship program, hosted by alumni from our Mumbai program. I could write a million words on the appreciation I have for all these humans that come to help make magic happen because they care about sustainability, equality, and a future that works better for all of us. But instead, I recommend that you watch a couple of the fellowship videos to get a sense of just how chaotic and wonderful they are. For me, they are pure chaos and joy with massive amounts of human-made magic. 

From Fellowships to an Online Learning Lab, a Brain Spa, and More

Five years later, here we are. Hundreds of people have come to in-person programs all over the world and are out there doing cool shit (in fact, every year we partner with the Ellen MacArthur DIF festival to showcase just a few of the creative changemaking activities of our alumni). We have won awards, created incredible partnerships with the UNEP and others, and designed curriculums around our content for Finland, and now Thailand as well.

We have almost 10,000 people taking courses in our online learning lab and recently started the Brain Spa in Portugal. I am immensely proud of this crazy idea that turned into people from all over the world connecting and supporting change. The fascinating irony is that after doing all this work and building this thing that I couldn’t officially name, I ended up being named as a Champion of the Earth by UN Environment in 2016 for my work in advancing science and innovation for sustainability. And as life seems to offer you many moments of irony, now, as a result of this affiliation, many people DO get us confused with the UN! But we are excited by our collaboration between the UnSchool and UNEP to activate sustainable living, and proudly share any affiliation as we launch the creative intervention we designed called the Anatomy of Action — so you know, full circle! 

But that doesn’t mean that we’ve not had our share of challenges and made our share of mistakes. I have cried at least 5,000 tears of frustration and joy at getting this thing up off the ground, with no external financial support whilst obsessively trying to maintain the integrity of the idea and diversity of people who had access to it. One of the biggest challenges is finding the resources to ensure we can offer the content to a diverse array of people, so that it’s not just those with financial means that can get further educated in these fundamental thinking tools for the future.

One of the models from the start has been to ensure that every program has scholarships and equity access, which we fund ourselves. Nowadays, many people get supported by their companies to come to our programs, so that enables us to redistribute some of these earnings into covering scholarships for others who don’t have financial support. I have almost gone bankrupt a couple times, but ensuring that the UnSchool is available to many different types of people is at its core. We have given away somewhere around $200,000 in scholarships to emerging leaders who would otherwise not be able to afford to attend a program like ours because equity is just part of our DNA. Along the way, some forward-thinking companies have helped out, supporting particular fellows from emerging economies, or sponsoring us with coffee or wine for programs (we are a school for adults after all!), but mostly we just eat into any potential profits, which means we are basically a very undesirable investment proposition!  

But this project is not about making money; it’s about making change. I am really committed to supporting as many people as I can with our tiny-but-mighty team in uncovering the tools needed for making positive change. We offer value exchange internships, and anyone can apply for an equity scholarship for our online programs too. Obviously there are only so many programs we can run face-to-face, and even though I had initial resistance to online education, for the last two years, we explored, prototyped, and developed an interactive blended learning model that enables people to activate their leadership for change by equipping them with the tools they need to do so. 

Another exciting development: we now have a certification system so that anyone who engages with our content can choose to validate their changemaking work and perhaps even go on to teach our method themselves!

The development process for our certification system was tough and long, as I wanted to ensure that it was not just someone sitting in their room watching videos, but instead that we had a mechanism for motivating local community action. This all resulted in our community activation points system that builds in many aspects of motivated community participation by encouraging people to do different things to gain the needed points for their certification level. 

Our first approach was more of a pick-your-own adventure style system that didn’t quite work, as busy people need motivation, and many of the early adopters asked for more structure to support them moving through to a level they knew would validate them. So, I went back to some of the things that I had used to motivate me through my PhD and drew on the tactics I had developed to get me to the end goal (which was a challenge to say the least). Tools like a reflection and process journal, along with gamified tasks that I had set myself to apply new knowledge — these all helped inspire the version 2.0 of our certification system that we launched a few months ago, and now have many people tracking through!

The Practitioner, UnMasters, and Educator tracks are the outcome of these past five years and then some, teaching people how to activate themselves to make change. The format is designed to guide people through the complex content month by month, offering pauses and fast tracks. We are just about to certify our first few educators who then will be able to teach our content and run their own programs wherever they are in the world. The UnMasters is designed for career changemakers and entrepreneurs, and the Practitioner for people wanting to validate their skill set for creative change and positively disruptive design. 

Future Thinking: Do I have to have a 5-Year Plan?

So what about the future? I am not into making five-year plans usually, but for the UnSchool, I do have one. In five years, when we turn 10 years old, I would love for the UnSchool to be obsolete. I hope that we have created a momentum and supported enough leadership and experiential learning provocations that others are taking the pedagogical approaches and ideas and seeding them in new and exciting ways. This is why the current certification model is so important, as I hope that with enough supported emerging leaders, we can create a continuum of change that evolves and expands exponentially until we have addressed many of our pressing problems in entirely new and unique ways.

On a personal level, I want to have disrupted the way we educate enough to ensure that the future of knowledge transfer is experiential and transformative, not reductive and linear, as it is so often the case today. I want to see that we design curriculums that are dynamic and hands-on, so that we equip people of all ages with the tools they need to agentize themselves in a world that needs creative changemakers as much as it needs bankers and engineers. I would love for a 15 year old to answer the question, “What do you want to do for your career?” with, “Be a creative changemaker and help design a future that works better than today,” and for that 15 year old to have that opportunity available to them, no matter where they are in the world. 

And say in five years the UnSchool is still needed and we have not achieved these ambitious disruptive goals? Then I hope that the people who come to help build it each time will be more activated to continue to build it even more, be organized and inspired enough to take the ideas and spread them even further and deeper so that we can work toward solving some of the complex issues afflicting this beautiful planet that we all share. 

What are the big challenges that we face in activating this change over the next five years? I see a bit of a battle in managing the digitalization of content, knowledge, and all the competition for attention that is going on as we move ever closer to a digitally-addicted age. I am not a Luddite; I love technology and all the life enjoyment that it brings.  But there are a lot of trade-offs that we must contend with, and one such issue is the manipulation of digital social spaces by larger powers for the misdirection of people into more narrow pathways of thinking and doing. All of the platforms for social sharing seem to have converged along the same pathway of attention-seeking behaviors, and this is something I have grappled with ever since communicating ideas became about competing for attention in ever-more ludicrous ways in a saturated market. 

So, our big question now is,  “What does ethical and equitable communication look like?” And how do we do it when two giant companies, Google and Facebook, own most of the digital communication space and require you to ‘pay to play’, funnelling you evermore into a myopic view of the world and the ways in which you can get access to ‘your’ people? This is a big challenge for us and many more integrity-based organizations, as the system is designed to extract more of your time as a viewer and more of your capital as a producer. Understanding our digital carbon footprint and working toward sustainable and equitable digital policy is our new goal. We, like many others, just don’t understand the impact of our actions every time we upload an image to Instagram or release a new video.  So we are working on that, and hope to have some way of sharing the learnings from this soon so that we can have more ethical intentions with our digital actions. 

To start this transition, we developed a more long-form communication exchange through our weekly journal articles (which you are reading now!), in which we cover topics relevant to our community and highlighting the incredible inspiring activities of our alumni. 

If the UnSchool has taught me anything, it is that everything worth doing requires work, and that the work you do teaches you how to do things better, or at least helps refine the way we each operate our life on this beautiful shared spaceship Earth. As I have mentioned in many interviews, one of the main reasons I ditched design school to become a sustainability-focused sociologist was because I had learned that everything was interconnected and that would mean I would have negative impacts without knowing it, which to me, seemed ridiculous. I know not all we do can be managed or controlled, and sometimes good intentions lead to not great outcomes. But we can throw our energy and creativity at the problems that persist in the world we live in, helping to etch away at them bit by bit so that we get to a place in the future, however far away that is, that is better, more equitable, sustainable, regenerative, and positive — otherwise, what’s the point? 

What I have learned

Reflection is key to what we teach, so here is me giving myself a challenge to come up with the top five things I have learned from making the UnSchool:

1. Starting things is hard work, but everything worth doing requires work 

2. Money does not always equal change; it helps, but change is valueless

3. It’s possible to get a lot of shit done in a small amount of time and still be energized by it, especially when you have good people to work with  

4. Burnout is a real. It creeps up on you, and when it happens it hurts to have lost all the passion for what you do. But the solution is to rest and regenerate, and then get right back to it

5. There is no such thing as wasted time, just paths you go down that may not end up where you intended. But, the place you land will have some value to offer in getting you to where you want to be 

AND a big thank you to all these INCREDIBLE humans!

The UnSchool is the outcome of the people who come to it and over the years we have had hundreds of amazing and inspiring people join us on our adventures into systems change, sustainability and social impact. Here are the cohorts from our 9 emerging leaders fellowship programs!

THANK YOU, TO EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU!

2015 New York Fellowship

2015 Mexico City Fellowship

2016, Melbourne Fellowship

2016 São Paulo Fellowship

2016 Berlin Fellowship

2017 Christchurch Fellowship

2017 San Francisco Fellowship

2017 Mumbai Fellowship

2018 Cape Town Fellowship

The rise of sustainable living

By Leyla Acaroglu

Earlier this year, I was invited to attend the Fourth UN Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya. Politicians, innovators, and activists gathered to discuss the future of global sustainable production and consumption, looking at what the next stages are for creating systems of sustainability and circularity and how to unlock the consumption paradox.  

Despite the meeting not obtaining the desired resolutions to help bring about the significant global restructuring needed for a healthy and sustainable planet, the uplifting thing was that finally, after many years, the discussions centered on the roles of design and consumption for how to achieve global social and environmental sustainability. I, like everyone else, have my moments of disillusion, where the hope gets drained out of you by the fatigue of complaints, problems, and inaction. So allow me to focus on the flip side to that: the changes I see rising from the slightly nerdy world of sustainable production and consumption.

Not too long ago, terms like “zero waste” were boring policy directives thrown around by government departments with long-term strategies like “zero waste by 2020”. But in the last few years, ‘going zero waste’ and sustainable living in general have taken on an entirely cooler persona as a lifestyle trend of young, hip Instagrammers and savvy YouTubers are all helping to make this a movement and trend that now anyone can get involved in.

Yes, there are like any movements critiques of the gender politics and the validity of the claims of those who are promoting this lifestyle trend. Years ago, there was a claim that there was a growing trend called LOHAS: Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, and that people would actually start to make economic decisions based on the issues that matter to them. So for me, the Zero Wasters are the living incarnation of this marketing prophecy. And even more so, it demonstrates that the actions of a small group of people can have big impacts on the economy.

A ZERO WASTE LIFESTYLE

A zero waste lifestyler is someone who actively reduces their waste consumption by designing their life to combat acquiring things that are wasteful or will end up as trash, especially avoiding all disposable and non-recyclable products and packaging. Someone embracing a zero waste life usually plans meals in advance to avoid convenience packaging, and ensures they always have a reusable water bottle, coffee cup, straw, and bags on hand to actively refuse disposable items. This names just a few and varied everyday actions these lifestylers take to avoid contributing to the global waste pandemic.

These types of actions aren’t really new; they were well-practiced as normal before the lifestyle of hyper-convenience encouraged runaway disposability, beginning in the 1960s. So, the challenge hasn’t been finding alternatives as much as it has been rebelling against the current status quo.

Many of the heroes of the zero waste lifestyle movement share incredible stories of only making one small jar of actual ‘trash’ a year, often shared on social media through active lifestyle design and adopting simple everyday changes. Composting organic waste from their homes, proactively purchasing reusable products, or even making essentials like toothpaste at home are all part of their day-to-day practices.

While there are aspirational leaders in the movement who are very much tied to the brand of zero waste, the key takeaway is that a person who actively seeks to reduce consumption impacts through conscious micro-actions across several different areas of their lives is a positive thing that should be encouraged. Not just because it helps bring about a new normal around reusability in society, but because it helps change the economy. When many micro-actions are being replicated, it has impacts on the goods and services that end up being made available to all of us.

This can all be seen in the rise of products and services to meet the needs of the zero waste community. Putting aside the questionable environmental credentials from a life cycle perspective of many of the products, and just looking at the shifts in the economy, we can see change — positive change toward a new type of normal, whereby people are activating their agency to help solve the global waste crises.

There are now dedicated zero waste stores in many major cities around the globe (not just in obvious hipster strongholds like New York!). Modern plant-based restaurants, and even entire shopping centers that have sprung up to accommodate this growing trend of plastic-free, package-free, and zero waste consumers who are interested in sustainable consumption options.

As a result of many different interventions, companies have also started to embrace the global trend toward sustainability. We are seeing leaders emerge in the circular economy in some sectors, such as apparel, consumer goods, and furniture. The Loop circular delivery service was just launched this year, and the biggest IPO in two decades was Beyond Meat. Ikea recently announced that they would be 100% circular by 2030, and Lego is working on a plastic-free brick. These examples show a growing demand and substantial shift towards the normalization of products and services that go beyond recycling and start to move us into position where further positive disruptions can occur.

I know, there is still a shit ton of work to do to solve the complex social and environmental problems that occur as a result of the global supply chain marketed to quickly meet every immediate desire of the human needs. Walk down the aisles in any supermarket around the world, and it's obvious that the vast majority of product providers are yet to catch on to this massive cultural shift underway, where consumers are conscious of their impacts and want to avoid investing in wasteful plastic-laden unsustainable products and services. But, the shifts we are seeing are encouraging and should be highlighted.

THE REAL ISSUE IS DISPOSABILITY: THE ROOT OF ALL WASTE

Waste is the dark side of consumption, and despite two solid decades of zero waste policies, and many different approaches from cleaner production to eco-design and sustainable consumption, and now the circular economy, we are still seeing a global increase in waste generation. And not just in plastics clogging the oceans, but in high-tech trash, textile, and food waste.

The issues with waste is that no matter how much recycling or waste management is put in place, more waste is generated than can be dealt with. Many emerging economies have limited or minimal waste management systems, and many big Western countries have absconded their responsibility to manage their own waste efficiently, just exporting it to an emerging economy. Like the case of the Canadian trash that the Philippians refused to take on, or as evidenced by the collapse of the recycling industry after China refused to take the world’s plastic trash any longer.

There continues to be a significant trend in converting reusable products to disposable ones, combined with the painful reality of planned obsolescence in high-value goods, so many aspects of our daily lives are now marked by single or low-value use products. Thus, going zero waste is one defiant act that anyone can do to take a stand against this. The reality is that what we spend our money on impacts the economy. Just like investing in renewable energy increases the value of that industry, the same is said for every product or service. We get more of what we invest in.

And let’s not forget that all of this comes down to design. The World Bank estimates that at the current rate of increase, we will see 70% increase in waste generation by 2050. This is all by design. Waste, whether it be in trash or recycling, is a design flaw, so even with the rise of waste rejection, we have a significant trend to contend with. Products are designed to break, and systems are designed to increase disposability as they cut costs and respond to customer concerns of health and safety. A significant part of the entire waste/pollution/unsustainability problem is that we have designed a system that incentivizes waste, and that is why we need to design for a post disposable future.

Design is also an incredibly powerful part of the solution. We can design for a future that meets our needs in sustainable and regenerative ways, and it's no wonder that the waste backlash is coming at a time when people are more able to design their own lives and share these behavioral and cultural shifts online to audiences of others willing to buck the status quo. This new generation of active consumers, be it zero wasters or minimalists, they are exerting their personal interests on the economy. This is helping to challenge the dominant culture of hyper-consumption and instead showing ways of living a more intentional and purposeful life.

MAKE CHANGES EVEN THOUGH IT TAKES TIME AND EVEN IF YOU FAIL

I have spent years researching ways of effecting change, and the one thing I know to be true is that change is constant, but it also takes time. Many people are not willing to even try something new because they think that it won’t serve them well, but when they do actually enact a habit disruption and discover that there was not a negative outcome, they often then adopt the new change and share it with others. Change is socially contagious, in both directions on the positive/negative scale.

Change is often hard to see whilst you are in the middle of it, and it is even harder when it’s a resistance to the status quo. The global changes toward a sustainable, regenerative, and circular economy require multiple different actors shifting their behaviors and patterns in diverse ways. In the case of zero waste living, it's all about agency and having ownership of your own impact. More so, it is contagious, as the power of social influence kicks in and people see the positive outcomes that making these types of changes can have.

When enough people validate the new actions, it’s a free pathway to the new outcome! To be sure, there are many challenges ahead of us when it comes to sustainability, and major corporations are still far behind in the trend of adopting the significance of the changes needed to adapt to a circular economy. But the progress is real and transformative. The question is not if, but when will we see the tipping point of change where we, as a collective species, start to design goods and services to be a positive influence on the planet?

It's never too late to start swapping unsustainable daily decisions to more considered ones, and in fact, there are five simple actions we can all can start anytime.

Five everyday actions to start RIGHT now

1. Swap out some meat for plant-based proteins

2. Ditch everyday disposables such as cups, plates, bags, and take-out containers

3. Invest in the things you want to see in the world by buying repairable and long-lasting stuff (and make sure to repair it when it needs to be fixed!)

4. Opt for low-carbon mobility options like biking, mass transit, or ride-sharing

5. Move money from high-impact industries to renewables through swapping energy providers, banks, and investment portfolios

One Person Can't Save the World, but Everyone Can Change It

By Leyla Acaroglu

Our lives are made up of actions that come about as a result of choices that we often make based on the available information we have on hand.

So when someone sees a tsunami of problems presented to them day in day out by the mainstream and now social media, it's easy to assume that these issues are disconnected to us, that poverty or environmental problems are the outcome of poor policy decisions, or even someone else's bad choices.

From a young age we are taught cause and effect; we intuitively know that every choice has ramifications. If you turn on a tap to get water, it only flows because there is an entire system that has been set up to enable it to do so. This is made painfully obvious when, for whatever reason, the water doesn't flow. Say you forget to pay your water bill, or a pipe bursts due to traffic work somewhere down the street, and suddenly you are confronted with a system impact that is an immediate loss of something that you are used to being always available to you. There are actions you can take to remedy this situation, like calling the water company or paying your bill if you have the means to do so. But, when it comes to bigger issues outside of your immediate control, the actions an individual can take to remedy the situation are less obvious and often far from the mind's ability to contribute constructively — so it chooses to avoid the issue instead.

We live on a planet that is intrinsically interconnected; we breathe in the byproduct of photosynthesis, which in turn oxygenates our blood and allows us to breathe out carbon to contribute to the cycle continuing. Each one of us, no matter how big or small our sphere of influence is, has an impact on the world around us. Everything we use, say, do — it all has the potential to unintentionally cause a negative impact or intentionally have a positive one, and that is why being equipped with the tools for making systems change is so fundamental in overcoming the reductive avoidance that so many people opt into.

Know it or not, our lives are marked by change — changes that we can’t avoid.

For example, age: each birthday, the age we define ourselves by goes up by one.

• Hair: it grows, goes gray, is lost, and in some cases, grows in very odd places.

• Weather: it gets colder, hotter, and even more so nowadays, it's getting weirder.

• Life aspirations: if you followed the dreams of your five year old self, you may be a miniature dragon doctor now.  

• Opinions: every other day they should change.

• Days: like seven times a week they change.

• Lovers: insert your time frame here _____, but what we love changes over time as we grow and evolve as humans.

Change is the one constant in life (thanks Heraclitus for this great quote). We are all changing constantly, and the world we interact day in day out, changes us.

It’s less often that you are saving things. Like maybe you saved a baby from a burning building in your dreams (or in real life if you are a firefighter perhaps?), or you may have recently saved a breakable item from smashing on the floor. You may even be one of those people who is good at saving money. But changing is way more common than saving, so let's get this straight. YOU, yes you, you change the world every single day that you are alive, and in turn, the world changes you. You are in an interdependent relationship with a bunch of systems and hidden processes that you may not have any idea about, and together, we are going to uncover what they are, how they work, and why you can help change them by activating your creative capacity and leadership so that you can contribute to helping the world works better for all of us.

The saying “change is hard” is often used as an excuse for not taking action or deflecting responsibility to other parts of the system. But everything worth doing requires work, and if the systems changes needed were easy, then they would have been done already. Easy solutions to complex problems often lead right back into the problem —  that's one of the basic tenets of a systems mindset, and one of the core things we teach at the UnSchool.

You can't make change unless you know what needs to be changed. Just like you don't know what you don't know until you discover that you don't know it!

I started the UnSchool to help people like you. It’s all about providing tools to help redesign the world through creative systems change. I know that it's not possible for any one person to suddenly save the entire world, and nor should be the responsibility for anyone to do so, but it is certainly the case that every single person can change it. In fact, the world does not need ‘saving’ — it is us humans that need a salvation, given the hyper-consumption fueled constant-growth mindset that has permeated modern societies at the expense of the systems that sustain us and the values that maintain our species’ success!

The power to make change lies in our personal ability to see our own agency and opportunity for for creative leadership and to then make intentional choices about how we will activate the influence we organically have on the world around us, while working on enhancing this to a point where we can actively make more positive systems change.  

One of the reasons I started the UnSchool almost five years ago, was to connect and encourage a global community of rebellious creatives willing to activate their agency for sustainable and regenerative future. It’s for all the people who are deeply passionate about contributing to changing the way we humans treat and interact with the world, so that we offer back more then we take.

All the tools and resources that I create are intended to support people agentizing themselves to be positively disruptive change-makers, rather than passive observers, participants, or even complainers of the status quo.

Developing healthy critical thinking, reflexivity, a systems mindset, and a problem-loving attitude are all fundamentals to increasing your capacity to take action and to contribute to needed systems change. To be able to see the relationships between things that occur provides the foundations for moving from blame to understanding, which in turn supports the development of a problem-loving mindset.

Over the last 15 years of working in sustainability and cultural change, I have met way too many people who say that they are trying to solve problems when, in fact, they are reinforcing them by not choosing to understand the relationships and hidden aspects that make them exist to begin with. This reductive linear thinking plagues decision making and is one of the fundamental reasons that problem solving needs systems thinking.

I made a choice to dedicate my career to figuring out how to contribute to effective positive change and how to overcome the reductive mindset that disempowers and disables, while being a problem lover, systems explorer, and supporter of regenerative and sustainable change. To further support changemakers developing their own learning journeys and discoveries. That’s why I am so proud and excited to share the new certification systems (UnSchool style) that we have developed. The three advanced learning UnSchool systems are self-directed learning journeys into activating positive change, as a Practitioner, UnMasters or Educator.

Of course you don't need to come to the UnSchool to make change! But if you want the support and want to become more agentized around creative leadership, systems, sustainability, and design, then we have short or long-form classes for you to help change and not save the beautiful planet we all share!