The UnSchool Kuching Fellowship Recap

UnSchool Fellowship Number 10 happened in Kuching, Malaysia on the island of Borneo between the 17th and 23rd of November, 2019. The Kuching cohort included seventeen fellows from nine different countries (meet them here). Read all about the incredible adventure into all things systems change over on our fellowship blog >

Anatomy of Action: The many ways to have fun!

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

Action 1: Enjoy the Journey

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

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

#EnjoyTheJourney Everyday Actions

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

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

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

4. Visit fewer places but stay longer in each

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

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

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

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

Action 2: Stay Curious

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

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

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

#StayCurious Everyday Actions

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

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

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

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

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

6. Foster an open and independent mindset

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

8. Learn new things through formal and informal education 
   
   

Action 3: Choose Experiences

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

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

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

#ChooseExperiences Everyday Actions

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

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

3. Spend more time connecting with nature and natural spaces 

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

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

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

7. Pursue purpose and passions, not possessions

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

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

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

Anatomy of Action: Money, Money Money

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

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

Action 1: Ethical Investment

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

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

#EthicalInvesting Everyday Actions: 

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

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

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

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

5. Invest in goods and services produced in sustainable ways

6. Never invest in products made from endangered wildlife

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

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

9. Pay taxes to help build your community

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

Action 2: Divestment

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

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

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

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

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

#Divestment Everyday Actions

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

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

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

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

5. Divest from fossil fuel or unethical companies 

Action 3: Energy Positive Homes

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

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

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

#EnergyPositiveHomes Everyday Actions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forget Netflix and Chill, Brain Binge with TED Talks Instead!

TED talks are a very popular and effective format for engaging with new knowledge. Themed around technology, entertainment, and design, the talks are free to watch and last for up to 18 minute, making them more easily accessible and digestible. Many of the talks come from TED’s main conference that the organization has held annually since 1984, but a few years back, they enabled people anywhere to host small independent TED events under the TEDx program (x stands for independent). As such, an explosion of TEDx talks have popped up online, creating so many new opportunities to hear fascinating ideas.  

In 2013, UnSchool founder and lead educator, Leyla Acaroglu, was selected by the TED organizers to be one of a handful of people to be invited to the TED mainstage in Los Angeles to give a talk as part of that year’s theme: ‘The Young, the Wise, and the Undiscovered’. Since then, Leyla has  given mainstage talks all over the world about systems change, sustainability, and design as a tool for creating positive change. She has now spoken at three different TED events, including the popular mainstage one Paper Beats Plastic, then in her hometown at TEDx Melbourne with Why We Need to Think Differently About Sustainability, and most recently, in Lisbon (near her Brain Spa, the CO Project Farm) where she creatively questions, How Do We Value Invisible Things?

In this week’s journal, the team at the UnSchool have put together summaries of these three talks to highlight the relationship between them and all the fascinating content that we share at the UnSchool. 

Paper Beats Plastic, TED Los Angeles 

Have you ever been at the supermarket and been given a plastic bag which you refuse, and then get offered a paper bag instead, and told it’s better for the planet because it's made of paper? In this fascinating talk, Leyla completely busts the myth of biodegradable or natural materials being “more sustainable” by nature. She explains the life cycle assessment data on how the whole-life environmental impacts mean that the paper bags (which require more raw materials) are often a larger impact than the plastic. She is not promoting plastic, however; she is using this example to illustrate that there are no simple solutions to complex problems and that it's the system that we need to understand. She then goes on to reinforce this point through examples of poorly designed refrigerators, electric tea kettles, and cell phones.

Life Cycle Thinking and Sustainable Design are two of the 12 units we teach as part of the Disruptive Design Method at the UnSchool. The ability to understand the whole of life environmental impacts of a product, service, or system and then to apply sustainable and regenerative design principles to changing the way these things exist in the world, is one of the core aspects of positive creative changemaking. 

Why We Need to Think Differently About Sustainability, TEDx Melbourne  

Supported by Einstein’s idea that “problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them,” Leyla presents a strong case for a paradigm shift on sustainability, sharing fascinating stories of what can go wrong when we try to apply simple, reductionist solutions to complex problems — which is also known as the law of unintended consequences. You’ll learn about a bounty on rat tails (!) during French-ruled Vietnam in 1902, how CFCs infiltrated our refrigerators and everyday products, why the EU’s use of biofuels resulted in a world food shortage and the deforestation crisis, the story of cane toads in Australia, and much more as she breaks down exactly how good intentions can result in far bigger problems. 

Leyla ends the talk by sharing the power of systems thinking in discovering how sustainability is actually about self-preservation of our human species when we understand the interconnectedness of our human relationships with natural systems. These key themes of systems thinking, sustainability and creative problem solving are the three pillars that we teach at the UnSchool. Together, they form the foundations of all our content and approach to creative changemaking that we share. 

How do we Value Invisible Things? TEDx, UniverSIty OF Lisbon 

Leyla continues her renowned provocations on how we can design the world and it, in turn, designs us. In this talk you can see how she illustrates the relationship between the micro and macro systems as she dives into why our current economic systems value novelty, prestige, and status over sustainability. She explores the failures of our growth-based GDP global economic system, and shows how it simultaneously devalues the beautiful invisible things that make life magic — like happiness, Earth’s natural beauty, and the freedom to pursue a fulfilling life. 

The story is told with the help of the history of pineapples (which once cost $10,000 and were rented for parties to show wealth and prestige), diamonds (which are technically valueless), chocolate cake (which apparently you can have too much of), in Leyla’s classic style of telling fascinating stories of the everyday things that we all engage with, but don’t often think about in this way. As usual, it’s a funny, fast-paced talk that will stretch your brain and encourage you to explore how we can challenge the current status quo of devaluing the most important things in life. 

The UnSchool is all about inspiring people to activate our individual agency and take action toward a more sustainable, circular, and regenerative future by understanding the complex and fascinating systems at play in the world around us. Much of the content Leyla shares through her talks is delivered with much more detail in the UnSchool digital and in-person content and workshops. Making change takes time and hard work, but it can clearly be a lot of fun and involve creative and fascinating ways of illustrating the stories we need to think differently about so that the world works better for all of us. 

If Leyla’s work and ways of approaching sustainability and creativity interests you, then you can watch hours and hours of content over at our online learning hub, UnSchool Online. We most recently added certification tracks, in which Leyla and the team spent two years dissecting everything she knows into video and written content that makes up the extensive learning systems for the three levels of certification.

Systems Thinking 101

By Leyla Acaroglu

At the UnSchool, we have three core pillars that make up the foundation of all that we do: systems, sustainability, and design.  The systems component is the ability to see the world for its dynamic, interconnected, interdependent, and constantly changing set of relationships that make up the complex whole. I recently shared just why systems thinking is such a powerful tool for effecting change, but 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 — in our case, this is always positive social and environmental change. We have developed many simple applied systems tools, such as the systems mapping approaches, and to get you started on thinking in systems, let’s dive into the foundations of systems thinking! 

How we See the World 

The status quo of how we are all taught is to think in linear and often reductionist ways. We learn to break the world down into manageable chunks and see issues in isolation of their systemic roots. This dominant way of approaching the world is a product of industrialized educational norms – in one way or another, we have learned, through our 15 to 20+ years of mainstream education, and/or through socialization, that the most effective way to solve a problem is to treat the symptoms, not the causes. 

Yet, when we look at the world through a systems lens, we see that everything is interconnected, and problems are connected to many other elements within dynamic systems. If we just treat one symptom, the flow-on effects lead to burden shifting and often unintended consequences. Not only does systems thinking oppose the mainstream reductionist view, but it also replaces it with expansionism, or the view that everything is part of a larger whole and that the connections between all elements are critical. Being able to identify relationships over obvious parts, seeking to decipher the dynamics of these relationships, and then being able to interpret the underlying models that created the relationships is the foundation of thinking in systems. 

The Iceberg Model

Learning to Name and Define Systems

If you had to, what words would you use to define a system? Funnily enough, many important systems are easily identified by the word ‘system’ after them, such as respiratory, education, legal or mechanical systems. Systems are absolutely everywhere, of all manners, shapes, and sizes; from the intricate workings of your body (nervous, neurological, digestive, cardiovascular etc) to the infinite possibilities of space, our world is made up of interconnected and interdependent systems. We interact with many of these which helps us understand them intuitively, but so often is the case that we are unable to identify a system that is not obvious to us — like many of the indirect natural systems that keep us alive. This can explain a lot about how we have created so many of the environmental issues we face today!

A simple way to define a system is it will: be dynamic (constantly changing), be evolving (having emergent properties), and have a boundary (a definable limit to its internal components and processes).  Systems are essentially networks made up of nodes or agents that are linked in varied and diverse ways. By using systems thinking, we identify and understand these relationships as part of the exploration of the larger systems at play. Everything is interconnected, every system is made up of many subsystems (of which even smaller systems make these up too), and then these are also all part of much larger systems. Just as we are made up of atoms with molecules and quantum particles, problems are made up of problems within problems! Every system is like a Matryoshka doll, made up of smaller and smaller parts within a larger whole. Seeing things in this way helps to create a more flexible view of the world and the way it works, and it illuminates opportunities for addressing some of its existing and evolving problem arenas. When teaching systems thinking, I like to explain this as the ability to look through a microscope at the tiny world that makes up all matter, as well as being able to shift to the telescope and see the infinite possibilities of space and the universe. In between these two opposite perspectives, you get a more three-dimensional perspective of how the world works. 

Three Key Systems at Play

Although the world is made up of endless large and small interconnected systems, I define three key systems that make up the fundamental relationships between humans, the things we create, and our reliance on nature. These are the social systems, which are the intangible human-created relationships and culturally governing aspects such as education, government, and legal systems;  the industrial systems, which include the physical infrastructure of roads, buildings, manufacturing systems, and products that allow us to function as a society and meet our human needs, and the natural systems that are the ecosystem services which allow for the other two systems to sustain themselves, providing all the resources for humans to survive and all the raw materials for our industrial needs.  These three major systems keep the economy churning along, the world functioning for us humans, and our society operating in order (sort of, anyway!). This is, of course, a very anthropocentric point of view, one I define in order to enable people to see the deep reliance and misalignment we have with the natural systems at play. Whenever I run a workshop and we create a map of these, people often get stuck on naming all the ecosystems, but have no problem identifying social and industrial systems that they interact and rely on. 

The fascinating thing is that the social systems are the rules and structures that make up our societies — the things that we humans have created to manage ourselves — and thus, can be reconfigured within generations. They are the often unspoken rules that maintain societal norms, rituals, and behaviors, all of which reinforce the unsustainability that we have created for ourselves. The same applies to the industrial systems — they are the outcome of our collective desires for speed, access, convenience, connectivity, success, status, cleanliness, and all manners of human desires and needs. The manufactured world is just that: created, and intentionally designed to facilitate the ever-expanding suite of human needs. However, the biggest and most important system of all, the ecosystem, cannot be redesigned or restricted without it impacting all the rest, yet we treat all natural services as though they are infinite and degradable. But clean air, food, fresh water, minerals, and natural resources need to be respected and shared with all species for the collective success of the planet. 

6 Key Tools for Systems Thinking

Words have power, and in systems thinking, we use some very specific words that intentionally define a different set of actions to mainstream thinking. Words like ‘synthesis,’ ‘emergence,’ ‘interconnectedness,’ and ‘feedback loops’ can be overwhelming for some people. Since they have very specific meanings in relation to systems, allow me to start off with the exploration of six* key themes.

*There are way more than six, but I picked the most important ones that you definitely need to know. To dive deeper, check out my  'Tools for Systems Thinkers’ series on Medium. 

1. Interconnectedness

Systems thinking requires a shift in mindset, away from linear to circular. The fundamental principle of this shift is that everything is interconnected. We talk about interconnectedness not in a spiritual way, but in a biological sciences way.

Essentially, everything is reliant upon something else for survival. Humans need food, air, and water to sustain our bodies, and trees need carbon dioxide and sunlight to thrive. Everything needs something else, often a complex array of other things, to survive. Inanimate objects are also reliant on other things: a chair needs a tree to grow to provide its wood, and a cell phone needs electricity distribution to power it. So, when we say ‘everything is interconnected’ from a systems thinking perspective, we are defining a fundamental principle of life. From this, we can shift the way we see the world, from a linear, structured “mechanical worldview’ to a dynamic, chaotic, interconnected array of relationships and feedback loops. A systems thinker uses this mindset to untangle and work within the complexity of life on Earth.

2. Synthesis

In general, synthesis refers to the combining of two or more things to create something new. When it comes to systems thinking, the goal is synthesis, as opposed to analysis, which is the dissection of complexity into manageable components. Analysis fits into the mechanical and reductionist worldview, where the world is broken down into parts.

But all systems are dynamic and often complex; thus, we need a more holistic approach to understanding phenomena. Synthesis is about understanding the whole and the parts at the same time, along with the relationships and the connections that make up the dynamics of the whole.

Essentially, synthesis is the ability to see interconnectedness.

3. Emergence

From a systems perspective, we know that larger things emerge from smaller parts: emergence is the natural outcome of things coming together. In the most abstract sense, emergence describes the universal concept of how life emerges from individual biological elements in diverse and unique ways. Emergence is the outcome of the synergies of the parts; it is about non-linearity and self-organization and we often use the term ‘emergence’ to describe the outcome of things interacting together.

A simple example of emergence is a snowflake. It forms out of environmental factors and biological elements. When the temperature is right, freezing water particles form in beautiful fractal patterns around a single molecule of matter, such as a speck of pollution, a spore, or even dead skin cells. Conceptually, people often find emergence a bit tricky to get their head around, but when you get it, your brain starts to form emergent outcomes from the disparate and often odd things you encounter in the world.

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it will be a butterfly — R. Buckminster Fuller

4. Feedback Loops

Since everything is interconnected, there are constant feedback loops and flows between elements of a system. We can observe, understand, and intervene in feedback loops once we understand their type and dynamics.

The two main types of feedback loops are reinforcing and balancing. What can be confusing is a reinforcing feedback loop is not usually a good thing. This happens when elements in a system reinforce more of the same, such as population growth or algae growing exponentially in a pond. In reinforcing loops, an abundance of one element can continually refine itself, which often leads to it taking over.

A balancing feedback loop, however, is where elements within the system balance things out. Nature basically got this down to a tee with the predator/prey situation — but if you take out too much of one animal from an ecosystem, the next thing you know, you have a population explosion of another, which is the other type of feedback — reinforcing.

5. Causality

Understanding feedback loops is about gaining perspective of causality: how one thing results in another thing in a dynamic and constantly evolving system (all systems are dynamic and constantly changing in some way; that is the essence of life). 

Cause and effect are pretty common concepts in many professions and life in general — parents try to teach this type of critical life lesson to their young ones, and I’m sure you can remember a recent time you were at the mercy of an impact from an unintentional action. Causality as a concept in systems thinking is really about being able to decipher the way things influence each other in a system. Understanding causality leads to a deeper perspective on agency, feedback loops, connections, and relationships, which are all fundamental parts of systems mapping.

6. Systems Mapping

Systems mapping is one of the key tools of the systems thinker. There are many ways to map, from analog cluster mapping to complex digital feedback analysis. However, the fundamental principles and practices of systems mapping are universal. Identify and map the elements of ‘things’ within a system to understand how they interconnect, relate, and act in a complex system, and from here, unique insights and discoveries can be used to develop interventions, shifts, or policy decisions that will dramatically change the system in the most effective way.

Although this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to systems thinking, the key takeaway is that ultimately, approaching life from a systems perspective is about tackling big, messy, real world problems rather than isolating cause and effect down to a single point. In the latter case, “solutions” are often just band-aids that may cause unintended consequences, as opposed to real and holistic systemic solutions. Looking for the links and relationships within the bigger picture helps identify the systemic causes and lends itself to innovative, more holistic ideas and solutions, for a more sustainable future that works better for us all.

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If you are ready to dive deeper into the world of systems thinking, then you should take our Systems Thinking course online, or if you are a bit more advanced, then continue to leverage that knowledge in learning to design systems interventions in this course.

You can also explore the Circular Classroom, which is a free, multilingual educational resource accessible to anyone but designed specifically for students and teachers alike to integrate circular thinking into high school and upper secondary classrooms, all packaged up in a fun, beautiful format. It offers the opportunity to think differently about how we design products, how the economy works, how we meet our needs as humans, and how to support the development of more creative professional roles that help to design a future that is about social, economic, and environmental benefits — and of course, this all begins with a systems mindset. 

I explain in detail how to do many applied systems thinking practices in my Circular Systems Design handbook, and we run in-person programs at the UnSchool that equip people to become applied systems thinkers for enacting positive change in the world. 

Yes, Recycling is Broken

By Leyla Acaroglu 

This pains me to write, but we all have to come to terms with the harsh reality that recycling validates waste and is a placebo to the complex waste crisis we have designed ourselves into. The things you are separating and putting in your recycling bins are probably not being recycled — and there’s a good chance that they are ending up somewhere you never imagined. 

The current recycling crisis, where much of the diligently separated waste is not getting recycled, started in January 2018, when China announced that they would stop taking the world’s recycling through enacting their “National Sword” policy, which after more than 25 years of accepting two-thirds of the world’s plastic waste, suddenly banned the import of most plastics and other recyclable materials.  This move not only stunned the world, but it also suddenly ripped the band-aid off that was holding together recycling as a viable solution to the single-use product proliferation around the world.  

A year(ish) has passed since the new Chinese legislation came into effect, and their plastic imports have dropped by 99%, forcing the bulk of the global recyclables to be landfilled, incinerated, stockpiled on docks, cast out into the environment, or sent to other countries in the region. The latter is an equally unpopular move where many countries are now openly rejecting foreign trash.  Experts now estimate that as much as 111 million metric tons of plastic waste will be displaced by 2030. 

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’. 

There has been an unfair reliance on consumers to be the responsible parties in dealing with the rise of disposable items. This is after producers and retailers have decided, without consultation, to wrap everything in plastic or replace reusables with disposables, normalizing the use of single use items by claiming them to be more hygienic and convenient than their reusable counterparts. 

There are many coinciding aspects with how this further exacerbates the issue. For example, take the issue of contamination (one of the motivators for China to stop accepting the world’s trash): many everyday items that can’t be recycled are mixed in with recyclables. Or soiled materials, like a coffee cups or food packaging, get in with clean items and then make a mess of the rest. Then there is “wishcycling,” when people who are so conditioned to “do the right thing” that they toss whatever they wish could be recycled into the recycling bin, hoping that the trash fairy will ensure that it gets recaptured and magically turned into something useful again (another spoiler: they don’t).  Furthermore, there is no universal recycling system, nor are there practices to teach an ever increasingly globalized world how to manage the complexity of this diverse practice. Nearly every state and country has different rules about how to recycle. In some places it's rinse and separate, in others it's pop it all together (no need to rinse), and in others there are very detailed separation techniques for all the different types of plastics (identified by the small number at the base of the plastic item). So we have well-intentioned citizens getting lumped with the responsibility of deciphering what they should and should not do, whilst producers make add more complex materials to the system. Of course there are just the lazy people too, who throw whatever wherever, further increasing the contamination rates, and this just makes the cost of recycling higher and results in more recyclables ending up being dumped in landfill. 

Good intentioned and well-trained recyclers the world over are up in arms over the news reports that their hard work to get things into the right waste streams is amounting to nothing. And countries around the world are sending contaminated loads of recycling back to their parent countries — often wealthy, consuming nations like England, Canada, Australia, United States, Germany, and the rest of Europe. What we have actually created is a system of dumping a waste legacy on developing economies, as few rich countries have localized recycling facilities to coup with the amount of trash generated. 

Consumer waste and recycling is a broken system that can’t be solved by just better recycling alone. Don't get me wrong — recycling, remanufacturing, and repair all have their place in the transition to a circular and regenerative economy, but the reliance on a cure-all magic system that takes your old clamshell salad box and turns it into something just as valuable and useful is very far away from the reality of the current status quo. The undeniable issue is that we have created a disposable culture, and no amount of recycling will fix it. We need to remedy this illness at the root cause: producer-enforced disposability and the rapid increase of a throwaway culture being normal. 

The systems failure: enforced disposability & a normalized throwaway culture

Single-use throwaway stuff permeates our day-to-day lives; it's hard to avoid a coffee cup here, a plastic bag there, some wooden chopsticks at lunch, or that boxed take-out Thai food for dinner. While it’s most prevalent in the food industry — bottles, cups, lids, straws, grocery bags, produce bags, cutlery, produce wrap, and even those single-serve little sauce sachets — recently, design for disposability has moved into the medical, transport, and government sectors just as much. Over the last 60 years since the invention of cheap plastics, and even more so in the last 15 years, since the rise in the cult of busy, we have literally designed ourselves into a disposable society. 

I have written about this before in this article on Systems Failures: Planned Obsolescence and Enforced Disposability:  “Many of the goods and services we all rely on are created with the specific intent to lose value over time so that the consumer is stuck in an enforced consumption cycle, which increases value for the producer, but not for the customer nor the planet. And the cost of dealing with all of this reduced value stuff is placed back on the customer and local governments in the form of funding local waste management services.”

That’s right, the decision by a producer or even your local cafe to swap to disposables is then costing you money in either general waste (ie landfill fees) or recycling — both of which are costly aspects for local government to manage, so much so that many are ditching recycling all together! The cost of running these cumbersome recycling systems is also one of the reasons so much plastic waste is escaping into nature via the rivers and oceans of Southeast Asia, as the rapid transition to disposable plastics has not been met by an increase in municipal waste management services. 

Recently I illustrated the extent of how we don’t see the costs of invisible things in a TEDx talk in Lisbon. 


Around the world, daily options for obtaining basic needs such as food and water have dramatically changed over the last two decades, from a reusable user experiences to a crappy plastic or paper single-use disposable option. For many, it feels cheap because it is, and it feeds into the speedy convenience-fueled lifestyles that currently dominates societies. But the long-term costs are much greater than the immediate cost cutting and time-saving perceived benefits. I know there are many hygiene benefits and that the bendy plastic straw help many people in hospitals or who are disabled, I get that a disposable diaper is so much easier than washing them, but the extent of disposable single-use products is fundamentally unsustainable. And the really insidious issue here is that we are all paying for this! We pay for the cost of a disposable lifestyle embedded in the cost of these services and products, pay for it again through local taxes, and then we pay for it collectively in the loss of natural environments like beaches and waterways. We pay for it when 90% of table salt ends up filled with microplastics, and we will continue to pay for it as long as we continue to believe that there are no consequences to our disposable addictions. 

As  awareness about environmental issues associated with waste has risen, so too has the quick fix of “make it recyclable” as a solution to disposability. This has validated the production of single-use product streams. It has given way to the myth of ‘good’ (paper) and ‘bad’ (plastic) materials, which is so problematic as all materials have impacts, but it also has distracted us from the real issue all whilst more and more products and services have shifted to disposable from reusable. 

What frustrates me to no end is that so many agents in the system just deflect responsibility to other parts. The plastic manufacturers say that the brand owners don’t want to change, and the brand owners blame the customers who then blame their governments who then blame the retails or the companies, and the cycle of blame continues. The reality is that plastic is a fantastic material for durable products, like reusable packaging systems that can be easily sterilized and reused. For example, I was on a flight recently where the food was provided in a thick plastic reusable bento box that had a salad and a snack in it, no plastic packaging, simple box wrap (although they did have disposable utensils…) but it was designed to be washed and reused over and over again. Of course washing has its own impacts too, but there is always a break-even point that can be factored into the systems design. The design solutions are actually really simple and the infrastructure interventions often financially viable, but the will to make change by societies’ institutions is significantly lacking. Where are all the pioneers who will help flip the script on our disposable world?

In the meantime, the burden of change comes down to you and me and our communities to refuse unless it's reusable — to reject the system that has been thrust upon us by ditching disposables and demanding better products and services. Of course, this is difficult for many people, but each and every action you can take does send price signals through the economy. I recently heard of a large supermarket retailer trialing package-free dispensers because they saw a shift in the market, which is dictated by economic actions of people everyday. Simply put — we need a reusable revolution to get us out of the recycling mess.

The story of Recycling is the Story of Intentional Misdirection

Magicians use misdirection to direct their audience to see what they want them to see so that they can trick you into believing what they have done is really magic. This is very similar to the tactic used to get our society to a place where recycling symbolizes the height of environmentalism. Our living grandparents will laugh at the idea of waste; they will tell us that they most likely never even had a trash bin. What was life like before disposable plastic? It was a lot more washing up, by the ‘save and reuse’ practices that, just a few generations ago, were the norm quickly got designed out of the modern world with the advent of cheap disposable materials.  

The big shift towards normalized disposability was initiated in 1970, when the first Earth Day was celebrated in the US, with this famous Keep America Beautiful ad: it features an Italian-American actor poised as a Native American who sheds a single tear as an oblivious passerby chucks a bag of trash out of his car window, into the street. Playing on people’s emotions, the ad then drills a message that we still have internalized today: “People start pollution. People can stop it.” It took two sentences to shift the blame and guilt on disposable items away from the producers of the new disposable economy and onto the citizens they had thrust it upon. 

This ad and many others to come were funded by Keep America Beautiful (KAB), a front for a lobby group made up of representatives from the major beverage companies. The very strategic goal was to turn the attention away from the rising concern for the environment in a post-Vietnam era, as soda and milk bottles were swapped out from reusable ones (which cost the companies money in collecting and washing) to the disposable alternatives. The slight of hand trick was to make out as though the problem was not the calculated shift to normalizing disposability, but the acts of the individuals, who prior to this, were not used to non-biodegradable materials filling their daily lives. 

It’s valuable to interject here a comparison of a recycling system that holds manufacturers accountable, rather than consumers. Such a system can be found in Germany, who is considered to have one of the best recycling systems in the world, in which it recycles nearly 70% of its waste. Many trace this success back to a package ordinance that was passed in 1991, in which it “required manufacturers to take responsibility for the recycling of their product packaging after a consumer was finished using it. This included transportation packaging, secondary packaging (i.e., the box around soda cans) and the primary packaging (i.e., the soda can).” Then, in 1996, the Closed Substance Cycle and Waste Management Act was established, and it “applies to anyone that produces, markets or consumes goods and dictates that they are responsible for the materials’ reuse, recycling or environmentally sound disposal. This act particularly targeted producers and encouraged them to focus on one of three waste management strategies: waste avoidance, waste recovery and environmentally compatible disposal.” 

The contrast in policy and in recycling success rates here further solidifies that manufacturers should be held accountable for packaging and that the solution is sustainable, circular design. 

Redesigning systems: what happens now?

Now that China is no longer accepting the world’s recycling waste, we need to have more efficient localized recycling systems in places that help to close the loop and bring about the transition to the circular economy. The challenge is how can you help make that happen?  Additionally, closed loop service provision systems like the recently launched Loop, will help dramatically eliminate single use packaging at least. 

We are always finding ways to help people make positive change at the UnSchool and overcoming the inertia that often seeps in when problems of this magnitude are presented. So, here are some really good first steps you can start with. Individual lifestyle swaps: get some small wins under your belt to motivate you and influence others around you, by refusing single-use, taking your own, asking for reusables, or refusing to buy something. This has positive ripple effects, as the more people who see a new practice, the more normal it becomes in society at large. It might seem futile, but bigger systemic impacts come through the regular consumption choices we make everyday. Look also at what you can do it your professional life by letting your workplace know you want to help them swap from disposables to reusables.  Enough people doing this in the world at large will redesign the normalization habits of hyper-disposability so that it goes out with the trash. 

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If you want to get started on designing for a circular future, you can download our FREE Post Disposable Activation Kit, a set of free tools that we designed to help you activate your leadership and make lifestyle shifts for a post disposable future, read my book on circular systems design, listen to this great podcast from the 99% Invisible, or come to an in-person program at the UnSchool to activate your agency and learn the skills of creative changemaking.

Unlocking the Power of Systems Thinking

By Leyla Acaroglu

I have long been a fan of showing how problem solving desperately needs systems thinking. If you are familiar with my work, you may have already seen the series I wrote on Systems Thinking, but let me share the personal experience in how I came to uncover the power of thinking in systems,  the insights that I gleaned from seeing the world through a series of interconnected systems at play, and some reflections on how this has helped me make more positive change through my creative work. 

I first encountered systems thinking as a practice around 8 years ago just as I started my PhD, and it completely blew my mind. I was going a bit mad at the time, as researching a PhD tends to result in some strange deep dives into all sorts of tangential aspects of your professional practice. At that time, I was exploring many of the adjacent fields to my actual area of study — sustainable design. This could otherwise be called procrastination, but I like to call it productive distraction. Days would start with looking into some more sustainable material processes and then I would end up looking into fractals, Newtonian physics, reductionisum, Lakoff’s work on metaphors... and then somehow in one of these Internet binges, I ended up in the world of systems and the fascinating transition from the mechanical worldview (thanks in part to Newton) through to the evolution of biology as a field of science which helped to form the foundations of understanding the interconnected systems that make life possible, which in turn helped to form the field of systems dynamics.

I then realized just how mechanistic my own thinking was, and in turn how this dominate worldview, that the world operates like a well-oiled machine, was supporting many of the reductive and damaging practices that sustainability was trying to resolve. So doing something about that became a new priority, and still is to this day.

Everything is interconnected

I remember spending one particular weekend locked in my apartment, watching every single documentary I could find about fractals, self-similarity, and the science of interconnectedness and basically nerding out on the relationships between everything. I found this beautiful introduction by Kauffman, and it was like a Disney movie in my mind where all the pieces of a puzzle magically came together in a Gestalt-esque moment of interconnectedness. I had been existentially  grappling with how to rationalize the randomness of so many of the problems/issues that I was wanting to be apart of changing, and then it all just slotted into a place as I started to see that everything as part of interconnected, interdependent systems, and that we are all affected by, and in turn, influencing them. 

To say my brain fell in love is an understatement. 

Hungry for more, I went on a knowledge scavenger hunt finding Russell Ackoff’s videos on YouTube (I consider him the best speaker on systems thinking. Ever.) and reading Peter Senge, Donella Meadows, and anyone else who had written on the topic in the last 25 years (quick side note, biologist von Bertalanffy, is credited as coming up with general systems theory, however did not uncover his work much later on).

All this cemented the realization that everything was interconnected and that in order to leverage creativity while working in sustainability — actually, in order to do just about anything — one needs to know how to see, identify, and think in systems. It also made me acutely aware of the diversity of explanations and approaches to systems thinking. Some are super obtuse and hard to penetrate, leaning more towards the engineering side of things, whereas other theorists are more lenient on their readers, prioritizing clarity rather than complexity (even though complexity is a critical part of systems thinking!). Take Meadows, for example — a fantastic systems thinker, but the entire first chapter of her book focuses on bathtubs as an analogy for systems dynamics. It might just be me, but it really did take some time for my brain to get what she was saying! And now? Well I can’t get in a tub without thinking about stocks and flows!

So started my love affair with this practice and my desire to figure out how to bring it into the design world. I developed a class for the university I was teaching at called ‘Systems Thinking for Designers’, and my students and I looked at how systems thinking could positively impact the design process.

Then, through my PhD, I began exploring nodal transfers as a theory of change and overlaying this new holistic worldview with my training as a sociologist. Years earlier, I had started to work in the extrapolated version of life cycle assessment, life cycle thinking, so adding the systems element to the understanding of how things impact each other in the linear supply chain was really empowering. Suddenly, the everyday impacts of how material flows were intersecting with the cultural layers of social interactions, the power plays, and the systems dynamics all become more accessible as the transition to focusing on relationships and non-obvious elements in a system become more prominent for me. I really could see how the multi-layers of social, industrial, and ecological activities intersect, impact, and, ultimately, change one another.  

Fast forward a few years, I had finished my PhD (thank gosh) and founded the UnSchool of Disruptive Design in NYC. I now had the big challenge of distilling all these years of research,  into engaging, shareable, and practical tools that would support others in picking up the systems mindset. I started to develop all sorts of systems mapping activities for workshops and refined the ones we now share — cluster mapping and the adapted interconnected circles maps. I advanced my life cycle thinking activities, as well as added X-maps into the mix,  and now we have a suite of tools at UnSchool Online that thousands of people around the world use to help them learn to love a problem, see the relationships before trying to solve said problem, and identify the areas where they can intervene within their agency and resources.

For me though, the most powerful thing is the moment when your brain just starts to see systems rather than the obvious things that we are trained to see. Sounds cheesy but it is really a superpower that anyone can access with a bit of training and overcoming the reductive mindsets that we were all taught in our linear education systems.

In order to overcome the global issues we are challenged with,  we need to change the linear, reductionist, status quo abiding thinking that reinforces breaking the world down into manageable chunks that can be controlled, where issues are attempted to be dealt with in isolation. What we need is to shift from a linear and reductionist dominant mindset to dynamic circular systems thinking. 

Why Systems Thinking is So Powerful?

Right now, there is no shortage of big complex messy social, political, and environmental problems that need to be addressed, from climate change to the rise in racism, homelessness, child exploitation, global politics and climate change. Taking a systems approach allows for a dynamic and intimate understanding of the elements and agents at play within the problem arena, enabling anyone to identify opportunities for intervention.

These tools are critical to overcoming the reductive mindset we were all taught in school — a mindset that teaches us to break the world down into individual and manageable parts, rather than see the complex, interconnected whole. But here’s the thing: problems never exist in isolation, they are always surrounded by other problems. The more you can comprehend the granulation and context of a problem, the greater your chances are of finding a truly effective solution that is within your capacity to enact. Problems are just unaddressed opportunities waiting for a creative mind/s to tackle them. 

The good news is that undoing linear and rigid thinking is pretty easy because, thankfully, humans naturally have a curious and intuitive understanding of complex, dynamic, and interconnected systems that make up the world around us. So, it’s really not that hard to rewire the thinking codes from linear to expanded, from 1-dimensional to 3-dimensional thinking. It’s one of the reasons I developed the Disruptive Design Method, which is a three-part approach to learning to love problems and dive under the obvious to explore the dynamics of an issue before attempting to build a solution to address it. 

The three stages of the DDM are Mining, Landscaping and Building

Leadership and Systems Thinking 

Without a doubt, the best leaders and problem solvers are systems thinkers, as they are naturally seeking out how parts fit within a complex whole and looking for the interconnectedness of issues and elements within a system. Understanding that the health of a system is defined by its diversity means that we avoid designing homogeneous systems, and instead we see flourishing complex robust systems. Furthermore, leaders who possess a systems mindset are more flexible and divergent in their solutionizing around issues that they face; they embrace curiosity and ask questions before trying to provide answers. As a result, outcomes are less likely to lead to unintended consequences or transference the issue to somewhere else in the system (shifting the burden). When solutions are systemic in nature they address the root cause instead of the obvious symptoms of a problem set. Critically, they know that the smallest part of the system has the power to make the most change, the challenge is finding that sweet intervention spot. 

In short, systems thinking helps unlock creativity and provide a fertile breeding ground for completely flipping your mind upside down and inside out, in the best possible way. Embracing this systems approach will help you evolve problems into effective, sustainable solutions and empower your agency to affect positive change.  

Future Thinking

I truly believe that thinking in systems  is the one core skill needed for being a leader in this next century. There is a strong  relationship between the reductive linear economy that is causing so much of the ecological and social exploitation and the reductive thinking that currently dominate our companies and governments. I see the failures of GDP and the non-inclusion of environmental services in our economic system. I can see how recycling validates waste, and that laying blame outside of our jurisdictions helps us all avoid making change. 

No matter how big the problem, the complex problem-loving mindset that systems thinking has given me is like a secret weapon of hope and possibility against all the negativity and merchants of doom that increasingly dominate the media landscape. When there is no blame, there is so much space for exploration, curiosity, and creativity. Personally, I think one of our biggest challenges of our time is the collective hope deficit, and embracing systems thinking helps to overcome that.  

The tools included in the Disruptive Design Method help me rise above the despair (right after I have had a good cathartic complaint session first), but the possibility for change is just as real as the catastrophic predictions, because everything is interconnected, the future is undefined, and the possibilities for creative change are endless —  if you just know how to see, value, and work within the systems that sustain us all. 

My hope for the future is that we, as societies, start to embrace more complex understanding of the world we have the pleasure of living in, that we see systems instead of silos, and adopt changes to education universally that teach the tools for the future, not the past and that we find ways of being a regenerative force on this beautiful magical planet we all share.

I’ll leave you with 6 insights that I have gleaned from embracing a systems mindset that hopefully will pique your curiosity and help you to fall in love with systems thinking like I did: 

1. Everything is interconnected. There is no blame because everything is connected to everything else

2. Today’s problems are often a result of yesterday’s solutions

3. You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that caused it

4. Easy solutions can lead to negative impacts elsewhere

5. The easy way out often leads back in 

6. Systems are dynamic and constantly changing, and therefore we can all change them too!

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Where to get started? I have written a short 11 Key Principles of Systems Thinking. You can also take our Systems Thinking course online and then continue to leverage that knowledge in learning to design systems interventions in this course.

You can also explore the Circular Classroom, which is a free, multilingual educational resource accessible to anyone but designed specifically for students and teachers alike to integrate circular thinking into high school and upper secondary classrooms, all packaged up in a fun, beautiful format. It offers the opportunity to think differently about how we design products, how the economy works, how we meet our needs as humans, and how to support the development of more creative professional roles that help to design a future that is about social, economic, and environmental benefits — and of course, this all begins with a systems mindset. 

Apply to join our 7-day adventure into systems thinking, sustainability and design as tools for activating positive change with our fellowship program happening this November in Kuching, Malaysia. 

Will Global Plastic Bans Work?

By Leyla Acaroglu

The lightweight and easy-to-produce nature of plastic has made it globally ubiquitous in a bazillion forms. As we are all becoming too aware, these cheap conveniences have negative impacts on the natural world and there is a growing trend in public policy actions to ban certain plastic products. Whilst there are complexities in implementing bans, there is an interesting conversation to be had on how different countries around the world are taking legislative action to discourage the use of some types of disposable plastics (like bags, cutlery, and styrofoam containers), and how impactful this is for activating change and moving toward a circular economy.

The Issue

Today, the average North American or European person consumes 100 KGs of plastic each year, and half of the world’s plastic has been produced in the last 12-15 years. The statistics on just how many disposable plastics are used and end up polluting the environment are staggering. With four trillion single-use plastic bags being used around the world each year, we are drowning in plastic waste. With a collapsing recycling industry, there is clearly a strong need for a systems change to support the functional delivery that plastic products bring us, but without all the disposable consequences.

As you can imagine, things aren't always as simple as they seem on face value. Banning bags and straws can help in some ways to curb the tsunami of plastic waste, but bans alone will not address the real underlying issue: the global normalization of disposability and expectation of convenience that has become a central aspect of our fast-paced, hyper-consumption-fueled lives. Furthermore there is the important question, of what replaces the plastic products, and what impact these alternatives have?

Just some of the bans include: European Union, Mexico City, New York, Kenya, United Kingdom, and Costa Rica to name just a few. The World Economic Forum counts 127 countries with active bag regulations in place.

15 single-use plastic issues

1. 91% of plastic waste isn’t recycled (source)

2. Only 1% of plastic bags are returned for recycling (source)

3. It costs retailers in the US alone $4 billion to give away “free” bags (source)

4. 12 million barrels of oil are required each year to make plastic bags for the U.S (source)

5. There is more micro-plastic in the ocean than there are stars in the Milky Way (source)

6. 8 million tons of plastic flow into the ocean each year (source)

7. As many as 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world's beaches (source)

8. Ingestion of plastic kills an estimated 1 million marine birds

9. Ingestion of plastic kills an estimated 100,000 marine animals each year (source)

10. There are 46,000 pieces of plastic in each square mile of ocean on average (source)

11. 1 million plastic bottles are bought every minute around the world — and that number will top half a trillion by 2021 (source)

12. The average person eats 70,000 micro-plastics each year (source)

13. The top three contributors of micro plastic waste in the oceans are car tires, fibres from wash cloths, and small plastic beads from body care products (source)

14. If plastic consumption increases at its current rate, by 2050 there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills (source)

15. Scientists have found plastic in human poop (source)

The thing that makes plastic so incredible as an ‘everything-material’ is the same reason it's a nightmare for the natural environment —  it's lightweight and indestructible. The lightweightness means that bags and bottles blow out of trash cans, and float on the ocean surface until they land on beaches. The indestructible part means that the stuff stays around for a very long time. The actual number of years it takes for plastic to break down is unknown, as all plastic in the world has only been around since the 1960’s when we started to mass produce it for everything.

The Changes

We are in the middle of not just a backlash to disposable plastics, but a significant cultural shift and transition to a circular economy that even has the Queen of England on board with the need to detox from disposable plastic.  She recently announced that Buckingham Palace will go plastic free after watching David Attenborough’s Blue Planet series! 18 months ago, China introduced a ban on all imported plastic waste, which has sent the global plastic recycling market into a tailspin. To get a full rundown on this, listen to this fantastic podcast on 99% invisible that explains the history of plastic straws and the public health concerns that fuelled their mass appeal in the U.S.

The mounting issues are encouraging countries and companies around the world to respond to consumer outcry about not just waste washing up on beaches, but on enforced disposable culture that we are now entrenched in. There are many reasons why we need systems change for a post disposable future and a circular economy.  

The Bans

The European Union just banned a list of 10 everyday disposable plastic products (interesting they avoided bags!?), and there are hundreds of various types of bans in place around the world, ranging from microbeads to expanded polystyrene (EPS) to single-use plastic bags, straws, cups, and utensils.

There are many different ways countries are legislating disposable plastics. Some have a total ban, which basically says if you are caught with these items you are in deep doo doo. Kenya, for example, has the highest with a $38,000 fine if you are caught with a plastic bag (which incidentally has created a fascinating black market for bags).

Taxation is also used to disincentivize product use; often referred to as a “bag tax”, countries like Australia, Sweden, the UK, and many more are using this approach. This is a bit of an easy way out - in a user-pays system, many people with the means will continue to pay the small inconvenience tax (often around 5 or 10 cents), whilst people who are less economically mobile will be burdened with the cost. Then there are also partial bans where certain regions within a country have imposed bans.For example, in the US there is not a total ban of plastic bags, but there are cities that have total bans (like San Francisco). This also applies, in some countries, to plastic bans in religious, historic, or natural sites, as in the states of Goa and Gujarat in India.

Do Bans Work?

Banning plastic cuts off the problem at the source, so at face value, and according to statistics, these bans present an effective and sustainable solution. For example, some widely shared figures tout that Ireland’s bag tax that was imposed in 2002 has led to a 85% reduction in plastic bag litter there. And, according to reports from San Jose, California, their 2011 ban has led to plastic litter reduction of “approximately 89 percent in the storm drain system, 60 percent in the creeks and rivers, and 59 percent in City streets and neighborhoods.”

While these numbers seem promising, things start to get a little more complex when you examine them through a systems mindset. Bans can misdirect the perception of what the problem is; in the case of bags, it vilifies plastic, but many of the alternatives put in place do not fit into a circular economy and are equally as problematic from a whole systems perspective. Paper bags are not as strong, so they are often double bagged. When you look at all the processes that go into making them (such as growing trees, cutting them, bleaching and processing them, and then manufacturing the bag), you start to see that there are ecological impacts at other parts of the system.

Additionally, we’re beginning to see plastic sales increase in other areas as an unintended consequence of bag bans; in California, for example, plastic garbage bag sales increased 120%! This is due to consumers needing bags for things they previously reused their plastic grocery bags for, like collecting household waste and picking up pet waste.

The issue with all of these products being banned is the disposability of them. Paper straws or wooden chopsticks may conjure up more eco-friendly sentiments, but they still cause significant issues when they are designed for single-use outcomes. Banning one product breeds a market for a new one, and then the question is in whether the new one will end up being better than the last disposable item. That is the sustainability question that needs to be answered from the start as we move toward circular design solutions that fit into a circular economy.

Even with items that are designed to be reused, like cotton tote bags, we have to be mindful of the life cycle impacts here too. The Danish Government recently published a LCA of grocery bags, in which they found that you’d have to use an organic cotton tote bag 20,000 times more than a plastic grocery bag in order for it to be better for the environment due to cotton manufacturing impacts like water use, damage to ecosystems, air pollution, and more.

Bans are also interesting to consider from a behavioral perspective. On one hand, they create a new type of normal for people and allow society to shift perspectives on certain things — like the fact that hyper-disposable products are not good for any of us. Bans also force innovation, as people will have to find new ways of meeting their needs. But on the other hand, when something becomes harder to get, it makes it more valuable, which leads to a rise in workarounds to getting the thing that is no longer readily available. What is even more interesting is the physiology of bans — people get really irate when they have something taken away from them. In both Singapore and Australia, for instance, there was a big controversy when the supermarkets tried to ban bags, and a small percentage of very vocal people claimed this was a violation of their rights.

Dissecting the issues with plastic bans here at a high level reinforces the need to examine problems and proposed interventions through a systems lens and a life-cycle perspective in order to avoid creating more problems. While the destruction imposed by plastic makes us all want to jump to a quick-fix-solution, we need to suspend the need to solve and reframe the conversation by emphasizing the real issue of disposability.  

Only time will tell if bans help ensure the disruptive shifts we need to get to a better future, but in the meantime, we can all examine how we contribute to disposability in our lives and implement micro-actions to support a sustainable future. As for bags, the best answer for now is simply to reuse the bags you have, no matter what type, over and over and over again. For some ideas on getting started with a post disposable lifestyle that fits into the future circular economy, download our free Post Disposable Activation Kit at UnSchool Online. or take our class on sustainability that covers life cycle thinking.

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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!