Alumni Neha Rao: Sustainable Textile Design with Hemp & Soot

Sustainable textile designer Neha Rao

Neha, a sustainable textile designer who is currently based in Mumbai, found out about the UnSchool from one of our other alumni, Priyam, who came to the Berlin fellowship and then went on to become our host on the Mumbai fellowship.

All of our alumni are eligible to host or volunteer on other programs. Sometimes they do so because they want to know “how the magic is made”, while other times it’s because they want to share the incredible experience with others, such as when our alumni become hosts and invite us to their city (as was the case with alumnus Lymun in our upcoming Kuching Fellowship!). And, as part of our new certification system, co-hosting is part of the learning experience. 

When Neha found out about our Cape Town fellowship, she arranged to crowdfund her way from Mumbai in order to participate in the exciting program. Her campaign successfully supported more than half her costs, and she was able to join the incredible cohort. Already deeply interested and involved in sustainability projects, Neha was an insightful and valuable contribution to the group, and later she was also featured on one of the UnSchool sessions of the DIF.

We caught up with her last month to find out more about her new projects and how the UnSchool has helped her activate her changemaking abilities.

Please give us an introduction to yourself and your work:

I am Neha Rao, a sustainable textile designer, currently based in Mumbai.  I currently work with Bombay Hemp Company, India's premier industrial hemp and cannabis organization that provides hemp-based products through sustainable agriculture and artisan empowerment. I am in charge of the fabric department called Hemp Fabric Lab. 

Soot print on reused silk
Image: Neha Rao
Model: Simoul Alva

My experience in the fashion industry changed my perspective. This firsthand experience in this highly-polluting industry made me more passionate about becoming an active change agent. I researched more about sustainability, particularly the materials and the impact of textile techniques on the environment, as well as the social and cultural impacts, including the effect on human behavior. The basic goal of this exploration was to bring a concrete shift in perspective. The creative outcome of this research was the project 'SOOT'. 

Gradations
Image: Neha Rao

What motivates you to do the work that you do?

As a textile designer, my goal was to put the brakes on disposable and environment-degrading fashion. A majority of the printing and dyeing on the garments we so frequently wear and dispose of is achieved through toxic chemical dyes that pollute our waterways. Driven by the desire to find an alternative to noxious chemicals and fast fashion, I converted soot, a common air pollutant, into a non-toxic printing dye for garments.

Soot printed upholstery
Image: Kartik Krishna
Furniture design in collaboration with Aaditya Chilpulkar

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

I found about UnSchool via a close friend Priyam Vadaliya, who has been an integral part of the USschool fellowship previously. Since then I have followed  UnSchool closely. I was at a juncture in life where I felt I needed help with career expansion and exercise design thinking principles, and I wanted to get a fresh perspective and collaborate on new projects.

What was your experience at the UnSchool like?

The UnSchool fellowship helped me immensely, as it is a platform where people from different fields participate. It made the knowledge sharing experience so rich and varied. The insights and experiences gained during this program improved my capability of problem-solving and helped me to achieve my goal of being a sustainable changemaker. During the program, there was sharing and exchanging of varied ideas. Everyone in this network was so passionate about the work they do and eager to learn. I did feel it was an intense 7 days, after which there was a sense of achievement. I was like a sponge absorbing information and ideas as much as I could.

The Cape Town Fellowship Cohort and Team

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

Changemakers from different walks of life have really inspired me in multiple ways. I felt nothing is impossible. I can make a difference in my own way and that one should not be restricted by an idea but should explore methods to expand the application. 

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

I am the first and only textile designer in India working on converting industrial pollutant waste by-product into a value-added resource with principles of sustainability & circular economy via fabric & paper printing applications, currently developing intelligent apparel with Graphitic advance material. In this one year, I was fortunate to get commissioned work from different artists and designers. From fabrics to now paper, I am able to expand my technique. I feel I have more clarity as to how I wish to sustain this project. 

My job at Bombay Hemp Company is to enable the makers and creators to adopt this sustainable material — hemp. I have been able to apply my learnings to research, marketing, product development, sales, education, etc.; in short, my role is multifaceted. My current project at HFL is to train the handloom weavers in the Northern part of India to achieve a lighter weight of hemp handloom fabrics and also includes exploring sustainable practices and processes, achieving unique blends. Hemp Handloom is an under-explored market at the moment and I’m hoping that this step goes a long way to improve sustainable practices.    

“I felt nothing is impossible. I can make a difference in my own way and that one should not be restricted by an idea but should explore methods to expand the application.”

— Neha Rao

How did the UnSchool help you start/evolve it?

After UnSchool, the Disruptive Design Methods have become ingrained in my design processes. I feel my methodology and approach to problem-solving irrespective of the magnitude of the problem has developed towards a more holistic approach.  

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

I am a member of a zero waste group. This group is a constant source of inspiration where we share and exchange ideas to inculcate and promote a zero-waste lifestyle. Although, I would say I haven't reached the ideal zero-waste lifestyle. I am trying to make those small switches in my lifestyle. One of my peers made a very strong case that in order to make these changes one has to start with what is the most difficult and sensitive area and slowly work towards the ultimate goal. The concept of zero waste resonates with my earlier project on Soot. This past year has been life-changing. Post UnSchool, I have been more involved with sharing my knowledge with individuals at school, colleges, and at the peer group level. 

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

Please feel free to reach out to me on the following platform:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neharao5

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sootbyneharao/

Blog: https://sootcolourant.wordpress.com

Anatomy of Action: The many ways to have fun!

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

Action 1: Enjoy the Journey

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

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

#EnjoyTheJourney Everyday Actions

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

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

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

4. Visit fewer places but stay longer in each

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

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

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

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

Action 2: Stay Curious

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

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

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

#StayCurious Everyday Actions

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

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

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

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

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

6. Foster an open and independent mindset

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

8. Learn new things through formal and informal education 
   
   

Action 3: Choose Experiences

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

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

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

#ChooseExperiences Everyday Actions

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

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

3. Spend more time connecting with nature and natural spaces 

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

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

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

7. Pursue purpose and passions, not possessions

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

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

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

Anatomy of Action: Money, Money Money

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

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

Action 1: Ethical Investment

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

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

#EthicalInvesting Everyday Actions: 

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

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

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

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

5. Invest in goods and services produced in sustainable ways

6. Never invest in products made from endangered wildlife

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

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

9. Pay taxes to help build your community

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

Action 2: Divestment

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

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

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

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

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

#Divestment Everyday Actions

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

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

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

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

5. Divest from fossil fuel or unethical companies 

Action 3: Energy Positive Homes

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

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

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

#EnergyPositiveHomes Everyday Actions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anatomy of Action: On How We Move

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

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

Action 1: Keep Active

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

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

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

#KeepActive Everyday Actions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action 2: Share your Ride

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

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

#ShareYourRide Everyday Actions

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

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

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

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

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

Action 3: Go Cleaner

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

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

#GoCleaner Everyday Actions

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

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

3. Swap short distance drives for alternative modes of transport 

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

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

6. Swap your fossil fuel car to an electric one

7. Use cleaner fuel when you can

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

Why the AoA?

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

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

Anatomy of Action: Getting to grips with STUFF!

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

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

Action 1: Beyond Buying 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#BeyondBuying Everyday Actions: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action 2: Fashion Slow Down

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

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

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

#FashionSlowdown Everyday Actions

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action 3: Ditch Disposables

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

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

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

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

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

#DitchDisposables Everyday Actions:

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

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

3. Carry your own vessel for water and hot drinks 

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

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

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

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

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

Why the AoA?

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

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

Anatomy of Action: Thumbs up for Food!

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

ACTION 1: PROTEIN SWAP 

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

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

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

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

#ProteinSwaps Everyday Actions

1. Swap animal protein for more plant-based proteins 

2. Diversify your diet and cook more at home

3. Eat what is seasonally available 

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

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

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

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

ACTION 2: USE ALL YOUR FOOD

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

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

#UseAllYourFood Everyday Actions

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Make stock out of food scraps 

8. Compost your food scraps 

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

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

ACTION 3: GROW YOUR OWN

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

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

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

#GrowYourOwn Everyday Actions

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

2. Start or join an urban school or kitchen garden

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

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

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

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

FOOD!

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

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

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

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

Introducing our UNEP collaboration: The Anatomy of Action

By Leyla Acaroglu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five More Years! Five More Years!

By Leyla Acaroglu

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

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

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

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

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

Why start a school for adults? 

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

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

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

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

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

The Pain and Joy of Starting Something New

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What I have learned

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

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

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

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

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

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

AND a big thank you to all these INCREDIBLE humans!

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

THANK YOU, TO EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU!

2015 New York Fellowship

2015 Mexico City Fellowship

2016, Melbourne Fellowship

2016 São Paulo Fellowship

2016 Berlin Fellowship

2017 Christchurch Fellowship

2017 San Francisco Fellowship

2017 Mumbai Fellowship

2018 Cape Town Fellowship

The Three Pillars of UnSchool’s Philosophy: Systems, Sustainability and Design

If you’ve been keeping up with our work at The UnSchool, then you already know that we are all about activating systems change for a sustainable future by design. We work with people of all professional and personal backgrounds to support the rapid transition to being an activated creative changemaker. 

Our approach is deeply rooted in a philosophy of systems, sustainability, and design, forming three knowledge pillars that hold up all that we do. All of our programs, projects, and practices have systems thinking, sustainability sciences, and creative design solutions at the heart. These three pillars wraps up into the Disruptive Design Method, which is a scaffolding that enables people to think and do differently when it comes to understanding and working to help solve complex problems. In fact, we LOVE problems and embrace chaos and complexity at the UnSchool, helping others do the same!

In this week’s journal, we are exploring in more detail our three pillars of Systems, Sustainability, and Design. 

SYSTEMS 

The world is made up of complex, interconnected, and interdependent systems, starting with the most important life-sustaining systems of all, the ecological system, Planet Earth, which is made up of the billions of individual yet interconnected parts that form the magical whole that we are all a part of. Earth's natural systems provide every single living thing with the resources needed to exist, and thus, it is in our fundamental needs to create things that meet our needs within the opportunities and limitations of Earth. 

We live within a set of complex social systems that subtly govern human society, from education to government and everything in between. Social systems are emergent outcomes of our collective desires for success as a species. Social systems breed the human-created industrial systems that work tirelessly to manufacture the needs of our desires, and yet so many of us are oblivious to how they work and what impacts they have. It's often at the point of these systems intersecting with nature, where we mine resources to obtain the raw materials required to make all the products we use, that we see many of our environmental and social problems evolve. The industrial system brings all the wonderful tools of modernity at the expense of the natural systems that we all need.  

Understanding and working within the multi-level perspectives that systems thinking enables is fundamental not only for making change, but also for being an active participant in the world and the design of a future we all want to live in.  We use systems mapping and life cycle mapping to explore these connections, and one of the key tools we use for this is the three systems at play map (see above). This particular map helps people identify the types of systems that we humans have designed, as well as how they connect to the industrial systems we have created to meet our social needs. Mapping connections here demonstrates the reliance and destruction of the ecological systems that sustain the rest of the systems. 

Within the Disruptive Design Methodology knowledge set, there are several systems-based classes: Systems Thinking; Language, Influence, and Effect; and Systems Interventions.  

SUSTAINABILITY 

The ability to sustain life on Earth requires us to work within both the systems that nature evolved as well as the human-formed systems of society and industry. We all rely on natural systems for survival, which means that the imperative to enact sustainability is within all of us. No one can opt out of breathing, consuming nutrient-dense food, or drinking H20, so we are all implicated in figuring out how humanity can be a regenerative force on this shared planet, rather than continuing to extract and exploit the natural systems that sustain us. 

The fundamental quest of our time is to figure out how to transform our global economy and society from a linear one based on value loss and waste creation to a circular economy built on regeneration, sustainability, and value-gaining systems. The knowledge and power we have acquired through the industrial and technical revolutions have formed the tension between nature and our human needs, but now we can transition to meeting our needs within the boundaries and systems of nature, if of course, we have the tools to understand, participate, and contribute back more than we take. That is the essence of the sustainability concept, doing more with less, and understanding how the planet works so that we can participate within its means and evolve from an extraction-based society to a regenerative one. 

At the UnSchool, we embed sustainability into everything that we do, from  post-disposable considerations in all our programs and our food philosophy through to our new farm-based rural regeneration campus. We don’t get everything right, but we are on a constant journey of figuring out how to do things in a more sustainable way; for example, we are currently exploring our digital footprint and developing a zero waste digital communication strategy as we recently discovered just how much of an impact each video watched and email sent has on our carbon emissions. 

Learn more about sustainable practices in our Sustainability and Sustainable Design & Production courses. 

DESIGN 

Design is a powerful silent social scripture that surrounds us at all times; it influences our lives from the moment we are born until the day we die. Everything, absolutely everything that we encounter in our day-to-day interactions with the world is by design, and thus can be re-designed to meet our needs in more elegant, sustainable, and sophisticated ways. That’s why we have the Disruptive Design Method as a tool to support anyone being able to contribute to designing a future that works better than today!

To form usable goods and provide services, design takes all the materials and resources it needs from nature. Therefore, every action we take has an impact on the natural world, so designing better products, services, and systems is one of the critical tools for bringing about a circular, sustainable, and regenerative future. 

Our current global condition of designing for disposability, overexploiting and undervaluing the raw materials and formed goods created in this industrial system perpetuates the unsustainability of our species, but through circular systems design, we can turn the tides on this trend. From this foundational perspective of design, we can approach the needs and reconfigure value to work within the natural systems that are required to sustain life on Earth, designing goods and services that not only meet human needs and desires in beautiful ways, but also add value back to the system that gives us all life, and support environmental regeneration. 

The Three Pillars, Combined

The combination of these three pillars make up the foundational tools for thinking and doing differently, for understanding complexity, and for developing the propositions for a better future by design. With systems, sustainability, and design at our core, we design systems of learning and positive impact that maximize social, economic, and environmental sustainability through the understanding of the complex interconnected systems at play in the world around us. This enables us to design experiences that maximize positive change. 

We translate these into all sorts of different things, reconfiguring our content and unique tools into learning systems like the Circular Classroom, our Fellowship Programs, and even our Living Learning Lab in Portugal. The beauty of having integrity-based models like this is that they hold regardless of the difficulties that you face, and for us at the UnSchool, our goal is to activate and equip people with the tools they need to agentize themselves to make more positive change in the world. 

Agency is the outcome of learning applicable tools that you can activate in your world, and the one thing we need more of is people willing to take action to solve the complex problems we all face. If you are keen to make change, you don’t need to come to the UnSchool to do so, all you need to do is get started! But if you want to get the tools to make change, understand how to design positive interventions an be a force for good, then we have you covered at the UnSchool!

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. 

Are we exploiting empathy?

By Leyla Acaroglu

Empathy, a term that was first brought into the English language in 1908, has become somewhat of a hot topic in design and business circles of late. A key part of the process of design thinking and human-centered design, it seems that “more empathy” has become the go-to solution for a myriad of problems, becoming a key part of the mainstream conversation around improving relationships and making better products and services. From better leadership, improved bedside manner for doctors, more progressive politics, and a fix for social crises like refugee relocation and homelessness, the call for more empathy is everywhere. Some schools, like this one in Denmark, are even teaching empathy in their curriculum in hopes of creating happier, kinder adults. But with considerable ethical and social implications, empathy as a tool for engaging with humans is a bit of a complex space, one that offers up many ethical issues that need some deeper exploration of this all-too-human experience.

What is empathy, and how does it affect the human experience? 

By now, you may have already seen Dr. Brene Brown’s work on empathy, especially since she has a new Netflix talk out at the moment that also dives into shame and compassion. If you have never heard of her, then you should at least check out the short video below, which illustrates the difference between empathy and sympathy and highlights the pitfalls in getting these valuable human experiences mixed up. 

Empathy is defined as the ability to feel, see, and understand the feelings of others. But empathy has a very clear physiological and neurological side to the experience (which, by the way, is a fascinating scientific process). We connect with the feelings of others because we are social beings that benefit from empathizing with those around us. In fact, our brains have mirror neurons, whereby our minds mimic the actions and facial expressions of those people we see and interact with so that we are more connected. 

Evolution has served us well when it comes to ensuring that we connect with our fellow humans. You may be one of those people that feels like vomiting when you see someone else doing it, or perhaps tears well when you hear of a friend’s pain. These are all triggered by the vagus nerve, which supports the biophysical reaction that makes up the empathetic responses we have. The vagus nerve runs down the spinal column and connects the emotional center of your brain to all the primary organs in your body, which then interprets things you see into feelings that trigger physical reactions — like vomiting or crying, or even that pang your get in your guts when you hear of a tragedy that doesn't affect you, but you can feel the loss and grief of others. 

Empathy is a cornerstone of the mammalian experience (humans are not the only ones who show prosocial behavior connected to empathy!), as it supports social bonding and builds connections by helping to identify with another’s pain or pleasure so that we can find common spaces and provide support when needed. However, there is a rising trend in misusing this powerful human connection tool to sell more products. 

Exploiting Empathy

Google search ‘empathy map’ and you will find a simple canvas used by design and marketing teams that doesn't really involve engaging with real humans most of the time. Instead, it is used to imagine a potential customer’s emotional space in relation to your product or service. Stage one of the design thinking process is to empathize with your ‘user’ by way of basic interviews and ‘putting yourself in the shoes of others’ by observing and gaining insights into how they feel or think of whatever problem you are attempting to solve. You can read more about the process in over at IDEO or d.School.

This approach to empathy has it diluted down to the sum of its parts — not as a complex holistic experience that considers the emotional, physiological, and deeply critical interpersonal experiences which have effects on people's emotional states and worldviews. Instead, it’s being leveraged to exploit people’s needs in order to sell them more stuff — stuff they may not actually need, nor perhaps can afford, because when we feel like someone understands us and we feel connected to them, we are more likely to connect with what they are trying to get us to buy. Not all empathy building is sinister by any means; much of it is done with good intentions to understand the human experience so that better services can be designed. But there certainly is a host of ethical conundrums that are evoked when empathy is used more so for extraction than for amplification of compassion and intercommunity understanding. There are many different opinions and critiques on design thinking that are worth the read (see here, here, here and here). Touted as the future of sales, with the ability to ‘empathize’ in the design thinking way, empathy can be used to find hidden desires and manipulate these into purchases, which unfortunately plays right into the systems failure of the hyper-consumption loop that has led to so many negative impacts in the first place and continues to create unintended consequences.

Does Empathy Promote Human Connection? 

I did a project a few years ago exploring leadership and specifically looking at why there are so few female leaders in the design sectors, despite the high rate of female graduates from design programs. I use the Disruptive Design Method for all my work, and in the mining phase, I conducted 30 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with men and women from within the design industry. I asked them all the same starter question and then allowed the 20 minute conversations to flow based on their reactions. I collected data by touch typing their responses instead of recording them so that they felt more comfortable sharing their stories. As a sociologist, I am hyper aware of the power of asking questions, since questions triggers all sorts of emotional reactions in the interviewee and can open up old wounds or trigger entirely new avenues of thought.  As such, respect and consideration need to be held by the questioner. In my case, I felt so many connections with the stories and experiences of the people in front of me that, as a researcher trying to understand the experiences of others so that I could interpret a potential place to intervene to support changes, I ended up identifying a lack of empathetic understanding as a tool for shifting the status quo on this problem arena. 

But for me, this was the critical thing: this was not just about a lack of empathy toward women —  it was a two-way street. People just didn't understand the conditions and experiences of the other gender; thus it reinforced this inability to provide equitable access to resources such as mentoring, emotional support, time off for childcare, etc. Men told me of being seen as being lazy for wanting to leave early to hang out with their kids, and women found it hard to break into a Friday evening drinking circle because it just wasn’t their type of good time. Either way, everyone was stuck a little bit in their own understanding of the world, so in the context of allowing people to flourish in the workplace, building connections between genders, different age groups, and cultural diversity was a point of intervention that I felt could be leveraged to increase leadership opportunities in creative industries. 

So, I developed this Gender Equity Tookit… however, I may have been wrong. I tested the activities with hundreds of people and found, in the moment, increased levels of understanding, empathy, and connection — but I have no idea if this will affect anyone's lives when it comes to work opportunities. I believe the ability to understand others in whatever ways we can is a powerful approach to effecting positive change, but I also worry about the risks associated with one-dimensional empathy building, which leads me to the wider questions around the limits to empathy as a tool for affecting change.

Limits to Empathy 

A decades long study by Sara Konrath on the empathy levels of young people in America has shown that since the 2000’s, empathy has started to decline by around 40%, with many people saying it is not their responsibility to help other people in trouble. For some people, being empathetic is a problem; being able to feel other people’s pain can be debilitating, as it’s exhausting and can lead to a surge in the stress hormone, cortisol, and can even result in bad decision making.

In our current media landscape, where many agents are competing to milk your emotions through the algorithmic cycle of serving your own interests (like most social media platforms now do), we see just how easy it is to be drained by the pull on our empathetic responses to others’ pain and suffering. Click on a story about a child cancer survivor, for example, and the next time you are online, you are served more heartbreaking stories of children's illnesses. This uptick in feeling empathy-induced stress has led to the coining of the terms “empathy burnout” and “compassion fatigue.”  

There are counterarguments against empathy, such as the those put forth by psychologist Paul Bloom, who argues that because empathy creates a hyper focus on one individual that we identify with, it distracts us from feeling connected to bigger issues. There was this story that emerged after the disastrous earthquake that hit Mexico City in 2017 — the story of a small girl being trapped under the rubble of a school that had collapsed. The entire country was gripped with hope and anxiety when authorities announced that Frida Sofia was rescued from the rubble, only to find out days later that the entire story was made up. The backlash to this hyper-focused collective empathy was profound, especially since this same false story line had played out in the 1985 earthquake. 

Adam Waytz provides other areas of concern regarding empathy. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, he says, “Failing to recognize the limits of empathy can impair performance,” arguing that it is a zero-sum gain, where the more empathy you expel in one area, the less empathy you have left for others, and critically that in itself can erode ethics.

Ethics can be misguided by empathetic responses, especially when paired with the cognitive biases we all have that support our brains categorizing and preferencing people akin to ourselves. Empathy can absolutely be exploited — and in some cases, weaponized — in order to dehumanize others. We’ve seen this play out in the political theater of the last five or so years, for example, as right-wing populist candidates have come to rise around the world.  One of the common denominators among these politicians is their use of “othering” techniques that utilize empathy for some victims and not others. They evoke a sense of hate toward some victims (such as the parents of school shootings) and portray them as liars, thus othering them. This results in what’s been called selective empathy, which not only creates division, but it also creates a major distraction around important issues that the world so desperately needs to focus on, like climate change, poverty, clean energy — basically all of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The Ethics of Empathy 

So is empathy a useful tool for effecting change? Yes. Is it a tool that can be misused or exploited? Yes. Can empathy create more problems than it set out to solve? Yes, yes, and yes. When used as a core part of decision making, consciously or not, empathy can lead to positive, negative, and even immoral outcomes.

So what should we do with empathy? Use it well. Like any knowledge, knowing how something works should inform us on how to ensure we use it well, with respect and integrity, which is critical in the case of empathy. This means empathy should always be served with a good helping of ethics. Considering the ethical implications of triggering an empathetic response, or extracting responses based on empathy triggers in people, should, like all other aspects of our social conduct, be used in ways that don't manipulate, exploit, or create suffering in those around us. Of course, this Utopian view of ethical empathy use is far from the reality, but the case for ditching the fake one-dimensional version of empathy used by marketing and business development people is the first step in getting over the tragic empathy milking that occurs in the name of sales and profits. And for our day-to-day interactions with other humans, perhaps we should leverage compassion instead.

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At UnSchool Online we offer a host of deep dive classes into topics like ethics and empathy, cognitive bias, and systems thinking. You can also to level up your leadership and creative change making skills.

Alumni Loo Ly Mun: Ecological Empathy & Community Resilience

Meet Loo Ly Mun (Lymun), a social and environmental changemaker based in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia. He attended our UnSchool Mumbai Fellowship in November 2017 and will now be our host for the next UnSchool program happening in November in Kuching!

Lymun and his partner Nisha run Ecocentric Transitions, an organization that works at “empowering individuals through skill-building and ecological empathy, strengthening community resilience through localized initiatives and relationship-building, and guiding early adopters in industry to champion sustainability in their core strategies.” 

The exciting thing about our fellowships being hosted by our past alumni is that we get an incredible insider perspective of the city and community we are exploring. That’s why when Lymun invited us to come to Kuching, we jumped at the chance to collaborate with him. It’s part of the UnSchool philosophy to make sure that in any place we run programs, we are invited into that space and not just parachuting in, and that local fellows help produce and run the entire complex adventure that we co-design! Hosts find the amazing local mentors, seek out unique locations and design local adventures for us to explore the social and environmental change examples that ignite creative change in our participating fellows.

We embody participatory design in all that we do, and that includes designing programs and creating experiences that take into account a diversity of local contexts, places, and people. The idea of going to Borneo (Kuching is the capital of Malaysian Borneo) excited us as it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. We are also aware that it’s an environmentally sensitive area, and our program will have unintended impacts. So working with our local hosts and producers helps ensure that our mission of having as much positive impact as possible, to contribute to the community in a beneficial way, and to mitigate any of the more undesirable impacts we may have, is achieved.

Kuching is actually the capital of Sarawak (a state in Malaysia) and offers several co-working spaces, fascinating insights into the region, and the opportunity to connect with those (like Lymun and Nisha) who are doing amazing work in sustainability and education for the area.

Borneo is one of the most dense biodiverse areas in the world

We recently checked in with Lymun to see hear about what impact the fellowship has had on him, why he wanted to bring the program to his hometown, and how he’s using what he learned from his time with the UnSchool. 

Hi Lymun! Can you give us an introduction to yourself and why you do what you do? 

“I’m a homo sapien. Was and always will be. I was one of those little kids that grew up with dinosaur books who could name almost all of them. Living with pets most of my life and being active in a scout troop nurtured my adoration of mother nature, along with the many creatures and vegetation that brings life within it and all around us. My natural tendencies toward science subjects led me to study electrical and electronics engineering. Didn’t like it, delved into other fields of work that’s unrelated, ventured into the dense jungles of Borneo for a 10-week expedition, found new interest in people, behaviour, and team building, came back to work in the corporate world, and then fast forward about a decade later, I founded Ecocentric Transitions (ET) with my partner Nisha. 

Nisha and Lymun of Ecocentric Transitions

Ecocentric was born out of our hearts to preserve our beloved environment after witnessing the degradation of our favourite camping spots and hiking trails that we visited over the years, littered with trash, and overbuilt with development. 

To encourage sustainable living habits among our family, friends, peers, and the general population of planet Earth who have access to modern-day facilities like the internet, we started learning and teaching various workshops that could potentially save the human race from itself —  like gardening vegetables, making compost bins, harvesting rainwater, carbon cycles, permaculture, pinhole camera making, and many other slow- life type, repurposed base weekend explorations of the world as we know it.

This was when we discovered that kids are quite impressionable. New mission: brainwash children into becoming champions for the environment, in an ethical way. Through play and a lot of encouragement. Our work now mostly focuses on service design and experiential education programming.”

What made you come to the UnSchool and how did you find out about it?

“An opportunity to meet not one but two UNEP Champions of the Earth (Leyla and Afroz Shah) and also some of the most brilliant people in this realm of expertise? Yes, please. 

I also wanted to learn more about systems design and how our brains have an important role to play in all of this sustainable stuff. Leyla’s TED talk titled Paper beats plastic? How to rethink environmental folklore was an eye-opener, and it rattled my understanding of what I know about sustainability. It made me wonder what else irks my unexamined assumptions when it comes to the everyday things that we use. This then started my research into the topic of systems design and also a bit of stalking Leyla’s work, in which we finally found the UnSchool program in the vastness of cyberspace.”

What was your experience like in the Fellowship?

“My motivation to be a part of UnSchool was to validate what I knew and believed about sustainability, and spending time with my cohort was inspiring. The energy was very positive from day one, leaders in their own right — everybody shared similar values and brought a diversity of skills and insights to the discussions. This was a bonus on top of the amazing sessions led by Leyla and Dagny.

Doing the pre-work is important, as it allowed me to better digest the content. I really appreciated the observation trips across Mumbai where we traveled in a school bus (dancing included) to observe and investigate established ‘systems’, like Dhobi Ghat, where a whole township of people manage laundry at the mammoth scale for the whole city.  Observing the working environment and living quarters and then reflecting on environmental issues, economic value, and social equity against my world view was sobering and challenging. It was also very inspiring to listen to a small group of very passionate children living in the slums of Dharavi talking about creating great change for themselves, their families, and the environment around them. 

Equally impressive was participating in the world’s largest volunteer-run beach clean-up. To top it all off, we were invited into the home of the person that made it all happen, which was even more amazing. We were welcomed by dozens of people from the local beach clean-up community where all of us packed tightly in a small studio apartment. In there, they shared great stories of their efforts to fight waste pollution on their beach home, all the while prepping dinner, socializing, and then eating it all together. And of course, there was a little crazy dancing before we said our farewells. It is truly great to see a leader share their home and celebrate each success with their community. Like a big family. 

The 24-hour no-sleep Design challenge —  we won the design challenge, yay! The time pressure created urgency, pushing our diverse team to band together. This proved how important it is to define the right question; we spent 70% of the time defining the question/challenge and 30% on developing the solution. Our mentors were great filters in instigating our solutions. 

I also appreciate some of the exercises that made us look deep within ourselves and question the very nature of our being. This has reinforced my sense of purpose and drive for the things that I do.

Sharing these personal motives with some of the fellows made me feel a lot more connected to one another in a way that we all want good things to happen in this world that we share, no matter where we come from.”

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

“Knowing that we are a part of a network of people that value the same things as we do and are keen to collaborate across the world reinforces our beliefs and sense of connectedness in tackling global issues of this magnitude. This makes me feel assured and inspired in the work that we do as a collective.”

How have you amplified your change in the world you do now?

“We have learned to choose our collaborators, design work based on leverage points, and affect change on a bigger scale.”

Any other thoughts you want to share?

“We, as the human species, need to rise up against the unending hunger that’s devouring the consciousness of the planet. That hunger is called, capitalism!…. ok scrap that. Maybe the next interview.

It helps to take a few steps back and re-examine our assumptions. James Lovelock who defined the Gaia Theory evaluated what it takes to sustain life and discovered that the planet is a self-regulating organism. Everything is connected, even at the subatomic level. Everyone has a role to play in creating the future that we dream of. Let love and hope be our guide to every decision we make today, no matter how big or how small. Speak with the heart. Peace.”

To learn more about Lymun’s work and follow along with Ecocentric’s updates, check out their website: Ecocentric Transitions or follow them on social: Instagram or FB.

You can also learn more about RIMBA The Card Game, which is dedicated to 30 animals from Peninsular and Borneo Malaysia and aspires to help people recognize the various animals in an attempt to raise awareness following mass rapid deforestation and flooding, on social here: Instagram or FB

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Hurry! Applications are open for our 10th Emerging Leaders Fellowship program for just a few more days! Get yours in today to learn more about this issue and to discover the tools for making a positive impact by design.  

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.

Alumni Bao Yen: Zero Waste Airline Transformation

Bao Yen is a Hong Kong-based flight attendant who is on a mission to help make the aviation industry more sustainable.

We first met Bao when she attended our Regenerative Systems Design workshop with Leyla Acaroglu and Laura Storm last Summer on the CO Project Farm. She inspired many people with her story of working to end plastic waste in the airline industry and shared more of her passion for this through her UnSchool Alumni Disruptive Innovation Festival (DIF) session.

Boa at the CO Project Farm Program in 2018

Bao’s change-making story begins with a whale — you probably can guess where this is going, given the condition of our oceans and plastic pollution. One day while she was on a break from flying, a coworker showed her a picture of a dead whale found in Norway that had 30 plastic bags in its stomach. This powerful image stuck with her, and after going back to her hotel room and searching for stories about how this came to be, it catalyzed a huge transformation within Bao. The impacts of single-use plastic and the catastrophic outcomes of all the disposable stuff that the airline industry perpetuated on each flight suddenly struck her as being a significant area of change, one that she had some power and agency over influencing. In that moment, the heart of Bao’s mission started: to make positive environmental change through her sphere of influence  — the airline industry.

What is amazing is that just recently, the Australian airline Qantas did the world's first zero waste flight, and many airlines have started to ban plastic straws and drink stirrers. There are small changes in a massive issue, but one that is coming back out because people are demanding changes. There is so much power in one person standing up and asking for something different, and that is what is so inspiring about Bao’s story.

Bao started out by questioning how she interacted with customers and how this impacted their use of single-use plastics. By offering or not offering the plastic stirrer, she found that many people didn't want it (although it is usually just given without asking). She watched to see how her colleagues recycled and was shocked to discover that many were not. So, all of this initial reflective observation research resulted in her initiating a program within her airline to raise awareness around the importance of the cabin crew pre-sorting materials for recycling. She explains that even those items in the recycling bin often end up in landfills because they are contaminated with other non-recyclable waste.

Since beginning this initiative to raise awareness and train the cabin crews on proper recycling practices, the airline has seen steady improvements in recycling and other sustainability matters.

Bao also had advice for everyday travelers who can take actions to reduce their waste impacts while flying. Just remember the 4 R’s:

Reduce: Bring your own reusables on the flight so that you don’t use any single-use plastic.

Reuse: Use the same pieces of plastic throughout the duration of the flight.

Recycle: Ensure that your plastic is clean and placed in the proper recycling bin.

Reach out: Talk to the airline directly. Use your consumer power to demand action on single-use plastic.

The project Bao has helped to activate

We recently checked in with Bao to see how things are going and hear more about how she’s using what she learned from her time with the UnSchool. Read our short Q&A below!

How do you describe yourself?

“I used to think I was quite insignificant. I didn’t know my life purpose and I was very unhappy with my job. The dead whale led me to an unbelievably beautiful journey full of opportunities and endless possibilities. It gave me a strong purpose to live and resolve the challenges. I now live by the motto that I AM the change I want to see in the world. Every challenge brings an opportunity. If we have a positive growth mindset and align ourselves with mother nature, we will thrive with the environment and live a truly fulfilled life.”

What made you come to the UnSchool?

“I firstly heard about Dr. Leyla Acaroglu through an entrepreneurial friend. He founded a reusable coffee cup brand called Pokito, and his mission is to save billions of paper cups. He told me he was inspired by Dr. Leyla’s Ted Talk, Paper beats plastic? How to rethink environmental folklore.  I watched that talk and it completely changed how I looked at sustainability. I then followed her page and got further inspired by her Co Project Farm, so I decided to do a workshop and creative retreat there. Turns out it was one of the most amazing and mind-nurturing trips I ever had!

 Tell us more about your initiative and how it is going?

“I started with raising awareness on our internal digital platform. When I saw something that needed to be changed, I would write an article and tag people who are in charge of that area. For example, our laundry company used to cover the washed uniforms with plastic bags. After I posted a discussion and had my colleagues’ involvement, the company removed the practice and millions of plastic bags will be saved.

Another example is that on rainy days, we used to provide one-off plastic bags for wet umbrellas in the office buildings. After I raised the concern and worked with relevant parties, the headquarter now has a reusable umbrella drying facility. Not long ago we stopped giving single used plastic bags, cutleries, and containers in our canteen. There is a big cultural and awareness shift in my airline since I started three years ago. Our voice is very powerful, and I encourage everyone to raise their voice in a respectful and helpful manner in their platforms.”

How did the UnSchool help you start/evolve it?

“Systems mapping and thinking* are so helpful in approaching the environmental challenges. They enable me to see the bigger picture, find the pain point, and come up with an effective solution. I also learnt from the workshop that waste is essentially a design problem and thus, we can resolve the challenge by changing the design. I used that principle to approach the in-flight waste challenge, and it has been so helpful. Staying on the Co Farm and being with inspirational people, close to nature and animals, learning that everything is interconnected really opened up my mind and heart. I loved the creative retreat so much!”

*To discover more about systems thinking, check out this course at UnSchool Online. or read any of Leyla’s articles on the topic here  

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

“If you have creative solutions or sources for resolving the aviation waste challenge, you can reach me via my email. Also, please write to the airlines you fly with and tell them how much you want them to run sustainably. Constructive feedback and useful solutions offered by passengers are always welcomed!”

Thank you, Bao, for activating your agency and being a positive contributor to creative problem solving in the sky!

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!

---——

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. 

Why Care About Deforestation?

By Leyla Acaroglu

There is this painful, old-school mental image of a ‘treehugger’ — an almost derogatory term used to describe someone who cares about the environment so much that they just hug trees. I usually make jokes when I do talks about how I love the planet but I don’t hug trees, as they have spiders and could ruin my clothes. But silly jokes of my spider fears aside, my perspective on trees has changed a lot over the last couple of years, as I took on an abandoned olive farm, which is now the CO Project and started to regenerate it. The farm has some 150 established trees (and a couple hundred new babies we have planted), all of which I am now a custodian of. As a result, my appreciation of and fascination with trees has grown immensely. I still have not hugged a tree per se, but I certainly do talk to them!

The CO Project Farm olive and citrus trees

The magic of trees

Firstly let me tell you how trees really are magical. Some of my several hundred year old olive trees have no insides, just a bark shell, and yet they burst into life every spring and drop a bounty of olives every year, despite looking as though they have no heart. Each autumn, when the weather cools, they become homes to all sorts of moss and animals and morph into these grandparent-like figures for all the life that needs shelter. The same goes with the fruit trees — they drop their leaves every year at the end of summer and appear to go to sleep. But, I have noticed that they are actually using all their energy to make tiny baby apples, apricots, or plums, and then, come summer, they burst with delicious delights that nourish and sustain our bodies. 

Trees and humans have a very intrinsic relationship. We obviously eat their fruits, use their wood, and rely on them to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen and purify our air. To top it all off, they regulate the climate, keep soils from eroding, provide habitat to other animals, and if all that is not enough, they also apparently ‘talk’ to each other via secret underground networks!  

So, when we decided to host out 10th Emerging Leaders UnSchool Fellowship program this upcoming November in Kuching, Borneo, Malaysia — a very rainforested area of the world — I wanted to discover more about how deforestation is affecting systems. You may have already heard of the issues with palm oil and the clear-felling that occurs to feed the world’s insatiable appetite for cheap oils (that end up in cookies, soaps, and many industrial processes), so in this week’s journal article, I wanted to explore the impact that deforestation has on all of us and find out more in preparation for our Fellowship.  

What Causes Deforestation? 

Globally, we have cut down 3 trillion trees since industrialization, and it is assumed there are 3 trillion still standing.  Since humans started using forest products, over 46% of trees have been cut down, adding to the climate crisis since, as we pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we also cut down the things that absorb and convert it! 

Farming, grazing of livestock, mining, and drilling combined account for more than half of the world’s deforestation. The main drivers, however, for the destruction of the hyper-diverse Malaysain rainforest (home to the delightful orangutans) is paper pulp logging and palm oil, the latter being a cash crop that creates one of the cheapest forms of lubricants on the global market. There is also a significant amount of illegal logging for hardwoods that then end up making their way into furniture and outdoor decking. There are some international policies to attempt to curb this trend, but poverty  and economic needs often drive people to find ways of still exploiting the forests. 

The immediate impacts of this, such as biodiversity loss and wildfires which often affect monocultures rather than natural ecosystems, are increasing in intensity and further increase the loss of trees. Around the world we have seen many intense and deadly forest fires such as in California where over 100 million trees were lost in the 2018 fires.  These kinds of extreme fires will only increase with the threat of climate change. Sadly, there are claims that fires are lit intentionally and even articles about firefighters starting fires so that they could get paid to put them out!

Overgrazing of native animals can also cause tree loss, but nature seems to have some smart resistance, such as the case of Acacias in Africa that developed a toxin in their leaves to kill off the over populated Antelope. Incidentally, the reduction in shepherds’ animals munching through the undergrowth has been attributed to the severity of the fires. However, the grazing of farm animals, such as goats (who I can confirm will eat anything, as we have 4 on the farm and if they had it their way, they would eat every leaf they could get their teeth on!) is part of some fire prevention strategies.

The Systems Impacts of Deforestation

Trees are a keystone species in our shared planetary ecosystem, so cutting them down and destroying their systems is a detrimental blow to any ecosystem — specifically, us.  From climate impacts to desertification, soil erosion, fewer crops, flooding, increased greenhouse gases, and loss of home lands for indigenous people, there is a whole slew of systemic impacts related to deforestation.

Not only is deforestation directly impacting us humans, but the destruction of natural habitats for plants and animals is another systemic effect that must be addressed. 80 percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and right now scientists say we are going through the sixth great extinction on Earth, mainly due to the activities of humans (like deforestation) and overconsumption. Consider what happens to the soil when the trees are cut down. Tree canopies are a little bit like the hair on your head, which protects your skin from the sun and helps to keep you cool. Without dense tree coverage, the soil is exposed to the more sun which changes the types of things that can grow. If you have ever been in a forest, you would know that the temperature is completely different; we seek shade under trees when having picnics because they do a brilliant job of protecting what's underneath them. The loss of these tree canopies has been detrimental, with, in the last 40 years, roughly 40-50% of species going extinct and the greatest losses being in Asia and Australia (where I’m from). Biodiversity is what makes Earth, Earth. Without diversity, we have weak systems that are susceptible to disease — which then breeds a new onslaught of system impacts.

Something else happens with the loss of these tree canopies, too — all of the carbon dioxide that the trees were storing as they grew is released back into the atmosphere when the trees are burned. And this is no minor source of climate problems — the current deforestation rate is outpacing the sum of all the world’s cars and trucks on the road to add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than automobiles do. Additionally, it’s striking to  consider how beneficial trees are to carbon mitigation. One estimate states that tropical tree cover can provide 23% of the climate mitigation needed to reach the Paris Climate Goals by 2030. But with the current profitability connected to the consumption habits of us 7.6 billion humans here on Earth, it’s going to take a true systemic effort to preserve our forests as long-term investments into sustainability versus the current short-term profits connected to extracting forest-related resources for goods. 

How We Can Change our Destructive Habits? 

Yes, it is complicated. The drivers of clear felling, forest fires, and land clearing are many, from paper production, through to grain production for the livestock industry (many drivers for the clearing of Brazilian rainforest), wood products, the need for cash crops, or even the increase in the world’s desire for coffee and chocolate. These are all directly linked to consumption, which offers some scope for individual choice preferencing, so needless to say, the issues are multilayered.

Forests cover 30% of the world's surface (in contrast oceans cover 71%), so there is much scope for reversing the destructive nature of deforestation. India and China, two of the world's most populated countries, have made huge efforts to reforest, a solution that can have many benefits, like purifying drinking water, reducing carbon in the atmosphere, cleaning the air from pollutants, and providing economic opportunities for current and future generations. 

On a personal level, you can protect the trees you have some sort of custodianship over. Buy land and allow it to rewild — take inspiration from the famed children’s book author Beatrix Potter, who purchased 14 farms and more than 4,000 acres of land in England. This kind of foresight can help to protect vulnerable land from development and support your own kind of carbon sink. If you can’t buy land (it's surprising how cheap abandoned farmland can be!), you can certainly help by planting trees in your community or supporting organizations like this one that are replanting forests impacted by deforestation.

Of course, making informed choices when it comes to consumption is an important everyday micro-action that you can begin taking immediately. Opt for plant-based proteins instead of meat (meat production is a big driver of deforestation), go paperless as much as possible, skip products that contain palm oil (unless you have concrete proof it’s been sustainably sourced), advocate for the rights of indigenous people, burn firewood responsibly, and continue staying connected to a community of like-minded changemakers who give a shit about protecting the world’s resources so that we have a future that works better for us all! If you really want to level up, learn more about this issue and get connected to people making change, then join me this November in Malaysia at our 10th Emerging Leaders Fellowship program.

Applications are now open for our 10th Emerging Leaders Fellowship program. Get yours in today to learn more about this issue and to discover the tools for making a positive impact by design. Applications due by July 12. Apply here >

What happened in Cape Town?

By Emma Segal

I had the pleasure of being the lead educator on the 9th UnSchool Emerging Leaders Fellowship program when we took it to the beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa, in May 2018. You may remember that this was right around the time that some of the city water supply was about to be shut off, due in part to lack of rain and subsequent reservoir shortages, along with a host of other issues. It was a bit of a stressful time, but at the UnSchool, we seem to have an unintended habit of running programs in extreme scenarios. For example, our Christchurch fellowship happened right after a major earthquake, and we’ve had cars stolen and venues flooded — so we are no strangers to a  rapid reorientation due to unforeseen circumstances!

Our on-the-ground local co-producers in Cape Town consulted with their government contacts, and we were encouraged to go ahead with the fellowship, but with strict water conservation policies in place. The Cape Town program had 10 local and 7 international fellows join us, along with an inspiring array of mentors, for an incredible 7-day adventure in this fascinating and complex city in which we explored the dynamics of systems change, sustainability, and how to make a positive impact.

I’t’s been a year, so I caught up with a few of our very busy fellows last week to find out what they have been up to this past year and see how the fellowship has impacted them. I’ll share their updates along with what we got up to that week, as it was quite an adventure!

But first, check out the incredible video that highlights everything we packed into the 7 days!

We kicked off the week with local team members Thessa and Wisaal giving us a walking tour history lesson of the city as we made our way to District Six Museum, a community co-creation storytelling project about the aparthaid effects in this area. We then evoked our UnSchool tradition of discovering more about our own stories and history through mini-pecha kucha style rapid 3 min personal storytelling, after which I led our first knowledge session on sustainability (we dive in quick!), followed by a much-needed brain-refueling, delicious, plant-based dinner, served family style at a local Ethiopian restaurant.

District Six Museum

Pecha Kuchas

Day two had us run through a teleconference session with UnSchool founder Leyla Acaroglu (calling in from our other on-going and newly launched project, CO Project), and a lively and engaging systems thinking and mapping session. These types of skills have since come in use for fellow Tim, who says that since the fellowship, “In all projects that I tackle now, I look forward to researching the problem, really getting stuck with the problem, and utilizing the systems thinking concepts to form more nuanced and, hopefully, effective solutions from the process.”

Exploring systems through UnSchool style systems mapping

Sharing the results of the systems mapping session

After one of our by now famous plant-based lunch feasts, we headed off to learn from Emile YX who works with youth through hip hop and dance, providing a place to grow and explore identity and career opportunities through the arts. This active session was followed by a beautiful communal dinner offered to us by Zaayan and her family in their home, where we made traditional snacks together while learning about Ramadan and Zaayan’s activism work in food gathering and the way it connects us to each other and the planet.

Emile YX

One of Emile YX’s group showing us his moves before we all joined in

Zaayan and her father greeting us into their home

Zaayan telling us the story of the food we made together

Neha

Story sharing has been important in fellow Neha’s work as well, as she finds that, “This past year has been life changing. Post-Unschool, I have been more involved with sharing my knowledge with individuals at school, colleges, and at peer-group level”.  Her work in India has been focused lately on hemp, while her previous project used soot as a design material (and was showcased on the UnSchool DIF sessions last year!). This project sees her working with industrial hemp to make products using sustainable agriculture and artisan empowerment. Neha describes her work, saying, “I look after the fabric department called Hemp Fabric Lab. My job here is to enable the makers and creators to adopt this sustainable material — hemp. I have been able to apply my learnings to research, marketing, product development, sales, education etc.; in short, my role is multifaceted.”

Day three was a full brain activation day with a mentor session from Naadiya Moosaje on women in engineering, alternative forms of capital, and a rapid group prototyping session to find solutions based on issues presented in daily newspapers.

Naadiya talking to the group

Rapid prototyping session led by Naadiya

Following this, we had our afternoon packed with thoughtful conversation on the water issues in Cape Town, led by Bernelle Verster, a bioprocess engineer with a focus on dry toilets and human waste systems (everybody poops!). To really dive into the subject, we had a high energy verbal fight club group debate on dry vs wet toilets, trying on different roles and perspectives to form a variety of arguments.

Verbal fight club with Kausar and Johan in the centre

Verbal fight club with Wafika and Sizwe in the centre

This type of perspective shifting has continued to benefit Tim, who says that his experience during the fellowship “reframed my world view considerably. I feel I'm better at removing myself or my 'ego' from projects and facilitating/coaxing solutions to emerge from others involved in the project… I'm a lot more conscientious with including more voices in the Gippslandia newspaper that I edit.”

Day four saw us take another field trip, this time to visit Quirky30, led by Sihle Tshabalala to address the 52% youth unemployment issue through coding and tech education to meet the demand for these types of skills, while simultaneously reducing poverty-driven crime. We then dove into a collaborative ideation challenge with their students and our fellows, and had an amazing lunch together, prepared by a local community caterer (food is a big thing for us!).

Sihle Tshabalala

The two groups in a lively ideation session

We hopped back on our bus and headed into the center of the city to meet social change architect Mokena Makeka, who introduced us to the ways he has been making positive social change through his building designs. He led us on a tour to check it out in person.

Mokena shows us around the redesigned train station

Discussing the impact of architecture at the base of the Museum of Contemporary Art Afrika

The Cape Town UnSchool team (pictured from left, Andi, Vanessa, Wisaal, Vicky, myself, Camila and Thessa).

These types of experiential and deep dive sessions are unique experiences not only for the fellows, but for team members on the fellowship as well. Previous fellow from Mumbai and co-host for Cape Town, Camila, found that, “The UnSchool has set a high standard of what is sustainability, and how it ought to be taught. Through UnSchool, I understood the importance of design as a social scripter, not knowing anything really about design before. Learning the importance of how people will interact with what you try to communicate and has also given me the vocabulary and the hard facts on personal agency.”

Volunteering or working on a Fellowship is a great way to gain community points towards certification and get a behind-the-scenes look at how we put together our unique programs. While Camila is finishing up her Masters degree this spring, she will be returning to the UnSchool for “the types of skills and professional development, which again even after my Masters, I don’t see that type of learning in any other place.”

Day five was launched by Vuyisa Quabaka and the practical aspects of building, running, and succeeding in social change entrepreneurship. His extensive knowledge helped kick off a group ideation and investability session. Often put to the side when doing social or environmental work, being able to have a financially and ethically sustainable business model is critical to being able to keep doing good work and getting positive shit done!

Vuyisa Quabaka: “I work with inspired people”

Alumni Zoe is putting her skills to work as she starts two new projects. She has been appointed to help facilitate and design interventions for the UCT Futures Think Tank to explore how the way they do their work, and how it should change to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world within the South African context, as well as being involved with Open Design Afrika who has launched a number of projects with the aim of building capacity and creating systemic change and social cohesion in Africa with creativity. She highlights that she finds, “Both of these experiences are helping to fill in that feeling of 'more' I was looking for after the fellowship.”

I then led the afternoon session on life cycle thinking, and sustainable design considerations when putting new things into the world, or engaging with those that exist. This is different than life cycle analysis (LCA), and provides anyone the tools to deeply understand how things are made and handled throughout their life. Alyssa remarked at the time that, “today’s Unschool Life Cycle thinking workshop is blowing my mind right now. How many things go into manufacturing a pair of shoes for instance? We have an end of life bias where we tend to focus on the landfill, reusing and recycling in terms of sustainability. But what about how our products are made, and all the parts of the system that contribute to the last product you bought? There is no code of ethics for designers and the potential destructive impact they can have with their designs.” She continued to explore this issue through an MBA in Design Strategy over the past year, having just finished up with a thesis project focusing on reducing single use packaging in grocery stores.

image of me and the group during the LCT session courtesy of fellow Alyssa Burtt.

Deep diving into some of the objects we are surrounded by.

We worked as a group on investigating some of these common objects to get a deeper understanding of the systems that surround us. Alumni Saleemah also mentioned this session when caught up, reflecting that, “The thing that really stuck with me from the Unschool Fellowship is life cycle thinking. I'm working with a global educational NPO, and I use this approach for all projects, initiatives, and operations — it's been life-changing”.

The afternoon was capped off with another teleconference with Leyla on cognitive biases and an overview of the Disruptive Design Method. Neha has found the week to resonate with her professionally, noting that, “After UnSchool, the Disruptive Design Method have become ingrained in my design processes. I feel my method and approach of problem solving irrespective of the magnitude of the problem has changed towards a more holistic approach.” After the week’s download, a much- needed quiet writing and reflection time gave us all a moment to synthesize and digest our experiences thus far. Before everyone left for the day, briefs for the challenge were handed out, and everyone got excited to get started with their groups the next day.

Day six was full of excitement as the teams arrived to dig into their positive future-framed challenge. They each ran through the Disruptive Design Method to identify and mine the issues they were working on in their teams, fueled by the tools they’d learned through the week and a steady stream of snacks and brain-friendly food.

The UnSchool team of Thessa, Wisaal, Vanessa, Andy, and I circulated through each of the teams to provide feedback, additional perspectives, idea prodding, local context from our Cape Town producers for those not from South Africa, and a late night sundae bar for extra energy. This real world application practice came in handy for Zoe later in the year when, “After the fellowship, I spent many months trying to work out how I could apply what I learnt to my big corporate world. I was optimistic about the change I could make and saw an opportunity to focus on sustainability as my angle (leveraging off the companies’ interest in design).”

Perris works late with her team to navigate the complexities

Teams system mapping their way to new ideas

The day wrapped up late, and everyone arrived early the next day for early morning practice presentations in front of the team including Leyla dialing in from the farm, curious to see what everyone had come up with. The afternoon saw each of the teams have time to present their ideas, with a community feedback session and group voting for the top choice based on viability, change potential, and community. Tim pointed out that this type of group collab “really stoked a passion for collaborating in cross-cultural and multidisciplinary groups too, something that is key to our thr34d5.org strategic design studio”.

One of the teams presenting during the 24hr Challenge

All the fellows are now part of a wider UnSchool alumni community that offers the opportunity to connect with each other, a key benefit to all the Fellowships. Tim says that it was a “mega bonus that I got to meet Zoe, and she's a legend. We now get to shoot the breeze on lots of cool initiatives that we are exposed to, and she inspires the shit outta me.” Last month, Zoe was asked to go back to her old high school to serve as their Designer in Residence. Over two days, she taught eight grade 9-11 classes an intro to systems thinking (with a shout out to the UnSchool!). She shared that the aim was to show them “a bit of the world of design beyond what they're learning — architecture, graphic/ fashion/ product design, etc.” and she mentioned she got Tim “to co-facilitate with me which was really fun, and I'm glad we've remained such good friends since the fellowship!”

Neha also has felt the momentum of the wider community, sharing, “Change makers from different walks of life have really inspired me in multiple ways. I feel nothing is impossible. I can make a difference in my own way and that one should not be restricted by an idea but should explore methods to expand the application.”

Tiahnah and the group write down their reflections on each day before we close with a group reflection session and celebratory drinks and food

Kausar and Saleemah celebrating the wrap up of the fellowship with South Africa’s national flower, the impressive Protea

Alyssa also reflected on her decision to come to Cape Town on her Instagram at the time, saying “It’s been such an epic week! Our 24 hr design challenge was fun and mind bending as we tried out the systems mapping and Disruptive Design skills to find a solution of our own design to a systemic problem we identify…. I’m so glad I signed up and traveled so far for this experience. It’s really been mind altering and eye opening, and the incredibly smart and diverse group of people I met have touched me deeply. It may be the end of our week together, but this is just the beginning!”

The fellowship week ended with a birthday celebration and group reflection on the experience. If you would like to read more (yes there is even MORE!) about this fellowship or any of our past 9 editions, then check out each day in detail on the blog!

High fives for positive change at the UnSchool!

Join our next fellowship!

Do you want to join our always growing and active community of social and environmental creative change-makers? We have just announced our 10th Emerging Leaders Fellowship program, happening November 17th-23rd in Kuching, Malaysia! If you want to be one of the 20 people selected to join us on a 7-day intensive adventure into all things sustainability and systems change, then get your application in today! Applications open now until July 12 > 

The rise of sustainable living

By Leyla Acaroglu

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

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

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

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

A ZERO WASTE LIFESTYLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE REAL ISSUE IS DISPOSABILITY: THE ROOT OF ALL WASTE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five everyday actions to start RIGHT now

1. Swap out some meat for plant-based proteins

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

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

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

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

Alumni Laura Francois: Sustainability Through Creative Interventions

Image courtesy of Laura Francois

During the past 4+ years that the UnSchool of Disruptive Design has been helping people make positive social and environmental change, and on the journey we’ve met some seriously incredible humans that are dedicating their lives and careers to creative problem solving for a better future.

We’re excited to share some of their stories here in our Journal to show you how they’re applying the Disruptive Design Method and all the different kinds of positive impacts they’re creating.

Today, we’re showcasing Laura Francois, a Canadian community engager, storyteller and impact strategist focused on the social impact space in Canada, India, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Singapore.

Her UnSchool Story

We first met Laura when she attended an advanced training in Circular Systems Design at UnSchool Online. She had been working intensively with textile artisans from low socio-economic backgrounds, exploring methods of economic opportunity and environmental sustainability by connecting them with the wider fashion industry. Then she decided to get more focused and level up her change-making and so she signed up for our Online Advanced Circular Design Training program in January 2018.

“THE UnSchool continually reminds me to question what I think I know. So much of my work is about awareness building, and starting conversations around sustainability with industries and sectors that all speak a very different language from one another. My experience with THE UnSchool built the groundwork for me to experiment with these conversations, thinking about speedy growth and vitality as a false sense of change. Slow, steady and always questioning wins the race”

Laura was already doing inspiring things, having been highly focused on the sustainability in the fashion industry for many years leading the Fashion Revolution movement in Malaysia and Singapore. But Laura felt a disconnect between the general views of sustainability and what the individuals working along the fashion supply chain were witnessing and experiencing.

Frustrated with the status quo of conversations around sustainability, Laura was looking to break the cycle of greenwashing and gain perspective on the industry she was navigating.  She decided to join UnSchool program to gain a new perspective on the same old problem, and she explains how she walked away from the training with new habits and ideas that she continues to exercise every day. Laura told us, “Regardless of the type of project, learning to take on the more detailed, systemic, and multidimensional perspectives of how things work (or don’t work!) inspired me to keep creativity and design at the forefront of my social and environmental impact projects”.

Creative Projects and Interventions

Laura experienced a turning point in her work when she discovered an abandoned garment factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, that had recently gone bankrupt. She stumbled upon hundreds of thousands of tons of textiles still in the factory that had no plan for their end of life. Listen to her share this story and more in our 2018 DIF showcase. This experience inspired her to begin her project Clothing the Loop, a collaboration with Von Wong, who is an internationally renowned photographer that is “notorious for documenting his intrepid adventures” — and who wears the same clothes every single day!

In a series of three art installations, the team created three giant structures that honor the natural resources most greatly affected by fashion: the air, the water, and the trees. There in the abandoned factory, they created three installations: a tornado, a waterfall, and a tree, using basic household materials and the clothes that they’d found. Their goal was to give life to 2,500 kilos of textiles — which is the amount of clothing that the average person wears in a lifetime — while showing the world the impact of our everyday fashion choices. Though the installations were eventually taken down, the project inspired Laura to work with the new building owners to infuse the history of the factory within the space and to make a statement about textile waste by building functional co-working spaces out of the leftover fabric.

Following the same idea as Clothing the Loop, Laura and Von collaborated again to create “The Tallest Closet in the World,” a 9 meter tall immersive installation at the Mall of Arabia in Cairo, Egypt, that showcased 3,000 garments as a visual representation of how much clothing each one of us, on average, uses in our lifetime. The clothing donations also support refugees in Cairo.

“In 2009, the Tak Fak garment factory in Cambodia closed due to bankruptcy leaving hundreds without compensation. According to local reports, some 130 Cambodian garment factories closed that year, leaving more than 30,000 workers jobless and an additional 30,000 temporarily out of work. That wasn't all. The Tak Fak factory closed leaving thousands of bags of unfinished clothing behind it's doors. For almost a decade, the clothing just sat there. That is, until October 2017 when we walked in for the first time.”

Tackling Plastic Waste

Laura has recently expanded her work to include awareness about the global impact of plastic waste. Plastikphobia is a brand new exhibit by Von Wong and Joshua Goh that Laura co-produced. The goal of this project was to answer one question: What percent of single-use plastic cups do we Take-Out vs. Eat-In?

The incredible art exhibition was open to the public at the Sustainable Singapore Gallery at the Marina Barrage from the 7th of March to the 18th of April, 2019.

“Plastikophobia is an immersive art installation made from 18,000 plastic cups collected from local food centers across Singapore to raise awareness for single-use plastic pollution.”

So many of the UnSchool Alumni do incredible things and we love to share their ideas and interventions to help inspier others to do more creative change-making work. If you are passionate about making change then come to an UnSchool program or sign up for one of our online classes.

We are so proud of the work that Laura is doing and happy that we could support her at the UnSchool! You can follow her work at www.laurafrancois.com or @laurafrancois_ on Instagram.