Hello all,
Have a look at the agendas for our ‘Zero Waste by Design’ event series.
The series starts on Wednesday morning, February 29th and finishes on Thursday afternoon, March 1st at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.
There are still some places available on http://zerowastebydesign.eventbrite.co.uk/
We’re looking forward to seeing everyone on the day.
Tweet Read MoreOn Friday 2nd of December I had the pleasure of speaking at the Chartered Institute of Waste Management (CIWM) Towards Zero Waste (TZW) Conference in Cardiff.
My presentation focused on the idea of waste as a social crime and proposed that everyone needs to take responsibility and show leadership to significantly accelerate the rate of required behavioural change. I put forward the case that we should move away immediately from using the term waste and instead view everything as resource. I also suggested we need to ‘use’ instead of ‘consume’ resource and transform rather than destroy. I reminded everyone that we should not use the excuse of ‘that’s the way it is’.
I presented 3 case studies; our work with Harman International on ecodesigning car speakers which emphasised the importance of material selection and true system impacts and costing; our ongoing work with Orangebox on ecodesigning office furniture which emphasised the importance of being transparent and viewing all materials as resource; and an example from the John Lewis Partnership of a unimaginably over-packaged shoe rack, imported from China, that did not assemble, which was delivered to my home the previous week. I brought the packaging with me to maximise the impact and will write a separate post on this, as I also want to contact John Lewis to get their side of the story.
I really enjoyed the day, with its mix of talks, workshops and exhibition, and as I always find with these type of events I met some really inspiring, knowledgeable and committed people. Thankfully the theme of ‘no more waste only resource’ carried through the day, and became a key outcome of the conference.
I ended with the following quote from Thich Nhat Hanh to emphasise our interconnectedness.
“To be” is inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing.
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Last week I attended and presented at the LCA in Business Conference in Lille, France. With an attendance of 270 people from 20 countries, these two days were jam-packed and extremely informative. Not only for my own personal interest in LCA but also in helping me understand how I can improve the LCA to Go project.
I came away from the conference with 4 key thought-provoking lessons.
Tweet Read MoreEarlier this week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Cylch Conference 2011 in Llandudno, along with attending the Wales Recycling Awards. I always feel inspired by the commitment, enthusiasm and activities of Cylch’s members network of social enterprises. This event was no exception.
My presentation focused on the role of ecodesign, particular in the context of the enterprises that recover and reuse products, such as furniture, electrical goods and clothing. I spoke about retaining material value through smarter recovery, adding value through design and the need for real partnership between sectors (e.g. designers, manufacturers, social enterprises, educators and government). I also reminded them that they are successful businesses in their own right.
I also posed the question “how are you contributing to the sustainability agenda?” reminding them that good intentions are not enough. We need sustainable businesses and sustainable results. I challenged them to go out and lead the way, retain their values and inspire others to follow.
Tweet Read MoreOn the 8th and 9th of September I attended the EPDE conference in London and presented a paper on strategic questions for design education for sustainability. The paper was a follow up from the SVID research we did in Sweden last year. You can find the paper attached and the presentation below.
Recently I did a presentation titled ‘joined up thinking and ecodesign require empathy’ at an event organized by the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) and Cylch, the Wales Community Recycling Network. The title was inspired by a TEDx video. As suggested in a previous post, in today’s environment I feel that improving our ability to empathise is even more significant as we try to move towards a societal culture of trust, openness, interdependence and co-creation. In ecodesign this shift requires designing for and with people and the environment. Where there is no waste only resource.
How to measure the value of design is a complex but vital question. It’s a complex questions because there are a number of sides to it. For example, how do you measure something that is intangible and irrational (i.e. creativity), what do we mean by ‘value’, who are we measuring for, should we be reducing design to a simple set of metrics and what does this mean for policy makers, investors and small businesses?
These are some of the questions that were at the heart of the 15th annual Design Management Institute conference last week. The conference attracts a couple of hundred designers and design managers from some of Europe’s leading businesses such as BMW, Nokia and Carrefor. I went to the conference with one question in mind – “How can policy makers and small businesses better understand the value of design and act accordingly”.
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