Disco for good

As disco, humour and tolerance are all high on my list of favourite things, the English Disco Lovers' mission resonates strongly with me. There's something pleasingly barmy about trying to reclaim the abbreviation EDL and dislodge a racist organisation from internet search engines through the medium of disco. Like-minded followers on Facebook have embraced the English Disco Lovers' lighthearted, pun-ridden "pro-disco, anti-racism" manifesto and responded with tweaked lyrics and puns of their own.

The aim is to attract more Facebook "likes" and Twitter followers than the English Defence League, in order to bump it off the top spot on the major search engines. The more people who visit the English Disco Lovers website - and especially link to it - the more successful the project will be. So if you, too, would like to see a world with less racism and more disco please like, tweet, +1 and blog in support of the English Disco Lovers and help bump racism out of cyberspace. Do good, have fun - and keep on dancing!

Introduction to the Circular Economy

While businesses have largely embraced the notion that they must manage their direct carbon emissions – in terms of gas, electricity and vehicle fuel – there is a growing awareness that embodied carbon has an equally significant, although less direct, effect. For every mobile phone, washing machine or vehicle that is produced, carbon emissions are created at every stage of the lifecycle; from extracting the raw materials used in its manufacture to managing its disposal at end of life. And as the global population grows, urbanises and becomes increasingly prosperous, the amount of goods we consume grows, too. This has the dual effect of both increasing carbon emissions from the manufacture, transport and use of the products and also putting stress on the raw materials used to manufacture and transport them. This stress leads to prices of raw materials becoming both higher and more volatile, creating clear economic risks for business through the whole value chain from raw material extraction right through to the retailer.

The concept of the Circular Economy is a provocation to move from the traditional linear “take-make-waste” model of consumption to a model where resources are used more efficiently and can cycle through the economy multiple times. A Circular Economy describes an industrial system designed to be restorative or regenerative, where end of life products become a source of materials for other processes. It is consistent with a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, the elimination of toxic chemicals that impair re-use of materials and promotion of product design that seeks to reduce waste, facilitate repair and make disassembly and materials re-use the norm.

A Circular Economy is based on three core principles. Firstly, it aims to ‘design out’ waste. In a Circular Economy waste simply does not exist—products are designed and optimised for a cycle of disassembly and all resources are re-used. These resource cycles define the Circular Economy and set it apart from disposal and even recycling where large amounts of embodied energy and labour are lost. Secondly, circularity differentiates between consumable and durable components. In the Circular Economy consumable components are largely made of biological ingredients or ‘nutrients’ that are at least non-toxic and possibly even beneficial, and can be safely returned to the biosphere—either directly or in a cascade of consecutive uses. Conversely, durable components such as engines or computers are made of technical nutrients, like metals and most plastics, and are designed from the outset for reuse. And finally, the energy required to fuel this cycle should be renewable by nature, to decrease resource dependence and increase system resilience.

The Circular Economy also redefines the customer’s need as functionality rather than necessarily the ownership of a product. This can lead to a new relationship between businesses and their customers based on product performance. An economy where users usually buy products outright encourages industry to make them “to a price” which can lead to longevity being designed out in order to remain competitive at the point of sale. In a Circular Economy, durable products are leased, rented or shared – and if they are sold, there are incentives in place to encourage the return of the product or its components and materials at the end of its period of primary use, so that they may be re-used. The innate resistance to paying more for a durable product that will last longer may be addressed by new “pay as you use” pricing models.

From a business perspective, the Circular Economy doesn’t just address the risks of resource scarcity and price volatility, it offers the opportunity to create new customer value through disruptive innovation. It invites businesses to re-think how they fulfil customer demand and to develop new business models that continue to create wealth and provide employment while at the same time conserving resources and reducing carbon emissions.

 

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has fantastic free resources for educators and businesses who want to learn more.

Falling out of love with the Kindle

An article in last weekend's Observer brought into focus my growing ambivalence about my Kindle. When the Kindle was launched I gleefully joined the early adopters, revelling in the fact that I could read without consuming paper and, with lifelong 3G included, get new reading material on demand without relying on WiFi. But over the last year or so, I've lost some of that early enthusiasm. I'm no longer the eager advocate that I once was, for several reasons.

Disquiet about labour standards in the factory where the Kindle is made. Kindles are manufactured at Foxconn in China, which has been criticised for its poor labour conditions and its high suicide rate - and is now the subject of bribery allegations. I've avoided buying Apple products for several years because it manufactures there but only recently I was dismayed to discover that the Kindle is made there, too.

Concern about Amazon's tax status. Recently, Amazon has been criticised for its policy of tax avoidance. I now try not to buy from organisations that don't pay their fare share of tax but, once you've acquired a Kindle, it's not so easy to acquire your ebooks from another source.

Reluctance to trade with monolithic corporations. The problem with massive corporations like Amazon is that they squeeze smaller operators out of the market, reducing choice and damaging competition. By buying from them, we perpetutate a business model that will ultimately undermine our power as consumers.

Of course, other e-readers are available and may not suffer from the issues outlined above, but one inevitable drawback remains:

Ebooks remove the ability to share. One of the joys of paper books is that they can be freely loaned, borrowed and sold on - sadly not the case with ebooks. In my experience, most paper books are read only once by each person, but the more people that have the opportunity to become a pass-on reader, the more environmentally efficient the original production of that book becomes. Authors may, for this reason, prefer the ebook model but the passing on of paper books went on for many centuries before the invention of ebooks without any apparent damage to the livelihood of authors.

The pass-on readership of paper books has the potential to make them vastly more carbon-efficient than might otherwise be the case. And while the lending library quite rightly gets the final word as the most eco-efficient way of reading, it has the potential to erode the earning potential of authors. Maybe it's time to move to an entirely new business model for reading material - the rental of paper books, with a royalty paid to the author each time the book is rented. Circular economy thinking applied to the written word.

Whoops (no) apocalypse

Despite the warnings of the doom-mongers, the end of the Mayan calendar didn't bring about the end of the World on 21st December 2012. So now what? Life goes on as usual, no doubt. But while the end of the World may not be imminent, we seem determined to live our lives as if there was no tomorrow.

We consume as though resources are limitless, burn fossil fuels without consideration of their effect on the climate and relentlessly pursue material wealth as if it was the only measure of a life well lived. And yet we know that our planet is finite and that nobody dies wishing they had spent more time at work or bought more stuff. We're supposedly Earth's most intelligent life-form, and yet to observe us objectively one would have to conclude that we had a collective death-wish.

Some academics put a different interpretation on the fact that the Mayan calendar ran out on this day - they posit that the end of the calendar marks the start of a new age of enlightenment. Sadly, that interpretation doesn't seem to be any more accurate. It seems increasingly inevitable that the human race will ultimately bring about its own downfall by undermining the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

So as we celebrate the face that the World didn't end today, let's try to start living as if we intended to stay here.

(My thanks to @penny_walker_sd for the tweet that sparked this train of thought)

The Great Recovery versus the death of hardware

Yesterday saw the launch of The Great Recovery, a joint venture project between the Royal Society of Arts and the Technology Strategy Board to promote the role of design in accelerating the transition towards a circular economy. Designers came armed with examples of super-easy to recycle circuit boards that can be disassembled simply by immersing them in warm water and alarming statistics about the amount of e-waste we ship back to China which already controls many of the resources needed to make it.

To me, the role of design in promoting resource-efficiency is obvious – if we design products to both consume fewer resources and make the materials easier to recover at the end of the product’s life, then sustainability becomes systemic and the circular economy is a natural consequence. And yet a totally different design philosophy is being adopted in the far east, where the electronics industry is engaged in a race to the bottom.

Many of our most prestigious technology brands have become massively wealthy by outsourcing manufacturing to China and Korea where labour is cheap and policymakers less interested in workers’ rights. Their focus is on building the products as cheaply as possible so that they can boost their profit margin to the maximum their brand value can justify. Innovations like design for recyclability have no place in this business model – anything that adds cost is ruthlessly excised in the drive to minimise production cost and maximise revenue. As a result, those countries have developed a high level of expertise in low-cost manufacturing of electronic goods that is now becoming a serious competitive threat to the vendors that instigated it.

One blogger visiting China this summer was shaken to find that even for a one-off purchase, with no haggling, he could acquire a perfectly reasonable tablet running Android Ice Cream Sandwich – with wifi, a camera and all the appropriate trimmings – for just $45. Little wonder, then, that he was moved to conclude that hardware is dead. It’s impossible to make a profit on hardware alone when it becomes so commoditised; the only way to make money is to sell something else and convince consumers to pay for the whole experience of which hardware is only a constituent part.

The implications of this for product designers are profound, because every designer works to a brief and clients have to ensure that their products or services are commercially viable. Given a situation where one country both controls many of the raw materials and has perfected the art of manufacturing a product for a price nobody can beat, it’s just possible that China’s domination of the electronics industry could become absolute. Meanwhile, technology vendors face some tough challenges and a catch-22 situation: reducing reliance on rare earths requires innovation in product design, which is hard to fund when the country that dominates the supply of those rare earths is driving price erosion that reduces margins to levels which mitigate against investment in R&D.

Despite this observation, I remain optimistic about the ability of the design community to propel us towards a circular economy. It certainly has the creativity and passion for the challenge. But vendors will have to adopt a long-term view that properly values the risks associated with strategic materials and resource scarcity, and be brave enough to make investments in design innovation that may take many years to pay back.

The ethics of conservation

A report published today lists, for the first time, the 100 species at the greatest risk of extinction, prompting a discussion on BBC Radio 4 this morning about whether or not species that offer no apparent benefit to mankind should be saved. If resources for conservation are limited, how should we prioritise? Is it right to focus on those plants and animals that have a positive influence on humankind, or does every living thing - including perhaps those that pose an actual threat, such as the malarial mosquito - deserve an equal chance of life?

The dilemma is challenging enough when applied only to animals and plants, but the choices we make could set a dangerous precedent for a resource-constrained future. Fast forward 50 years, to a population in excess of 10 billion trying to survive on a planet that can't produce enough food and water to nourish everybody. In a perfect world, we would adopt a collective approach that shares the Earth's resources equally among all its people. But humanity's record doesn't support such an optimistic outcome.

If we're prepared to let another species die out because it's not sufficiently useful to our particular species, can humanity be trusted not to do the same thing to a country or an ethnic group that doesn't contribute sufficiently to the economy of a resource-impoverished world?

The real Olympic legacy

Well, we did it. And what a boost to our collective confidence it has been to host an Olympic Games which managed to be at the same time both slick and idiosyncratic, both competitive and inclusive. The closing ceremony may have lacked the scale and the sentiment of the opening ceremony, but one moment last night seemed to encapsulate the spirit of London 2012 - the signing singers and their performance of Imagine. Never have Lennon's lyrics seemed more poignant, as the athletes gathered to celebrate the end of an event that embodied so many of the song's aspirations.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have welcomed athletes regardless of their nation, colour or creed in a show of global solidarity that celebrated their hard work, dedication and, in many events, their team spirit. Every one of the athletes was a positive role model, and every one was accorded the respect that he or she deserved. I couldn't help wondering whether the world would be a better, safer and happier place if it was governed by athletics coaches rather than politicians.

Perhaps it won't encourage our youngsters to get off their sofa and into their trainers, but inspiring a generation - as London 2012 set out to do - is not just about sport. Of course, the athletes' achievements are remarkable - but they weren't the only stars of the show. The volunteers who both delivered Danny Boyle's vision for the opening ceremony and acted as "games makers" - welcoming, directing and assisting athletes and spectators - demonstrated an altruism that seems to have been elusive in recent times.

So my hope for the Olympic legacy is that we hold on to those values that really made London 2012 an event of which we can be rightly proud: confidence, tolerance, respect and altruism. London in August 2012 seems a million miles from London in August 2011.