As a designer, I and my co-designers must, in part, take responsibility for making the unsustainable, single-use, consumable economy a massive success. Fashion designers created exciting collections for every season. Car designers created stylish facelifts to make last year’s model an embarrassment on the driveway. Product designers created convenient and cheap Bic pens that got lost long before the ink had run out. Identified and communicated benefits drove the consumer economy.
Now we have the power to make the green economy a success by making products for keeps, durable and long life a good thing. We can make circular systems convenient, with built-in benefits to make them more valuable to the seller and buyer. We can encourage the user to be responsible and play a part in sustainability by making it appealing and sociable through our messaging and design nudges. We can design new systems to deliver service-enhanced products to the end-user in a circular and sustainable way.
I’m excited by the potential to make a difference and energised to push things forward. Sadly, others don’t see it the same way. Some see the potential for it to cost more, make less money, and have little effect on the planet. Others would prefer things to stay the same, happy in their little bubble, and many don’t think they can make a difference.
I was at EB100 Alumni Celebration Evening the other night (an excellent event by the way) where Michael Hayman MBE, spoke about the fear of failure as a block to entrepreneurship and the many challenges we face as a nation, sustainability being a major one. I would add a lack of self-belief to that. After all there are not many successful entrepreneurs who suffer from imposter syndrome. We need that fearless entrepreneurial spirit driven by self-belief to change the paradigm and push past the naysayers to reach our net-zero targets. In a recent post, Paul Poleman, ex-Unilever CEO, debunked the apparent backlash to green investment, pointing out that it is, in fact on the rise. However, on the ground, I am seeing more and more green initiatives being cut back, delayed on the grounds of cost-cutting or put into, as one of my colleagues coined, the ‘too-difficult’ box.
The big polluters, corporate consumer goods companies, are struggling to find growth and seeing dwindling margins. Activist investors are putting pressure on them to cut back their green initiatives to save money and increase dividends. My initial enthusiasm for their achievements was because sustainability actually helped them to cut costs. For example, reducing packaging saved money and looked green at the same time. Those initiatives have run their course and reached the point of diminishing returns. The only way to become greener now is to innovate, which requires both investment and risk, but the first thing that goes in rounds of cost-cutting is innovation.
Most corporate employees I meet are passionate about making a difference in the green economy and I used to believe it would be the corporations that would lead the way to a more sustainable world with their scale and market-responsive dynamics. It seemed to me that start-ups and SMEs, whilst passionate and numerous, didn’t have the scale or co-ordination needed to make the required impact. Governments’ short parliamentary terms and national boundaries limit their impact on a global problem. Countries with the worst environmental situations do not have the leadership, money, or infrastructure to cope or respond. Consumers will always look for convenience and value and sustainability are portrayed by many as a cost and inconvenience, so they are reluctant to change habits.
In the first round, light-weighing packaging, removing single-use shopping bags, or even installing offshore wind power was easier to implement as it didn’t modify our behaviours significantly. The next round is difficult. Most of us live in cities, so recharging electric vehicles is extremely problematic. For anyone other than Gretta Thunberg travelling across the Atlantic by yacht is impractical, we need to fly. Fitting heat pumps into the UK’s millions of draughty Victorian buildings is ineffective. Refilling a shopping trolley’s worth of products in a supermarket would be chaotic.
So, shall we give up and slowly sink into the rising seas? No.
Firstly no one party can be responsible for driving the green economy forward- it will require all of us. We have to turn the problem on its head and make it an opportunity. The government must drive forward the green economy because it will create thousands of new businesses, employ millions and turn around our flagging economy. Providing the infrastructure, coordination and favourable taxation will encourage businesses to engage. Legislation will give that extra push required to get them over the line. Industry should explore new value, capabilities and competitive advantages inherent in the resulting new systems. Brands, start-ups and SMEs should design new benefits into their offers giving them the margin they require to thrive. Lasty, do you think it would be possible for national media to put out a few good news stories on the green economy to balance the griping they usually serve up and give consumers a more balanced view of the potential benefits it will bring?
Positivity is our most powerful tool.
