Someone once said, "design is the first signal of human intention". If our intention was to satisfy consumers, then one might argue we've been getting it right. However, if we apply a wider lens, we are likely to see that we have been designing products that contribute to diminishing economic return…
Circular economy initiatives are being undertaken across Google’s operations, from the way the company manages the hardware in its data centres, to the materials used in its buildings, to the way its kitchens are operated. For example, over the last five years, it has improved its data centre operations and hardware to gain 3.5 times the computing power out of the same amount of electricity. Since 2007, Google has repurposed enough outdated servers to avoid buying over 300,000 new replacement machines. In addition to its large-scale composting program, Google uses a software system in its kitchens to track pre-consumer food waste. Google believes that business has a key role to play in being part of the solution to move from a global economy based upon ‘take-make-dispose’ to one that is based on designing waste out of systems. Google’s goal is to embed circular economic principles into the fabric of its infrastructure, operations, and culture. We speak with Jim Miller, Google’s Vice President of Global Operations, to ask him what the circular economy can do for one of the world’s most influential companies. This podcast was recorded as part of the 2016 Disruptive Innovation Festival. Find out more at thinkdif.co.
Michael Pawlyn of Exploration Architecture, tells us how biomimicry can be applied in architecture to produce astonishing results.
"We are makers", Mark Miodownik tells us. We have created some astonishing products, but perhaps we should be ashamed of some of them, he says. We need to get smarter with our material choices.
Granta Design outline their vision of a circular economy and how we should design for it.
With up to 50 billion connected devices predicted by 2020, a pervasive digital transformation is reshaping the economy. Will this ‘fourth industrial revolution’ lead to an acceleration of the extractive, ‘linear’ economy of today, or will it enable the transition towards a society in which value creation is increasingly decoupled from finite resource consumption? A new report, Intelligent Assets: Unlocking the circular economy potential, finds that pairing circular economy principles with the information generated by intelligent devices creates a fertile ground for innovation that could enable this decoupling, and lead to broad social benefits. The report was produced by the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation as part of Project MainStream, a global, multi-industry initiative that aims to accelerate business-driven innovations to help scale the circular economy.
This video was produced for a younger school audience. It asks, 'how do we make stuff?'
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