-
So imagine, you're in the supermarket,
-
you're buying some groceries,
-
and you get given the option
-
for a plastic or a paper shopping bag.
-
Which one do you choose if you want to do
-
the right thing by the environment?
-
Most people do pick the paper.
-
Okay, let's think of why.
-
It's brown to start with.
-
Therefore, it must be good for the environment.
-
It's biodegradable. It's reusable.
-
In some cases, it's recyclable.
-
So when people are looking at the plastic bag,
-
it's likely they're thinking of something like this,
-
which we all know is absolutely terrible
-
and we should be avoiding at all expenses,
-
these kinds of environmental damages.
-
But people are often not thinking
-
of something like this,
-
which is the other end of the spectrum.
-
When we produce materials,
-
we need to extract them from the environment,
-
and we need a whole bunch
of environmental impacts.
-
You see, what happens is, when we need
-
to make complex choices,
-
us humans like really simple solutions,
-
and so we often ask for simple solutions.
-
And I work in design.
-
I advise designers
-
and innovators around sustainability,
-
and everyone always says to me, "Oh Leyla,
-
I just want the eco-materials."
-
And I say, "Well, that's very complex,
-
and we'll have to spend four hours talking about
-
what exactly an eco-material means,
-
because everything at some point
-
comes from nature,
-
and it's how you use the material
-
that dictates the environmental impact.
-
So what happens is, we have to rely
-
on some sort of intuitive framework
-
when we make decisions.
-
So I like to call that intuitive framework
-
our environmental folklore.
-
Okay, it's either the little voice
at the back of your head,
-
or it's that gut feeling you get
-
when you've done the right thing,
-
so when you've picked the paper bag
-
or when you've bought a fuel-efficient car.
-
And environmental folklore is a really important thing
-
because we're trying to do the right thing.
-
But how do we know if we're actually
-
reducing the net environmental impacts
-
that our actions as individuals and as professionals
-
and as a society are actually having
-
on the natural environment?
-
So the thing about environmental folklore is
-
it tends to be based on our experiences,
-
the things we've heard from other people.
-
It doesn't tend to be based
on any scientific framework.
-
And this is really hard, because we live
-
in incredibly complex systems.
-
We have the human systems
-
of how we communicate and interrelate
-
and have our whole constructed society,
-
of the industrial systems,
-
which is essentially the entire economy,
-
and then all of that has to operate
-
within the biggest system,
-
and, I would argue, the most important,
-
the ecosystem.
-
And you see, the choices that we make
-
as an individual,
-
but the choices that we make
-
in every single job that we have,
-
no matter how high or low
you are in the pecking order,
-
has an impact on all of these systems.
-
And the thing is that we have to find ways
-
if we're actually going to address sustainability
-
of interlocking those complex systems
-
and making better choices that result
-
in net environmental gains.
-
What we need to do is we need to learn
-
to do more with less.
-
We have an increasing population,
-
and everybody likes their mobile phones,
-
especially in this situation here.
-
So we need to find innovative ways of solving
-
some of these problems that we face.
-
And that's where this process called
-
life cycle thinking comes in.
-
So essentially, everything that is created
-
goes through a series of life cycle stages,
-
and we use this scientific process
-
called life cycle assessment,
-
or in America, you guys say life cycle analysis,
-
in order to have a clearer picture of how
-
everything that we do in the
technical part of those systems
-
affects the natural environment.
-
So we go all the way back
-
to the extraction of raw materials,
-
and then we look at manufacturing,
-
we look at packaging and transportation,
-
use, and end of life,
-
and at every single one of these stages,
-
the things that we do
-
have an interaction with the natural environment,
-
and we can monitor how that interaction
-
is actually affecting the systems and services
-
that make life on earth possible.
-
And through doing this,
-
we've learned some absolutely fascinating things.
-
And we've busted a bunch of myths.
-
So to start with,
-
there's a word that's used a lot.
-
It's used a lot in marketing,
-
and it's used a lot, I think, in our conversation
-
when we're talking about sustainability,
-
and that's the word biodegradability.
-
Now biodegradability is a material property.
-
It is not a definition of environmental benefits.
-
Allow me to explain.
-
When something natural,
-
something that's made from a cellulose fiber
-
like a piece of bread, even, or any food waste,
-
or even a piece of paper,
-
when something natural ends up
-
in the natural environment, it degrades normally.
-
Its little carbon molecules that it stored up
-
as it was growing are naturally released
-
back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide,
-
but this is a net situation.
-
Most natural things
-
don't actually end up in nature.
-
Most of the things, the waste that we produce,
-
end up in landfill.
-
Landfill is a different environment.
-
In landfill, those same carbon molecules
-
degrade in a different way,
-
because a landfill is anaerobic.
-
It's got no oxygen. It's tightly compacted and hot.
-
Those same molecules, they become methane,
-
and methane is a 25 times more potent
-
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
-
So our old lettuces and products
-
that we have thrown out that are made
-
out of biodegradable materials,
-
if they end up in landfill,
-
contribute to climate change.
-
You see, there are facilities now
-
that can actually capture that methane
-
and generate power,
-
displacing the need for fossil fuel power,
-
but we need to be smart about this.
-
We need to identify how we can start to leverage
-
these types of things that are already happening
-
and start to design systems and services
-
that alleviate these problems.
-
Because right now, what people do
is they turn around and they say,
-
"Let's ban plastic bags. We'll give people paper
-
because that is better for the environment."
-
But if you're throwing it in the bin,
-
and your local landfill facility
-
is just a normal one,
-
then we're having what's called a double negative.
-
Okay, I'm also a product designer by trade.
-
I then did social science.
-
And so I'm absolutely fascinated
-
by consumer goods and how the consumer goods
-
that we have kind of become immune to
-
that fill our lives
-
have an impact on the natural environment.
-
And these guys are, like, serial offenders,
-
and I'm pretty sure everyone in this room
-
has a refrigerator.
-
Now America has this amazing ability
-
to keep growing refrigerators.
-
In the last few years, they've grown one cubic foot
-
on average, the standard size
-
of a refrigerator,
-
and the problem is, they're so big now,
-
it's easier for us to buy more food
-
that we can't eat or find.
-
I mean, I have things at the back of my refrigerator
-
that have been there for years, all right?
-
And so what happens is, we waste more food.
-
And as I was just explaining,
food waste is a problem.
-
In fact, here in the U.S., 40 percent
-
of food purchased for the home is wasted.
-
Half of the world's produced food is wasted.
-
That's the latest U.N. stats. Up to half of the food.
-
It's insane. It's 1.3 billion tons of food per annum.
-
And I blame it on the refrigerator,
-
well, especially in Western cultures,
-
because it makes it easier.
-
I mean, there's a lot of complex
systems going on here.
-
I don't want to make it so simplistic.
-
But the refrigerator is a serious contributor to this,
-
and one of the features of it
-
is the crisper drawer.
-
You all got crisper drawers?
-
You know, the draw that you put your lettuces in?
-
Lettuces have a habit of going soggy
-
in the crisper drawer, don't they.
-
Yeah? Soggy lettuces?
-
In the U.K., this is such a problem
-
that there was a government report a few years ago
-
that actually said the second-biggest offender
-
of wasted food in the U.K. is the soggy lettuce.
-
It was called "the soggy lettuce report."
-
Okay? So this is a problem, people.
-
These poor little lettuces are getting thrown out
-
left, right, and center, because the crisper drawers
-
are not designed to actually keep things crisp.
-
Okay. You need a tight environment.
-
You need, like, an airless environment
-
to prevent the degrading that
would happen naturally.
-
But the crisper drawers, they're just a drawer
-
with, like, a slightly better seal.
-
Anyway, I'm clearly obsessed. All right?
-
Don't ever invite me over because I'll just
-
start going through your refrigerator
-
and looking at all sorts of things like that.
-
But essentially, this is a big problem.
-
Because when we lose something
like the lettuce from the system,
-
not only do we have that impact I just explained
-
at the end of life,
-
but we actually have had to grow that lettuce.
-
The life cycle impact of that lettuce is astronomical.
-
We've had to clear land.
-
We've had to plant seeds, phosphorus,
-
fertilizers, nutrients, water, sunlight.
-
All of the embodied impacts in that lettuce
-
get lost from the system,
-
which makes it a far bigger environmental impact
-
than the loss of the energy from the fridge.
-
So we need to design things like this far better
-
if we're going to start addressing
serious environmental problems.
-
We could start with the crisper drawer and the size.
-
For those of you in the room who do design fridges,
-
that would be great.
-
Okay, so the problem is, so imagine if we
-
actually started to reconsider how we design things.
-
So I look at the refrigerator as a sign of modernity,
-
but we actually haven't really changed the design
-
of them that much since the 1950s.
-
A little bit, but essentially they're still big boxes,
-
cold boxes that we store stuff in.
-
So imagine if we actually really started
-
to identify these problems and use that
-
as the foundation for finding innovative and elegant
-
design solutions that will solve those problems.
-
This is design-led system change,
-
design dictating the way in which the system
-
can be far more sustainable.
-
Forty percent food waste is a major problem.
-
Imagine if we designed fridges that halved that.
-
Another item that I find fascinating
-
is the electric tea kettle,
-
which I found out that you guys don't really,
-
you don't do tea kettles in
this country, really, do you.
-
But that's really big in the U.K.
-
Ninety-seven percent of households
-
in the United Kingdom own an electric tea kettle.
-
So they're very popular.
-
And, I mean, if I were to work with a design firm
-
or a designer, and they were designing one of these,
-
and they wanted to do it eco,
-
they'd usually ask me two things.
-
They'd say, "Leyla, how do I
make it technically efficient?"
-
Because obviously energy's
a problem with this product.
-
Or, "How do I make it green materials?
-
How do I make the materials green
-
in the manufacturing?"
-
Would you ask me those questions?
-
They seem logical, right? Yeah.
-
Well I'd say, "You're looking at the wrong problems."
-
Because the problem is with use.
-
It's with how people use the product.
-
Sixty-five percent of Brits
-
admit to over-filling their kettle
-
when they only need one cup of tea.
-
All of this extra water that's being boiled
-
requires energy, and it's been calculated
-
that in one day of extra energy use
-
from boiling kettles
-
is enough to light all of the streetlights
-
in England for a night.
-
But this is the thing, right?
-
This is what I call a product person failure.
-
But we've got a product system failure
going on with these little guys,
-
and they're so ubiquitous, you know,
-
you don't even notice they're there.
-
And this guy over here, though, he does.
-
He's named Simon.
-
Simon works for the national
electricity company in the U.K.
-
He has a very important job of monitoring
-
all of the electricity coming into the system
-
to make sure there is enough
-
that it powers everybody's homes.
-
He's also watching television.
-
The reason is is because there's a unique
-
phenomenon that happens in the U.K.
-
the moment that very popular TV shows end.
-
The minute the ad break comes on,
-
this man has to rush
-
to buy nuclear power from France,
-
because everybody turns their kettles on
-
at the same time.
-
(Laughter)
-
1.5 million kettles, seriously problematic.
-
So imagine if you designed kettles,
-
you actually found a way to
solve these system failures,
-
because this is a huge amount of pressure
-
on the system,
-
just because the product hasn't
thought about the problem
-
that it's going to have when it exists in the world.
-
Now, I looked at a number of
kettles available on the market,
-
and found the minimum fill lines,
-
so the little piece of information that tells you
-
how much you need to put in there,
-
was between two and a five-and-a-half cups of water
-
just to make one cup of tea.
-
So this kettle here is an example of one where
-
it actually has two boiling chambers,
-
or, sorry, two reservoirs.
-
One's a boiling chamber, and one's the water holder.
-
The user actually has to push that button
-
to get their hot water boiled,
-
which means, because we're all lazy,
-
you only fill exactly what you need.
-
And this is what I call behavior-changing products:
-
products, systems, or services
-
that intervene and solve these problems up front.
-
Now, this is a technology arena,
-
so obviously these things are quite popular,
-
but I think if we're going to keep
-
designing, buying, and using and throwing out
-
these kinds of products at the rate we currently do,
-
which is astronomically high,
-
there are seven billion people, right,
-
who live in the world right now.
-
There are six billion mobile phone subscriptions
-
as of last year.
-
Every single year, 1.5 billion mobile phones
-
roll off production lines,
-
and some companies report their production rate
-
as being greater than the human birthrate.
-
152 million phones were thrown
out in the U.S. last year.
-
Only 11 percent were recycled.
-
I'm from Australia. We have a
population of 22 million. Don't laugh.
-
And it's been reported that 22 million phones
-
are in people's drawers.
-
We need to find ways of solving
the problems around this,
-
because these things are so complicated.
-
They have so much locked up inside them.
-
Gold: did you know that it's actually cheaper now
-
to get gold out of a ton of old mobile phones
-
than it is out of a ton of gold ore?
-
There's a number of highly complex and valuable
-
materials embodied inside these things,
-
so we need to find ways of encouraging disassembly,
-
because this is otherwise what happens.
-
This is a community in Ghana,
-
and e-waste is reported, or electronic waste
-
is reported by the U.N.
-
as being up to 50 million tons trafficked.
-
This is how they get the gold
-
and the other valuable materials out.
-
They burn the electronic waste
-
in open spaces.
-
These are communities, and this
is happening all over the world.
-
And because we don't see the ramifications
-
of the choices that we make as designers,
-
as businesspeople, as consumers,
-
then these kinds of externalities happen,
-
and these are people's lives.
-
So we need to find smarter, more systems-based,
-
innovative solutions to these problems,
-
if we're going to start to live
sustainably within this world.
-
So imagine if, when you bought your mobile phone,
-
your new one because you replaced your old one
-
— after 15 to 18 months is the average time
-
that people replace their phones, by the way —
-
so if we're going to keep this kind of expedient
-
mobile phone replacing, then we should
-
be looking at closing the loop on the systems.
-
The people who produce these phones,
-
and some of which I'm sure
are in the room right now,
-
could potentially look at what
we call closed-loop systems,
-
or product system services,
-
so identifying that there is a market demand
-
and that market demand's not going to go anywhere,
-
so you design the product to solve the problem.
-
Design for disassembly, design for light-weighting.
-
We heard some of those kinds of strategies
-
being used in the Tesla Motors car today.
-
These kinds of approaches are not hard,
-
but understanding the system
-
and then looking for viable, market-driven
-
consumer demand alternatives
-
is how we can start radically altering
-
the sustainability agenda,
-
because I hate to break it to you all:
-
consumption is the biggest problem.
-
But design is one of the best solutions.
-
These kinds of products are everywhere.
-
By identifying alternative ways of doing things,
-
we can actually start to innovate,
-
and I say actually start to innovate.
-
I'm sure everyone in this room is very innovative.
-
But in the regards to using sustainability
-
as a parameter, as a criteria
-
for fueling systems-based solutions,
-
because as I've just demonstrated
with these simple products,
-
they're participating in these major problems.
-
So we need to look across the entire life
-
of the things that we do.
-
If you just had paper or plastic,
-
obviously reusable is far more beneficial,
-
then the paper is worse,
-
and the paper is worse because it weighs
-
four to 10 times more than the plastic,
-
and when we actually compare,
from a life cycle perspective,
-
a kilo of plastic and a kilo of paper,
-
the paper is far better,
-
but the functionality of a plastic or a paper bag
-
to carry your groceries home
-
is not done with a kilo of each material.
-
It's done with a very small amount of plastic
-
and quite a lot more paper.
-
Because functionality defines environmental impact,
-
and I said earlier that the designers
always ask me for the eco-materials.
-
I say, you know, there's only a few materials
-
that you should completely avoid.
-
The rest of them, it's all about application,
-
and at the end of the day, everything
we design and produce in the economy
-
or buy as consumers is done so for function.
-
We want something, therefore we buy it.
-
So breaking things back down and delivering
-
smartly, elegantly, sophisticated solutions
-
that take into consideration the entire system
-
and the entire life of the thing, everything,
-
all the way back to the extraction
through to the end of life,
-
we can start to actually find
really innovative solutions.
-
And I'll just leave you with one very quick thing
-
that a designer said to me recently who I work with,
-
a senior designer, I said,
-
"How come you're not doing sustainability?
-
You know, I know you know this."
-
And he said, "Well, recently I pitched
a sustainability project to a client,
-
and turned and he said to me,
-
'I know it's going to cost less,
-
I know it's going to sell more,
-
but we're not pioneers, because
pioneers have arrows in their backs.'"
-
I think we've got a roomful of pioneers,
-
and I hope there are far more pioneers out there,
-
because we need to solve these problems.
-
Thank you.
-
(Applause)