Time to combine Life Cycle design & penalties for environmental waste to solve a ballooning problem
Organisations like CleanUp Australia and Take3.org have (along with many others) taken a leading role at identifying and removing waste that has entered our environment. Their efforts are fantastic yet have one clear problem – they rely on volunteers to clean up the mess of others, after the fact – it’s a ‘playing catch-up’ strategy. So I’m thinking that the time is now right to use the ‘end of life-cycle’ product design approach to put the onus on product manufacturers to lift their game.
I’ve been particularly inspired by two recent images that landed on my desktop. One is of a pile of cigarette butts in a carpark at the Townsville Hospital (how’s that for Irony!) and the other was of the (mainly) plastic/soft drink related rubbish collected on Bondi beach among others (find those images here). Here’s what we know really well – when you put the emphasis of product returns back onto the producer, they change their models of behaviour and often, use product designs to do so.
So what we need right now is a $1 per cigarette butt penalty to be applied to makers of cigarettes for any of their butts collected from parks, railway stations, beaches etc. We know that cigarette companies will be keen to do this because they’re wanting to ensure they can brand their cigarettes – so now EVERY butt will have their name clearly stamped on it.
And let’s extend the idea to drink containers whilst we are at it. We all know it’s been working in South Australia for years, we all know NT is bringing it in but has had a massive rejection by Coca-Cola threatening legal action (though I think that is because Coca-Cola are trying to bring in their own version of plastic and don’t want supplies of existing plastic to come back online – don’t quote me, just a thought). So let’s say, oh, $1 per plastic container collected in a local Council precint. How quick do you think drink makers will embrace the idea of a 10c deposit scheme then?
And next, TV’s (say $100 per dumped TV) PC’s ($100)
How quickly will product designs focus on end of lifecycle as the penalty invoices start rolling in?
You’d think that given a focus on the future, you’d ask specialists in the future to have some input, and whilst that didn’t occur for the PM’s Summit in Canberra over the weekend, some of Australia’s Futurists had already done the leg work to contribute their thoughts on the future of Australia. That report is…
Read More >Some of Australia’s leading futurists gathered in Melbourne in March to provide a specialist Futures approach to addressing the Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra. The outcome of that Summit and the development that subsequently followed has led to the creation of the report ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’ that has worked through each of the ten…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will meet with eminent ABC radio presenter Jon Faine on Wednesday the 16th of April to discuss the outcomes of the Australia 2020 Futurists Summit and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra on the weekend With a focus on the future of Australia it would be only natural…
Read More >A group of leading Australian Futurists gathered over the weekend to consider the 10 core themes set to be tackled at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Australia 2020 Summit in Canberra in April. Convened by Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber, the 2020 Australia Futurists Summit utilised some of the advanced facilitation and strategy development techniques as a…
Read More >As preparations continue for the Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘1000 heads’ ideas summit in Canberra in April, a group of Australia’s leading futurists are gathering in Melbourne this weekend for the ‘Australia 2020 Futurists Summit’. The futurists attending the summit work across Australia, in corporate, not for profit and Government agencies in a variety of fields…
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Read More >Marcus Barber offers his thoughts on How to Stop Japanese Whaling in its Tracks and suggests that raiding boats won’t do the job. Instead he suggests that the key to negotiating with the Japanese is to have the Japanese people do the work. And to encourage them to do so we must begin to talk…
Read More >If an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ raised the profile of global warming to the general population, it appears that a willingness by political leaders to take appropriate action to mitigate the possible ramifications is still very much lacking. It is such a pity. No one who holds the Global Warming scenario close to heart wants to be…
Read More >Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber will join Tim Cox on 774 ABC as part of the conversation hour next week Tim is filling in for Jon Faine whilst he takes a well deserved break and Marcus will join him for the conversation hour kicking off at 11am on Thursday the 13th of December, where they’ll discuss…
Read More >At the AustForesight 2007 Conference, Strategic Futurist Marcus Barber and fellow Futurist Steve Tighe presented their take on what is required to enable futurists to be seen as more relevant to the Corporate world. Drawing on their shared experience as facilitator and client, they detailed the journey of foresight and futures across the past 50…
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