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?
For those of you that follow me on other platforms, you’ll have seen, heard or read some of my thoughts on the lab grown proteins from firms like #ImpossibleFoods or #BeyondMeat. I’m a fan of those lab grown protein concepts arriving at that position whilst undertaking a Master of Science in 2004 in which…
Read More >Trying to understand something you’ve never experienced before can be a real challenge. In this post the #Covid19 #pandemic is explained using cars and traveling Your body is your car – it’s your mode of transport in this life. We want to treat it well and insure it and ideally we want to be able…
Read More >There’s a significant disconnect with a number of articles on ‘Hybrid Workplaces’ and it’s really disappointing to see SO MANY large consultants pump out articles that ignore reality. So this is a short take to offer an additional perspective. 1) Hybrid workplaces have existed for centuries, they are not new, though the sudden interest is…
Read More >Hi everyone – though a focus on particular those of you in Victoria, Australia who have an idea related to sports, active living or recreation that they might like to convert into a business. Sportstech & Active Living Pre-Accelerator program is being run by the Australian Sport Technologies Network (ASTN) and the Global Sports…
Read More >Old normal, new normal, normal normal. As some businesses aim to rush back to ‘old normal’ they’re likely missing a key opportunity to define, perhaps for the first time, what a new normal should look like for themselves. This Workforce Planning framework should help As a CEO or senior manager, here’s questions I’d want…
Read More >As Covid19 variants continue to emerge, the cause of which can be fairly placed at a lack of social distancing and slow vaccine rates that allow ‘mixing’ of viral strains in social settings, India is on the brink of a healthcare collapse and the implications for Australian companies, especially in the tech sector, are huge.…
Read More >What does the future hold for Australia in the next 3 months, to 3 years? Travel, work, living… Recording to the one hour session inc a Q&A Here’s the Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/pBJqFvN_yZVrktNsN2xWRE7heUTpr226GtyjJpiChG8yZA2D3qEHpACjm8TpMfxd.67Jj1DNSPserOvpZ Passcode: 1DPi*.$Z
Read More >Sometimes the words come to you readily and this small piece has me thinking about what I’d like to say at a time when maybe I’ve lost the cognitive ability to do so Before I was Me Before I was Me I used to be fit, and even quite smart; We’d chat about love,…
Read More >I was doing it well before then and there’s clips of me online going back as far as 2010 or so, railing against the idea of human resources as a label and the insistence by HR managers or CEOs that only people who work ‘in the office’ are going to be productive. It Is A…
Read More >Like lab grown meats, Vertical Farming is going to be part of the future of food. For now it might be best to compare them to small scale battery storage on the electrical grid that can help balance out spikes of demand in the system and provide an output directly where needed. Eventually (like…
Read More >