🌱 Can design be a tool for change?
Circular design is a key tool companies can use to act more responsibly. Typically, responsibility on the market is thought to be a shared responsibility between consumers, companies, and governments. The problem however is that consumers and governments seldomly have access to the full information companies have on their production and manufacturing processes. Consumers and governments also do not always possess the specialist expertise needed to understand this information, even if it is made public or is disclosed. Therefore, it is also difficult for consumers and the government to hold companies accountable for the business decisions they make.
🌱 What shift are we seeing in the EU?
The shift to profit maximization and capitalism in design processes has unfortunately created a plurality of issues for both the environment and humans. Notably however, the EU has recently seen a push for bringing responsibility back to companies through a variety of new legislations on supply chains, corporate sustainability, the use of forced labour, circularity, and ecodesign. Without the active participation of companies that are willing to go beyond doing the bare minimum, these laws alone cannot however save the planet or our future.
🌱 What shortcomings are there in the law?
In the past, many consumers and businesses have looked to the law to create new rules and to “level the playing field”. The law was expected to define what was considered as fair and ethical. While this thought was not a bad one, it failed to account for many of the shortcomings of legislation and regulations. One bigger issue is that legislation is typically retrospective by nature. Laws often only fix things after they have become an issue or a hazard. Moreover, regulators cannot know everything that businesses know, because they are not on the ground within companies every day. Additionally, “creative compliance” or the circumventing of laws’ intentions frequently also creates issues.
🌱 Is compliance alone enough?
The law is very rarely truly a codification of the highest ambitions of our societies. It should therefore, at its best, be seen as setting out minimum requirements for businesses and different stakeholders. In line with this, companies willing to take on responsibility should not only comply with “the letter of the law” but also with the intentions or “the nature of the law”. If, as a society, we are truly serious about tackling the environmental and social challenges of our time, companies will need to go above and beyond what the law sets out. For companies to be sustainable or responsible, their core business principles need to be circular and innovative. To truly achieve circularity or sustainability, a more profound shift in design and entire business models will be needed – at that soon.
🌱 Is there a responsibility for companies to design for circularity?
Our economy needs to shift permanently away from single-use — and even from merely “recyclable” — products over to reusable and long-lasting products. We need companies to champion an economy where products will be used to the very end of their lifespans.[i] These products could be rented, shared amongst several users simultaneously, or passed from one user to another.
This post has been adapted from a newsletter written by Saskia Tykkyläinen and Christine Nikander for a collaboration between Palsa & Pulk and The E-Waste Column. The newsletter titled “How can we design a circular economy?” was originally published in both “The Just Transition Newsletter” and “The E-Waste Newsletter”.
[i] https://www.sitra.fi/en/events/tackling-root-causes-halting-biodiversity-loss-through-the-circular-economy%EF%BF%BC/