UnSchool of Disruptive Design
Activating sustainability and systems change by design, we share content designed to support the transformation to a sustainable, circular future.
11: Website impacts and surprises
View this email in your browser & share Hey Reader, For a while, we knew that the impact of our websites was not good. We had run them through a carbon calculator and found that they were actually performing as some of the worst on the web 🤦🏽♀️. Of course, when you discover you are accidentally doing something that causes negative impacts, the first thing to do is investigate why and then develop a plan to fix it. We’re proud to say that the newly launched UnSchool site has a grade of A+ for...
10: The Nature Positive Movement
View this email in your browser & share Hi Reader, For too long, nature has not been given any voice or “seat at the table” when decisions have been made that directly impact nature's resilience and health. But that is changing with the nature-positive movement growing in strength and awareness, thanks in part to campaigning from a coalition of 27 nature NGOs. Additionally, a landmark UN treaty signed in 2022 called The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) lays out a framework...
09: Beating Plastic Pollution
View this email in your browser & share Hi Reader, According to the UN’s facts and figures on plastic pollution, this year the world is expected to consume 516 million tonnes of plastics, with 11 million tonnes of plastics leaking into aquatic ecosystems each year. What’s even more shocking is that only 9 percent of all plastics produced is actually being recycled, with only 21 percent being economically recyclable. So even if we increased recycling capacity, based on the current mix of...
08: A Deeper Look at Systems Mapping
View this email in your browser & share Hi Reader, In the last Interconnected edition, we talked about the importance of systems thinking in sustainability. In this edition, we’re building on this by exploring one of the main tools of systems approaches: systems mapping (which Leyla will also be teaching in her upcoming live online Systems Thinking workshop; scroll to the bottom for details!) With mapping providing a visual representation of the system, a few commonly used mapping techniques...
07: The Power of Systems Thinking for Sustainability
View this email in your browser & share Hi Reader, We live in a complex, interconnected, and interdependent world, but for many of us, we have been taught to think in linear and reductive ways—which is at odds with the complexity that we are living in! This is one of the reasons we have been so committed to advancing systems thinking, and so this week’s Interconnected is a homage to applying systems to sustainability. We have curated a list of our favorite places to access systems thinking...
06: Earth Day is 55 this week
View this email in your browser & share Hi Reader, What was the inspiration that resulted in a day each year being dedicated to focusing on the Earth? Pollution. The United States was riddled with it; the air, oceans, land and streams were visibly affected by the rapid industrialization that had occurred. Whilst, for a long time, pollution was seen as just being part of progress, a group of people started to see pollution as a problem that needed to be addressed. “This planet is threatened...
How advanced is the Circular Economy? Interconnected #5
View this email in your browser & share Hello Reader, Across the world, the Circular Economy (CE) is gaining impressive traction and momentum. At least 58 countries have circular policies, with CE development being “widespread in the Global North and developing in the Global South,” according to this recent study. The EU has led the way in policy and legislative development, adopting a Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) back in March 2020. You can also dive into Australia’s Circular Economy...
More than human: Interconnected #4
View this email in your browser & share Hi Reader, What does it mean to be human? Existential questions like this are not immune to us—a questioned life is a lived life. In this installment of Interconnected, we’re exploring what it means to be more than human…and no, we don’t mean AI. More than human is a concept that is gaining traction when referring to non-human living things—the billions of other living entities that co-inhabit this beautiful planet with us humans. "More-than-human, as a...
The hidden impacts of our decisions
View this email in your browser & share Hello Reader, In this week’s Interconnected, we have 5 perspectives on how decisions of all sizes have impacts—good, bad and unintended. Leyla is well-known for exposing unintended impacts, like in her 2013 TED talk and recent article on the hidden impacts of AI, as it's only once we uncover impacts that we can then make changes to address them. As humans, we are limited by our perceptions, which are impacted by our experiences, values, worldviews,...
Bio charging the bioeconomy
View this email in your browser & share Hi Reader, Our economy is made up of millions upon millions of different materials, many of which have been synthesized from originally natural inputs but end up having polluting, hazardous outcomes during their production and end of life. The issues with microplastics, for example, have been well publicized and occur in part because it’s normal for things to break down over time—in fact, everything in nature does that organically— but synthetic...
Activating sustainability and systems change by design, we share content designed to support the transformation to a sustainable, circular future.