The Blueprint #18
This week I talk about Business Green's Net Zero Festival, a ciruclar service pilot by City To Sea, and initiatives to support access to organic vegetables in Liverpool.
What’s The Blueprint About?
The Blueprint is a newsletter sent every 2 weeks exploring service design topics in relation with the planetary crisis and vice-versa, under 10 minutes.
If you have any questions, comments or recommendation, you can contact me at hello@sidneydebaque.com. In the meantime, bonne lecture!
Business Green Net Zero Festival
This is the 5th edition of the festival, led by UK news-outlet focusing on the green economy, as its name suggests. It spanned over 2 days, during which I attended around 18 talks and workshops, ranging from inspirational talks, to product keynotes, to collaborative sessions.
There was quite a variety of topics, from the role of ISO standards in the transition to net zero, to the role of politicians, or how to address the gender gap in the sustainability industry. Quite a few things picked my interest, or on the contrary, confused me. I’ll talk about these and then will focus on my reflection for services and service design.
Electric vehicles, heat pumps, AI, carbon capture, and other buzzwords did indeed buzz. Maybe the main takeaway I have is that there’s a massive focus on technical solution to operational and behavioural problems. This poses an issue to the way we address problems, looking through a peep-hole, and displacing issue throughout the system.
On the bright side, a couple of speakers & events did address the systemic aspect of the planetary crisis and did point out that we needed to look at solutions beyond the scope of carbon, and to look at it from a new angle, especially around inclusivity.
This is the case of WWF’s Ed Steed, who rightly pointed out the two-way relationship we have with our environment, as a resource to power our activities, and through our impacts on it. As we’re disrupting nature processes, we’re losing ecosystemic services we rely on to operate our society.
This is also the case of UK Green Building Council’s Yetunde Abdul, who rightly pointed out that net zero couldn’t be our only focus, as it sometimes comes to the expenses of other planetary boundaries, or social foundations, arguing we should look at a number of criteria to assess the problem and evaluate solutions.
A couple of speakers did look at more structural solutions. This is the case of Jarvis Smith, calling for longer term planning and vision. Not as “let’s do that after tomorrow”, but more in the sense of “We want to be there in 10 years, what is our first step today?”. This is also the case of Simon Reeve& Clover Hogan, rightly pointing out at the role of people, communities, as foundational functions to foster change. Something that has been echoed by a workshop on fostering diversity in sustainability by Women In Sustainability Network’s founder Rhian Sherrington & IEMA’s Social Impact & Sustainability Director Beth Knight.
Reflection from a service design point of view:
I think the main thing that comes to mind in that regards is the type of work we’ll get to work on as service designer. It seems the focus is yet again on solution implementation and less so on behaviours or operations, as I mentioned previously. This echoes the recent podcast by the School Of Service Design on Austerity Service Design. Lou Downe & Sarah Drummond discuss the shift towards austerity and how it impacted the service design practice, from something to invent new futures back in the 2000’s and early 2010’s to delivering cost reduction solution.
As we keep our focus on carbon budget instead of only financial budget, a similar service design paradigm might happen, in which we focus on reducing carbon costs, at the expense of other planetary boundaries or social foundations. Political Historian Robert Saunders rightly reminded of the closure of the coal mines in the UK by Margaret Thatcher, which can be argued as a good step for the planet, but at the expenses of millions of people in the UK.
The question therefore is, how can we shift from passive implementation of services surrounding technical solutions to active transformation through services? I believe it starts very much with the people and being of service of them through our practice.
At the scale of a project, by engaging people and co-designing solutions to human problems, rather than simply implementing technical solutions.
At the scale of a service, by understanding implications, beyond the remit of an organisation, of a service and embedding a systemic approach to decision making. Investigating, Understanding, Mapping and Communicating interdependencies, and mostly importantly using a service as a tool for people to achieve their goals in a way they want to, rather than a tool to control their behaviours.
Other noteworthy news:
[Case Study / Circularity] During the Circular Economy Week, Charity City To Sea presented their learnings from the pilot they held in Bristol to reduce single use coffee cups waste. The talk focuses more on behavioural challenges to circular services.
→ Access the recording
[Initiative / Food access] Queens Of Greens is social enterprise supporting communities in food deserts around Liverpool and Knowsley to access affordable organic products. The initiative hinges on a mobile grocer moving around communities so they can access organic products.
→ Read on Wicked Leaks
[Carbon Emissions / Visualisation] The NASA has published a mesmerising visualisation of the carbon dioxide emissions in the world. We can see how Co2 lives with us, travels through world with winds and is absorbed.
→ Watch on YouTube
I’m a freelance service designer who helps public and private organisations intervene to mitigate the impact of the planetary crisis on humans and vice-versa.
You can contact me about for questions, comments or consulting at hello@sidneydebaque.com