Why waste, if you can share and care?
Food, clothing, furniture — everywhere people throw away their goods. The value of these goods may have extinguished for one person but still exist for someone else. So why throw it away, rather than revalue? Why not share with someone?
The world faces many challenges. Climate change, poverty and hunger are just some of them. That is why, more than 4 years ago, on 25th September 2015, the United Nations launched the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development. It encompasses the 17 SDGs — the Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to tackle the major challenges faced by the global society and thereby pave the path to a better future. “Sustainable Development” denotes development that satisfies the needs of the present-day generation without compromising the ability of future generations to fulfill their own needs.
“We envisage a world free of poverty, hunger, disease and want, where all life can thrive. We envisage a world free of fear and violence. A world with universal literacy. A world with equitable and universal access to quality education at all levels, to health care and social protection, where physical, mental and social well-being are assured. A world where we reaffirm our commitments regarding the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation and where there is improved hygiene; and where food is sufficient, safe, affordable and nutritious. A world where human habitats are safe, resilient and sustainable and where there is universal access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy.”
This excerpt from the Agenda 2030 declaration, in which the 17 SDGs have been formulated for the first time and a further 169 sub-goals have been set. Overall, the SDGs are intended to lead to a “transformation of our world.”
But the objectives have an even greater impact and include environmental and ocean protection , education and equal rights as well as a sustainable and stable economy. What is special about them is that, for the first time, such goals have been set equally for all member nations. This is what we call a new way of networking of the United Nations, acknowledging that poverty, environmental destruction, inequality, production and consumption patterns, corruption and many other problems are no longer regional challenges. The Agenda states that all goals apply to all countries. All 193 member countries of the United Nations have signed the Agenda 2030. They are thus committed to implement the SDGs at national and international level.
What can WE, what can I do?
SDG 12 “Sustainable Consumption” proves how well each and every one of us is able to contribute to the issue. This goal is particularly important for companies and consumers in so-called states of the global North, i.e. USA or member states of the EU. “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” Goal 12 sounds simple, but is challenging: First of all, it is about sustainably managing the planet’s natural resources.
For example, decoupling economic growth from increased consumption of natural resources. Also on the agenda is the improvement of the negative environmental impacts that arise in the life cycle of a product — production, use — and the reduction of the environmental impact of the product itself. The quality of life should be maximized, the consumption of natural resources, toxic materials, emissions, waste and pollution minimized. Once again, the aim is not to jeopardise the opportunities of future generations.
The use of natural resources and their sustainable management is also being addressed, as is the reduction of food waste. Losses in production and the supply chain, the environmentally sound handling of chemicals and waste throughout the entire life cycle, and the reduction of waste are also problems defined within goal 12. Companies are required to implement sustainable practices and report information on sustainability. Finally, together they should ensure that everywhere people have relevant information and awareness of sustainable development and a lifestyle in harmony with nature.
This is where each individual comes into the picture as everyone is capable of contributing to change their individual unsustainable consumption and production patterns.
We understand that we are just a very little cog in the machine room of the Sustainable Development Goal 12. What we also see is that our goal “Ensure Sustainable Consumption” is linked to other SDGs, such as 11, “Sustainable Cities and Communities.”
In the Asian and African countries, population will grow bigger and if we look at the 2019 United Nations report, we see that there are still one billion people in the world living in informal settlements. Even worse, up to two billion people have no access to garbage disposal services and three billion have no access to controlled waste disposal. Due to given factors such as rapid urbanization, rising income levels, and the consumer-driven economy, experts predict that all waste generated by the world will increase from two billion tons to nearly four billion tons by 2050 if habits do not change.
The United Nations report concludes:
“Urgent action is needed to ensure that current material needs do not lead to the overextraction of resources or to the degradation of environmental resources, and should include policies that improve resource efficiency, reduce waste and mainstream sustainability practices across all sectors of the economy.”
Let’s take a look at Germany: up to 12 million tons of food are thrown away every year. Every German citizen is throwing away 76 kilos of food per year. We buy too much, store the food incorrectly and do not recycle the leftovers. With the initiative “Zu gut für die Tonne!” (Too good for the bin!), the German government is trying to counteract the downward spiral and to provide educational work.
The government is pursuing the goal that only half as much food from retail and households should be thrown away by 2030. The problem is: There is no policy framework. Although the Minister of Food Julia Klöckner (CDU) called on consumers, retailers and restaurants to take counter measurements, so far no active political action can be seen.
Germany’s dismissive attitude towards “containern” (dumpster diving) is still perceived as a major drawback. Saving food that is already in a supermarket’s garbage is still punishable. Recently two students were reported to the police, and eventually sentenced to eight hours of social work just because trying to save food from trash cans is legally seen as stealing in Germany. In contrast, German civil society is mobilizing. With the petition “Dumpster diving is not illegal! We need an amendment to the law!” the petition platform WeAct! takes initiative to decriminalize food rescue. And it is successful. Already more than 159,000 signatures.
Success in this area can already be seen in France. For three years now, supermarkets in France have not been allowed to simply throw away food. France is the first country in the world to officially criminalize food waste.
Besides a well-designed national policy framework and instrument, we are in urgent need of social entrepreneurship and start-ups, NGOs and public actors to battle the problem. Therefore, we should look at the role models in the fight for sustainability. In particular, the focus here is on reducing food waste.
“OLIO connects neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away.”
With OLIO, a food-sharing app, the founders took up the idea in 2015 to share leftover food with the neighbours. They were shocked, that despite there was an app for literally everything “including one, where you could rent your toilet out” but not an app to share your food. They created the opportunity for their home country, the UK, to share remaining food.
„OLIO is super easy! To make an item available, simply open the app, add a photo, description, and when and where the item is available for pick-up. “
As we learned from Guido van Garderen, a leading brand strategist, branding is not just marketing but telling and selling a story.
This is our Story!
But first: let’s go on a small journey together.
Imagine you are on holiday on your favorite Greek Island.
Imagine getting woken up by the sunlight shining on your face, warm and welcoming. You get up, open the window, smell the fresh air of the sea and enjoy the view. You can already smell the coffee that is being prepared for you. After taking your time, enjoying the view and drinking your coffee on your sunny balcony you get yourself ready for the beach. You leave your room and you can instantly feel the warm sand under your feed, you hear the birds singing and the calming sound of the waves. You put down your towel and as soon as you lay yourself down on the warm, soft sand you close your eyes.
Suddenly you feel something hard touching your feed. What is it? It rips you out of your calming soft, sleepy mood and you open your eyes. A plastic bottle got washed ashore. Now you feel disgusted and you want to throw the bottle away, but soon realize the whole beach is swamped with littler. Food waste, plastic bottles and bags, clothing, your paradise has vanished.
Nightmare or our future?
Unfortunately this dystopia has already become reality in a lot of places and we are committed to tackle this problem. But let us take a step back and tell you who we are, where we come from and what the story was all about:
We, Torge Marschalk, Annabella Backes, Eloise Faure and Franziska von Poser are four international students, all from different areas of expertise. When we met in October 2019 we were four complete strangers but what connects us is our ecoanxiety and our passion for sustainability. An awareness of environmental issues, climate change and animal welfare, sustainability, was something instilled in us quite early. But what a conscious and free decision was for our parents or people their age — in a time when vegetarianism was a mental confusion and global warming was hardly considered an issue, when nuclear power was the enemy and the echo of the Vietnam War was still noticeable — is obligatory for our generation. We must question our lifestyles, find ways to minimize our consumption, manifest a sustainable mindset. We have to start thinking about the local and global consistency of our individual behaviour. The big industries, political decision makers and power holders must take responsibility. We seem to be at the point where a radical change in our way of life cannot heal the symptoms produced by capitalism and colonialism, but it might alleviate them. We have to find treatments for the disease “capitalism”, which has been spreading for years, slowly but surely, like a deadly virus, through increasing globalization, all over the world.
In our course Social Issues and Corporate Responsibility taught by Betty Tsakarestou, we got introduced to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) defined by the UN to achieve a better and sustainable future. To act and help achieving goal number 12 “Responsible Consumption and Production” we created our social platform κυκλοφορία.
But let’s take it step by step: Why waste?
Our interest for goal Number 12 originates from a task Mrs. Tsakarestou gave us. She proposed to us to simply observe our daily life.What struck all of us was the huge amount of plastic consumption and the even bigger amounts of wastage of goods and littering of Athens. We would like to share with you our thoughts and feelings that were the starting point for this project. Here you can find a small story on what we have observed walking through Athens with our eyes widely open.
And, what now?
So our starting point were our observations. But how did we go from there? From the moment we had developed a common ground and everyone was convinced of the still somewhat blurred idea, many discussions followed and hours on roof terraces in Athens.
Our vision is a society based on respect, responsibility and participation. A world in which personal relationships and an open heart are more important than profits. Κυκλοφορία wants to make the world a little better for everyone. That is why we work for a strong, solitary community and a sustainable lifestyle. We believe that in order to realize a fairer world, we need a value system that is not dominated by a materialistic point of view but rather a sustainable one combined with new forms of social engagement. This requires new rules, new ideas and new business models within the economy.
So, first of all, in order to clearly define the problem we are addressing, we defined our two hypotheses:
- Wastage is a major problem in Greece as well as in the whole of Europe.
- There is a missing awareness for alternatives of wastage.
Starting from our personal opinion and own observation, we had to validate and quantify this impression.
In a first step, we read many articles, informed ourselves about the legal and political situation and evaluated statistics. Here are the results:
In a second step, we defined our goals that we personally felt were most important:
What are the concluding main objectives?
- We want to prolong the lifespan of any product, challenging the trend of fast food and fast fashion.
- We want to make the sharing experience as easy as possible. Products come into the roundabout by those who don’t need them anymore and get collected by those who want them.
- We want to be an interface where users can find a multitude of collected and meaningfully compiled information. So that they can easily get hints and tricks on do-it-yourself projects or articles to understand why products are either harmful or healthy for people and the environment.
- We want to spread the notion and the joy of collective consumption and goods. So that a community is formed that supports each other and shows solidarity.
Since we are all foreigners who were we to decide if the issue we assumed to be a problem was actually experienced as one by the locals of Athens. So besides doing research on statistics and media coverage as well as contacting people who are already working in the field, like the founder of Boroume, we decided to conduct a survey. Having a long discussion on what kind of data actually has to be collected and what questions to be asked, we created a questionnaire to finally conduct an online survey. Our goal was to get an impression on the awareness of wastage and the actual amount of wastage.
Was it fitting? Were the people actually wasting as much food, clothes and furniture as we assumed? If yes, was there an awareness for it? To take it even further, if they were aware of the issue, why didn’t they change it? Is there room for solutions?
Let the numbers speak for themselves:
The problem is defined, what now: Finding our solution.
Motivated by the statistics and the reassurance that we are acting in favor of local citizens we brainstormed on possible solutions. The survey revealed that most people are aware of the problem of fast-fashion and fast-food and the simple solution of throwing away but they were missing alternatives.
Eventually after many hours of brainstorming in the sun and multiple cups of coffee and pieces of cake:
Κυκλοφορία was born.
Inspired by the success stories and the simplicity of platforms for collaborative consumption in Germany and France, our home countries, like Foodsharing and RE-NT we have decided to create a social platform where people could share, following the motto: “someone’s garbage being your treasure”.
To get an idea how already well established foodsharing organizer work and get some feedforward to improve our concept, an expert from the Bremerhaven (Germany) Foodsharing community gave us an interview.
So what exactly is our solution?
The beautiful sound of the word κυκλοφορία and the fact that it is a greek word are not the only reasons we chose to call our platform κυκλοφορία. It has many meanings. An older meaning is circulation. Life is a never ending circle. What dies, is taken by the earth and will provide new nutrition for new living beings. Nowadays κυκλοφορία also means roundabout, talking in “traffic terms”. The purpose of a roundabout is, to allow the cars in the most efficient way to move into the direction they want to go. Both meanings really refer to what our platform is supposed to do.
Spreading the Love
Finding a name was not too complicated due to the clear identification of our aim: to provide a bustling platform that promotes the sustainable, circular traffic of goods and encourages the circulation of knowledge — κυκλοφορία.
Firstly we set up a website to educate and inform on sustainable consumption and waste and also provide a forum to connect people but we soon realized that it would be difficult to engage them activly. Our solution was social media, more specifically: FACEBOOK.
But why use Facebook?
To spread the idea of shared consumption and reducing food waste we decided to use Facebook as our main tool. It provides a well-known, easy to use platform to connect many people from different social backgrounds. So far, our main target group are young students. Since the survey revealed that food sharing in Greece is nowhere close to be as well-known as in other neighbouring European countries, we focused primarily on Erasmus students who already had experiences with shared consumption.
To reach out to as many people as possible we shared links with a short information on the purpose of κυκλοφορία on different Erasmus Facebook groups as well as What’s App groups and on our Instagram account. This easy step was a game changer, not only leading to currently 82 members with more to join every day but allowing our idea to become reality, making the step from theory to practice.
Facebook allows us to connect with each other on a simple basis, not forcing people to give personal information to another website and using a platform everyone is familiar with. So far the feedforward from our users has been great and is motivating to continue. One suggestion by our fellow students was to use other platforms to reach out to more people.
Resulting in our Instagram account.
Even though Instagram might seem more “up-to-date” we decided that it is not suitable for the direct exchange of information and goods between active people. The account remains as a platform to reach more people and get attention.
How does it work?
