Life of a coffee cup and how it could pave the way for a prosperous world!
By Kate Daly & Ditte Lysgaard Vind based on our conversation in the book ‘A changemaker’s guide to the future’
Centuries of industrialisation have brought radical improvements of life for billions of people. But they have also wreaked havoc on our environment and put our climate under immense stress. Every year, millions of tons of plastic end up in our oceans while temperatures are rising, and resources are becoming scarce.
It does not have to be that way. By harnessing the powers of innovation, circular economy, design and business we can start valuing and utilising the resources at their true value. In return, this will enable us to align the future interest of people, profit and planet The Circular Way.
In Denmark, we know that by doing things smartly and working together across industries and professions, we can unlock the potentials of circular economy. We can make good design and good business, while creating a more prosperous world for all to thrive in.
This resonates with the message of UN’s sustainable development goal (SDG) number 17. While the first sixteen goals articulate clear targets on specific issues such as water, food, production etc., the SDG 17 tells another story. The story of how we get there; through partnerships.
A good example of this is how the Danish plastic industry is tackling the increasing problem with plastic. Instead of bowing down, the whole industry has come together pro-actively and asked us at Lendager TCW to help form and drive a cross-value-chain initiative known as the ‘Innovation Forum for Circular Plastic Packaging’. With what goal? To jointly make Denmark a global role model for circulating plastics; positioning the whole industry at the forefront of the upcoming EU legislations on producer-responsibility and plastic recycling. To get there, we have laid out an ambitious road map and created a design-manual that altogether highlight the way forward for the industry as well as encouraging the political system to take action.
Another story of The Danish Circular Way is Lendager Group’s collaboration with the global leader on high-end wooden floors, Dinesen. Coming together to ensure the most valuable (re)use of Dinesen’s surplus wood, we have designed a solution that allows for using it as indoor flooring and cladding, amongst others at the critically acclaimed Upcycle Studios residentials in Copenhagen.
As such, the good news is that we know what to do and how to do it, and that major consumer brands are increasingly realising that it is good business too. This not only in Denmark but globally. The recipe for a viable solution can thus be summed up in the story of a coffee cup.
The story of a coffee cup
600 billion disposable cups are produced each year. In the current setup — a linear economy — the journey from the coffee shop to the trash can is short. The second you drop your cup in the bin, it goes from solving a problem to becoming a problem — a problem of waste, carbon emissions and pollution.
So why let the cup become waste when we could just as well reuse it? An obvious and simple idea, and all it takes is to set up the proper system for it.
This, in fact, is exactly what The Center for the Circular Economy are doing. In a partnership with Starbucks and McDonald’s they have launched the NextGen Cup Consortium to reinvent the cup in a design that is 100% recyclable and compostable. The vision for this effort is to have several brands on board in a so called pre-competitive partnership. This will enable the consortium to reach a critical mass of consistent materials being collected, sorted, recycled, composted, and reused. The more retailers to join this initiative, the stronger the effort will be.
All for one — and one for all
The transit to circularity is driven by value innovations enabled by design-thinking and technology. To decouple future growth from rising CO2-emissions and virgin material extraction, we need new systems to facilitate the circular flow of materials.
Yet, in order to reach the stage of impactful “value innovation”, competing businesses need to recognise that the value created by collaborating outweighs the risks.
The individual, brilliant product design is not enough. We must also factor in how the products or materials can retain their value at every stage of their life cycle, and this is only possible if the product is aligned with the infrastructure built to manage its recovery and reuse. When businesses collaborate to ensure access to post-consumer feedstocks, they can capture value for their own brand while fostering systems change across the value chain. Pre-competitive partnerships are not only necessary to support this system but also profitable as the increased scale resulting from a unified materials flow drives down cost and future-proofs business investments.
Our experience from both Denmark and the US show us exactly this. When major consumer brands invest in circular solutions and come together across industries and professions, we can create the solutions of the future. Even more, each company are better positioned to achieve their own independent goals benefitting people, profit and planet. Everyone wins.
On March 6, we present the new book ‘A changemaker’s guide to the future’ by Ditte and Anders Lendager in New York during the circular city week. In the book, we talk more about how to create successful pre-competitive partnerships. Here are a few insight from the chapter:
1. Make it win-win for all by identifying where the solution create value for each partner.
2. Highlight the need for scale and the financial benefits that result.
3. Bring together the company teams focusing on innovation and technology and the teams focusing on sustainability and circularity. The new approaches designed to maximize efficiency or solve supply chain challenge can be leveraged to support a more circular model.
4. Always think through the entire life cycle of your solution. How will the product get through every stage of our current systems and infrastructure?
5. Always question whether you’re just tackling the above, without facilitating replacement of the underlying a linear approach. Go big!
Please see more in the book ‘A changemaker’s guide to the future’
