Only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling, with an effective recycling rate of approximately 2% globally. Reusable packaging, designed to be used several times, is necessary to reduce total virgin material consumption, emissions and waste generation by keeping resources in circulation.
Measurement and reporting is a significant barrier to scaling reuse models of consumption. There are currently no standardized and tested metrics to track progress on reuse, which is critical for companies to fully understand the economic, consumer and environmental benefits of reusable business models. Organizations still tend to operate in siloes, using different reuse metrics and calculation methodologies. Standardization of reuse metrics across industry, government and standard-setting institutions will accelerate the systemic shift toward reuse models.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/09/plastic-waste-reuse-measurement?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social_scheduler&utm_term=SDIM2022&utm_content=26/09/2022+00:00
Category Archives: the home
IDSA Idea Gallery
This collection holds over 3,000 past Gold, Silver and Bronze winners, as well as Featured Finalists. It stands as an everlasting celebration of brilliance and is a comprehensive reference tool for designers around the world. The winners within this collection are responsible for billions of dollars in sales, have saved lives and have forever changed how people live, work and play. Apple’s original iPhone (Gold, 2008), Tesla’s Model S (Gold, 2013) and the Oculus Rift (Bronze, 2016) are just three recent examples of IDEA winners that have completely disrupted industry and society. This gallery displays the tremendous significance design has in business and beyond. Proving that great results can happen when design is leveraged to its fullest power.
https://www.idsa.org/IDEAgallery?combine=&term_node_tid_depth=383&field_year_value=All&field_idea_award_level_value=All&field_award_special_value=All
“The 21st Century” with Walter Cronkite March 12, 1967
Does the shift to a circular economy have a simple solution?
Hundreds of millions of tonnes of waste end up in landfills yearly – actual wastelands of everything from mattresses to electrical equipment to unworn clothes, determined to be worthless and no longer needed.
Extending the value of such things and the materials they’re made of will lessen our reliance on extraction – raw material extraction – something our current economy is pretty good at and which translates into high sales-related profits. This shift would stem the environmental impacts of extraction, such as polluting waste streams and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
“Using things longer” isn’t as simple as it sounds and understanding how to maximize the value of a product and its materials “post-consumer” is critical for a circular economy to work.
The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse
Taking their cue from Tesla founder Elon Musk colonising Mars, Palantir’s Peter Thiel reversing the ageing process, or artificial intelligence developers Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil uploading their minds into supercomputers, they were preparing for a digital future that had less to do with making the world a better place than it did with transcending the human condition altogether. Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migrations, global pandemics, nativist panic and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff
Midjourney Experiments: Home Mental Health Diffusers and Immersions
Walmart’s would-be role as circular packaging matchmaker
Walmart is seeking to promote these ideas to other consumer products companies through an online tool called the Circular Connector, launched by Walmart in April as a global resource for companies seeking more sustainable packaging options. Since its introduction, Circular Connector has received more than 100 submissions from innovators hoping to meet their match, said Ashley C. Hall, director of sustainable packaging for Walmart. “The idea is to bridge the gap between companies that are looking for good packaging ideas and those that offer them,” she said.
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/walmarts-would-be-role-circular-packaging-matchmaker
How gray became the king of color
If you’ve spent any time on TikTok lately, you may have noticed a sudden obsession with color—or rather the absence of it. “There’s been a disappearance of color variety everywhere in the world,” one user says. “Now I’m insecure about liking neutrals,” another comments. It all stems from a 2020 blog post that claims color has been disappearing from the world. The researchers behind the post used computer vision to analyze the color pixels in 7,000 photographs of objects and how the color of these objects has evolved from the 1800s to 2020. These were sampled from five British museums and split across 21 categories, from electronics and lighting to household appliances.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90778314/how-gray-became-the-king-of-color
Amazon’s Roomba Deal Is Really About Mapping Your Home
A smart home, you see, isn’t actually terribly smart. It only knows that your Philips Hue lightbulbs and connected television are in your sitting room because you’ve told it as much. It certainly doesn’t know where exactly the devices are within that room. The more it knows about a given space, the more tightly it can choreograph the way they interact with you.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-05/amazon-s-irobot-deal-is-about-roomba-s-data-collection
What Does the Future of Work Sound Like?
Before the pandemic, two-thirds of U.S. office workers were in open office environments filled with bad acoustics and distracting noises from loud group meetings, phone and video calls, watercooler chatter, and the clicking of keyboards. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Made Music Studio’s research shows that companies can improve employees’ workplace experiences — by creating a sense of privacy, masking bad noise, and enhancing mood, focus, and even productivity — through the right use of sound.
https://sloanreview-mit-edu.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/sloanreview.mit.edu/article/what-does-the-future-of-work-sound-like/amp
Analyzing Trends with Tim Stock 