‘Design the world you want’: creativity for sustainability

According to the European Commission, up to 80% of a product’s impact on the environment is determined in the design phase. Sustainability Victoria celebrated Melbourne Design Week earlier this month by showcasing how creativity and innovation will be essential for Victoria to make ‘waste’ a thing of the past.

Everything around us has been designed by someone: our buildings, products, clothes and even the services we use every day to meet our needs.

When something is designed, important decisions are taken that affect how things are made, used, maintained, repaired and managed. These decisions determine the environmental impact that results. By thinking long-term and embracing our creativity to make better design choices, we can minimise the impact, eliminating waste and pollution, and keeping products and materials in use for longer.

Creating a sustainable future at Design Week

Sustainability Victoria was proud to host 2 workshops at Melbourne Design Week. The community had the opportunity to ponder a future where we design and use materials, products and services with a more sustainable mindset.

Creative brains built handheld gaming devices from upcycled e-waste components in a session led by industrial designer Elliot Whinnen, highlighting the importance of rethinking our approach to the design, reuse, repair and recycling of electronics. As society becomes increasingly high-tech, e-waste is growing 3 times faster than other municipal waste streams.

Looking to the future also proved key for the second session, as Sustainability Victoria’s Florian van den Corput encouraged participants to become time-travellers and explore the art of foresight, or long-term thinking.

We know we need to think long-term to reach our state’s target of net zero emissions by 2045 and use our resources and materials more sustainably. Foresight will help us to understand the opportunities and risks as we work towards those goals.

While our Design Week participants got a taste of ‘thinking big’ on sustainability, Sustainability Victoria has already started working across the Victorian Government to unlock the potential of foresight for decision makers, applying our expertise to ensure our state can make the best long-term choices for a more sustainable future for Victoria.

A more creative way to look at waste

Part of Victoria’s future plan is moving to a circular economy, and work has already started.

In a circular economy, waste is treated as the beautiful and valuable commodity it is. A circular economy is a chance to look at waste in a new way: materials as a valuable resource, made, used and repaired, then recycled to be made into new products again.

It’s all about thinking creatively to get the most out of the things we use every day, like repairing a bike or an item of clothing instead of throwing it away, or breaking down an object into parts and upcycling those parts into a new object like our e-waste creatives at Melbourne Design Week.

The impact could be profound. In Australia, transitioning to a circular economy could rescue more than $324 million worth of resources that could be used by the manufacturing, construction and agricultural sectors. Just a 5% improvement in materials efficiency could boost the Victorian economy by $6.4 billion.

We can all get creative

By changing the way we think about materials and the resources we use, we all have the ability to design the future we want.

Through a focus on investment and innovation, Sustainability Victoria has supported businesses, industry, councils and communities to make the circular economy transition. We all have a part to play.

Both large and small businesses can think creatively to move to circular business models, systems and processes that design out waste. Our Circular Economy Business Innovation Centre is supporting businesses with grants and the know-how they need to innovate, adopt, and implement circular initiatives and business models.

Local councils and community groups can also design their own fit-for-purpose projects to design out waste in their local area or region. The Circular Economy Councils Fund and Circular Economy Communities Fund provide grant funding and capability building for brilliant local ideas, from toy libraries to repair sheds or even research into more sustainable nappy disposal.

Similarly, the industry can invest in innovation, new technology and infrastructure to reprocess and recycle materials for re-use in new products.

We’re reshaping our world with recycled materials by investing in Victoria’s recycling sector and creating new markets for recycled materials. We’re providing funding on behalf of the Victorian Government for projects that improve our capacity to recycle locally and to use recycled products as part of Victorian infrastructure projects.

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