Exponential Day #3: (UN)SUSTAINABLE! Creating a regenerative future
By Marina Henriques, Innovation Consultant. (Originally published in English)
It is evident that our current model cannot meet with the Earth's capacity. We take natural resources for granted. A clear example of this is when my building's water supply got cut for several hours while I was working from home. Suddenly, I had to fill up buckets of water to make sure I could go through the rest of the day. I thought I valued water but, until recently, I hadn't realised just how much I depended on it. This was just one day in my life. A much different story would be told in Cape Town or Cochabamba, to name a few.
On the 21st of October, the event "(UN)SUSTAINABLE! Creating a regenerative future" was held. This was the third edition of ACCIÓ's Exponential Day, of which we also had the opportunity to collaborate in the previous edition, tackling the new (im)mobility emerging from the COVID-19 crisis. This time, we placed a special emphasis on circular economy, and how to build a resilient and regenerative future.
A multidisciplinary round table
A discussion on sustainability and disruptive innovation was held between Ideas for Change's Founder & Director, Javi Creus and Ship2B's Co-founder and Co-CEO, Clara Navarro.
During the stimulating conversation, Javi Creus recalled that in the Observatory of Emergent Capabilities Report, we observed how organisations and society transform in times of struggle. Indeed, reinventing oneself is necessary in order to be resilient.
Moreover, five experts in the field of sustainability shared their insights on key issues:
Blue spaces: Eugeni Castejón, Founder of Clean Rivers HUB, introduced the idea that blue spaces, such as rivers, must be thought of as a system: from the land in which it is born to the ocean, sea, lake, reservoir or estuary in which it expands.
Citizen action! Sònia Ruiz, Founder of NOIMA, highlights three key roles citizens have in their daily lives: resource and data management, proposing and participating through activism, and becoming prosumers and demand sustainable consumption models.
Energy, presented by Carlota Pi, Founder of HolaLuz, needs to be shifted from an investment to a savings approach, both for the planet and for its users.
Industrial symbiosis expert, Verónica Kuchinow (Símbiosy), foresees the next industrial revolution of circular economy: to redesign materials so that they can later on we can create markets and opportunities from waste and underutilised resources.
Waste: Last, but not least, Xavier Marin (DAN*NA) defends that a local diet makes sense beyond kilometre zero consumption, because it generates raw materials for a new local industry, that is, bioplastics.
Thirteen scenarios for a regenerative future
Following the steps of our Pentagrowth methodology for the design of disruptive business models, 100 participants gathered in a hands-on virtual workshop to tackle the thirteen scenarios presented. Among these, we assessed the opportunities that will arise when a surplus in renewable energy is given, fostering regenerative agriculture, how we can design products to be trash-free from their inception, citizens as key actors to advance society's agenda and enhancing biodiversity by battling against microplastics.
An open green energy management platform, a marketplace for leftover goods, and mobility alternatives that save environmental and economic costs were some of the ideas that were born in this two-and-a-half hour workshop.
Do you have ideas you want to develop? Dare to design future scenarios where business models make a greener, more sustainable and circular world possible with the Pentagrowth methodology.
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