Four ways design is key to green growth

Innovation, ambitious goals, and the right framework conditions. These are the three most important ingredients in achieving and succeeding with a green transition. While overall goals and legislation can be well resolved by the state and the government, there is no doubt that companies play a crucial role when it comes to innovation. The private sector must, by and large, create the concrete changes that can accelerate the green transition we need.

But even if companies want to take the green plunge, most still need to answer: How? The good news is, designers hold the key. They have lots of ideas and proven methods on how to embark on the green journey. In particular, we see they can help businesses incorporate them in four ways:

Help with everyday solutions. To succeed with the green transition, companies must reorganize workflows and their organization, drive new product development and develop new types of services. With design thinking, this "everyday innovation" can be strengthened by involving employees in the innovation work, even if their daily job description is not development or innovation. An example is the company Stykka, which designs furniture. When the corona crisis hit, all employees put their heads together and in a few days designed a locally produced desk in sustainable cardboard, which is now a global sales hit among people working from home.

Designing circular business models. In many industries, companies are asking themselves how their products can be included in more circular models of value creation, where materials and products are not just produced, used, and thrown away. Designers can ensure that products are not only produced in sustainable materials, in high quality and with long-term durability -- but that they fit into circular business models, for instance by being designed for disassembly and reuse.

The company Plus Pack (of which Camilla Hermansen is a co-owner) produces packaging for food and meals. Here, the work with the green transition and circular solutions means, among other things, that 89 percent of the products today are easy to reuse after use, and packaging is designed in 100 percent recycled plastic.

A push towards environmentally friendly consumer behavior. One of the most central and controversial areas of the green transition is our behavior as consumers. That is the shopping choices we make, how we transport ourselves, how we take out a pension scheme, buy clothes, furniture, travel or electronics. In a nutshell, our culture of consumption needs to become green. Designers can push consumer behavior in a greener direction, e.g. by designing recycling systems and processes from the users' perspective so that they become as intuitive and simple to use as possible. And with the help of designers, new successful startups can be created such as Too Good To Go and Eat Grim, which build their entire business on changing consumer behavior - in these cases to minimize food waste.

From lab to consumer. The designers can "translate" new and complex scientific research and bring it to life in businesses, and ensure the employee involvement and customer understanding that is crucial for the solutions to work and turn into sales and new green growth. Just like Cornelia Therkelsen, a graduate student at the Design School Kolding, who studied the materials included in running shoes and how professional runners use the shoes. Her research shows, among other things, how a runner can give the shoes a longer lifespan by assessing their wear and taking better care of them, as well as how manufacturers can build modular shoes, where the parts that wear and tear the most can be replaced and recycled - instead of having to discard the entire shoe. In a few years, we may see a growing market for such circularly designed running shoes.

So, design plays a crucial role in the transition to a green, circular economy and can be a catalyst for many of the climate efforts we all face. But we have to use the good and strong design forces we already have. 

What are your own biggest challenges you face when it comes to creating a green transition for your business? And what are you doing to overcome them?