Radical Design for Sustainability at TedXBrum
“A look at the huge global changes that have happened over the last few centuries and how to get back on track. Professor Stuart Walker is Director of Design and Co-Director…
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Biomimicry DesignLens
“The Biomimicry DesignLens is a collection of diagrams that visually represent the foundations of our design approach. It includes the core components of this approach: Essential Elements, Life’s Principles, and…
Footprint Calculator
“How many planets does it take to support your lifestyle? Take this free quiz to find out your Ecological Footprint, discover your biggest areas of resource consumption, and learn what…
Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognise that eradicating poverty in all its…
Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development
The General Assembly, in its resolution 38/161 of 19 December 1983, inter alia, welcomed the establishment of a special commission that should make available a report on environment and the…
The Silent Spring
The seminal book of environmental scientist Rachel Carson on the adverse effects of the use of pesticides on the environment. She accuses the chemical industry of disinformation and the public…
Towards the Circular Economy
These three volumes on moving towards circular economy outline the rationale behind this transition. The first volume details the potential for significant benefits of circular economy across the EU, using product case studies and economy-wide…
Circular Economy
Looking beyond the current “take, make and dispose” extractive industrial model, the circular economy is restorative and regenerative by design. Relying on system-wide innovation, it aims to redefine products and…
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development: Outcomes of UNCED 1992
This is a list of 27 guiding principles for sustainable development throughout the world, produced at 1992 United Nations “Conference on Environment and Development” (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit. The principles focus on…
The Future We Want: Outcomes of Rio +20
The non-binding document as the outcome of United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio +20. It is largely a declaration of political commitment to Agenda 21 (Rio…
Living Planet Report 2016
“Global biodiversity is declining at an alarming rate, putting the survival of other species and our own future at risk. The latest edition of WWF’s Living Planet Report brings home…
OECD Better Life Index
This is a first attempt to bring together internationally comparable measures of well-being. It aims to address concerns that standard macroeconomic statistics like GDP failed to give a true account of people’s current and…
Good Country Index
“The idea of the Good Country Index is simple: to measure what each country on earth contributes to the common good of humanity, and what it takes away, relative to…
Reports and Maps – European Environment Agency
“The European Environment Agency provides sound, independent information on the environment for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and also the general public. In close collaboration…
Cradle-2-Cradle
As a radical approach to life-cycle assessment, Cradle to Cradle was brought forward with the book of the same name by McDonough & Braungart in 2010. It takes nature as a…
AskNature Database
“Life on earth presents elegant solutions to many of the challenges that designers and innovators face every day. Explore AskNature to find biological strategies, inspired ideas, and resources relative to your own innovation challenges,…
Circular Economy: An Introduction Course
“Our global society is not sustainable. We all know about the challenges we’re facing: waste, climate change, resource scarcity, loss of biodiversity. At the same time, we want to sustain…
Pause, reflect, activate, impact: Co-designing Consensus and Dissensus for Positive Societal Impacts
“Societies are in transition, trying to balance the forces of globalisation with creating a meaningful (local) life. Our natural world is simultaneously in transition, forced to change by unprecedented levels…
Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation
“In a changing world, everyone designs. Each individual person and each collective subject – from enterprises to institutions, from communities to cities and regions – must define and enhance a…
Product-Service Systems and Sustainability: Opportunities for Sustainable Solutions
“This publication examines the potential of sustainability in product-service systems, particularly in term of life-cycle approaches. It includes case studies of companies offering product-service systems, such as Auto Share of…
The Pearl Diver: The Designer as Storyteller
“Presently, we encounter a wide variety of ways in which designers tell stories of social innovation. This encouraged us to start a reflection on the idea of storytelling emerging from…
Using Design to Influence Behaviour: On Energy Saving
TEDxTalk, Utrecht. Another aspect of design, not on designing products or built environments, but about designing messages to influence behaviour change with respect to sustainability. Creator: Deena Rosen Year: 2014…
Energy Parasites
“Energy parasites are handcrafted objects designed from scavenged parts to opportunistically harvest small bits of energy across public landscapes. Agnostic to energy origin or ownership, these artifacts redirect their captured…
Design for Demand – Designers Lecture
“A strategic tool for emerging designers, to accelerate their ability to design for a more circular economy. Our design strategies focus on the consumer; looking to empower them, to influence…
Participatory Methods
“We explain what participatory methods are, where and how they are used, and their problems and potentials. We focus on participatory approaches to programme design, monitoring and evaluation; to learning,…
The Bootcamp Bootleg
“The Design Thinking Bootleg is an overview of some of our most-used tools. The guide was originally intended for recent graduates of our Bootcamp: Adventures in Design Thinking class. But…
IDEO Circular Design Guide
“The scale of what we’re designing has shifted from products, to companies, to economic systems. Who we’re designing for has expanded from a solitary user to an intimately connected web…
Human-Centered Design (HCD) Toolkit
“[This toolkit] contains the elements to Human-Centered Design, a process used for decades to create new solutions for multi-national corporations. This process has created ideas such as the HeartStart defibrillator,…
OpenStructures Project
“The OpenStructures (OS) project initiates a construction system where everyone designs for everyone. It is an ongoing experiment that wants to find out what happens if people design objects according…
Design-led Research Toolkit
Information on a collection of design research tools and guides for their application. These tools are categorized under four headings: Observe + Discover Frame + Propose Prototype + Act Evaluate…
Design Method Toolkit
“The MediaLAB Amsterdam Design Method Toolkit enables you to get started and enrich your design process. A collection of design and research methods: categorised to help you select, time based…
UK Government Service Manual
A set of user research and design tools for developing digital services for UK Government’s website, openly shared with general public. While the website offers basic design solutions for digital…
Frog Collective Action Toolkit
A set of design thinking tools explained for the use of local change agents for social innovation. The toolkit has a simple vocabulary and insights into building teams, carrying out research,…
100% Open Innovation Toolkit
“This 30-piece toolkit covers the whole open innovation journey from setting a strategy for collaboration to implementing mutually beneficial business models. It helps to make the case for open innovation…
A literature and practice review to develop sustainable business model archetypes
“Eco-innovations, eco-efficiency and corporate social responsibility practices define much of the current industrial sustainability agenda. While important, they are insufficient in themselves to deliver the holistic changes necessary to achieve…
Circular Economy Business Toolkit
“The circular economy is an alternative to the predominant linear “take-make-dispose” economy of production and consumption, which relies on large quantities of relatively cheap materials and inputs, and produces a…
Circulator: The Circular Business Models Mixer
“The Circulator is a project funded by EIT Raw Materials aimed at supporting aspiring entrepreneurs in making conscious strategic choices regarding the sustainability of their business model and value proposition. The project offers a web-based…
UNEP Eco-Innovation Manual
“Eco-innovation is the development and application of a business model, shaped by a new business strategy that incorporates sustainability throughout all business operations based on life cycle thinking and in cooperation with partners…
Circular Economy Toolkit: Resources for an Evolving World
“With the vast number of possibilities for creating value out of the Circular Economy and cradle-to-cradle thinking, it can be challenging to assess all the options. The Circular Economy Toolkit…
Design with Intent
“Design is increasingly about people’s behaviour, but this is often considered simplistically. Design with Intent aims to give practitioners a more nuanced approach to design and behaviour, working with people, people’s understanding,…
Okala Practitioner Guide
“Product designers, architects, interior designers, and graphic designers are particularly influential in design decisions that affect our limited resources and the quality of our shared habitat. The new 2014 Okala Practitioner guide…
LEAP Dialogues: Educator’s Guide
“Since the 2016 Designmatters publication LEAP Dialogues: Career Pathways in Design for Social Innovation edited by Mariana Amatullo, Bryan Boyer, Liz Danzico and Andrew Shea, we have heard from many educators and students…
Models for Impact: The Business Model Design Game
“Models of Impact is a role-playing and ideation game that makes it easy (and fun!) to generate new, sustainable, business models. Our digital download is available on a pay-what-you-want basis, and…
Delft Design Guide
“The design methods presented in this collection of articles can be very useful for you as a designer, both during your time as a student and as a practitioner. Our…
Sustainable Manufacturing Glossary of Terms
Glossary of terms, bringing together terms used by different disciplines to explain sustainable manufacturing practices. A useful guide to learn and properly use different terms to explain design projects and…
Getting it right from the start: developing a circular economy for novel materials
“Novel materials go hand in hand with improving technologies. Carbon fibre enables lighter weight, more fuel efficient vehicles; bioplastics promise to be superior to fossil fuel derived plastics; and additive…
SolidWorks Sustainable Design Guide
” The ideas of sustainability and sustainable design are a growing part of today’s product design conversations. But exactly what is sustainable design, and how do you create a greener…
Circular Economy: Indicators and Priorities for Critical Materials
“This report reviews briefly the historical criteria for critical raw materials currently under review by the Commission and the Joint Research Centre (JRC), and notes that many critical materials still…
European Union REACH Regulation
“REACH is a regulation of the European Union, adopted to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks that can be posed by chemicals, while enhancing…
Materiom: Nature’s Recipe Book
“Make materials in your kitchen, Fab Lab or Makerspace. Our recipes use locally abundant natural ingredients and life-friendly chemistry. Plastics and composites you can cook on the stove, mold, laser…
Rethinking finance in a circular economy
“Recently, the international discussion about sustainability has taken a new course through the development of the concept of the circular economy. The circular economy goes beyond the intention of not…
Service Design Toolkit
“Service design is a method for improving the quality of your service. Those improvements are directed at both the users and staff of your organization. Innovating in services is not…
The Business Model Innovation Grid
“This grid aims to inspire businesses to reconceive how they operate and to become more future proof. To grab the opportunities of a sustainable future, innovations need to introduce environmental and social…
The Circular Economy Business Model Toolkit
“In partnership with Unilever, we have developed a toolkit identifying 10 circular business model archetypes. These archetypes distil our long-term research into circular business models and include case studies we have…
ISO 14000 family – Environmental management
“The ISO 14000 family of standards provides practical tools for companies and organizations of all kinds looking to manage their environmental responsibilities. ISO 14001:2015 and its supporting standards such as ISO 14006:2011 focus…
ISO 26000 – Social responsibility
“Business and organizations do not operate in a vacuum. Their relationship to the society and environment in which they operate is a critical factor in their ability to continue to…
Climate: Get the Big Picture
“This guide seeks to provide a starting point for newcomers to help them see the ‘big picture’ of the United Nations (UN) climate change regime, which is at the forefront…
The Circularity Indicators
“The Circularity Indicators Project provides companies with a methodology and tools to assess how well a product or company performs in the context of a circular economy, allowing companies to estimate…
Circular by Design: Products in the circular economy
“This report explores the circular economy from a product perspective, applying a systemic approach and transition theory. Drivers of product design and usage are discussed in the context of emerging consumption…
8 Business cases for the circular economy
“The macro-opportunities associated with implementing the circular economy are clear. Now, companies need to know how circularity will impact their business as well as specific industry or sector opportunities. Summarizing…
Nederland Circulair! Best Practices
Business practice cases on Circular Economy in the Netherlands, shown on map. Clicking on a pin on the map takes you to the page of each case, providing detailed information on…
Best Practice Examples of Circular Business Models
“Best practice examples of circular business models are presented in this report. The purpose is to inform and inspire interested readers, in particular companies that aspire to examine the potentials…
SVID Sustainability Guide
The Sustainability Guide provides companies, designers and higher education institutions inspiration and tools to work sustainably. The web is a valuable source for those who want to learn more about…
The Thing from the Future
The Thing from the Future is an imagination game that challenges players to collaboratively and competitively describe objects from a range of alternative futures. The objective of the game is…
Eco-indicator 99 Manual for Designers
“Eco-indicator 99 is one of the most widely used impact assessment methods in LCA. It is the successor of Eco-indicator 95, the first endpoint impact assessment method, which allowed the…
MaterialWise
“Material Wise is a non-profit initiative to advance better chemistry in the course of product design and manufacturing by expanding access to verified, actionable chemical data. MaterialWise provides data-driven insight…
Ethics for Design Interactive Documentary
“Every day we use objects, services and applications designed by all kinds of designers. But does this mean that everything a designer conceives is done in our interest? Some interfaces are…
CFDA Guide to Sustainable Strategies & Sustainable Strategies Toolkit
“The CFDA Guide to Sustainable Strategies, authored by Domenica Leibowitz, seeks to provide a “how to” overview for sustainable fashion. The guide’s goal is to take the complex idea of sustainability…
Value Recapture Brainwriting
Value Recapture Brainwriting is a tool to facilitate a quick brainwriting exercise, where your team can draw and write down ideas and share them with each other. With the supporting…
Healthy Materials Lab
“ “We are Healthy Materials Lab, a design research lab at Parsons School of Design. We are dedicated to a world in which people’s health is placed at the center…
Circular Design Internships Design Briefs
Four consecutive Circular Design internships were conducted as part of the Circular Design: Learning for Innovative Design for Sustainability (L4IDS) Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance project. Each internship was conducted in collaboration…
