New solutions tackle Japan’s waste problem at its core

As the world casts its eyes toward the ongoing COP28 conference in Dubai, we are faced with a stark reality: Our global climate efforts are falling critically short of the mark.

Traditional approaches to problem solving are clearly inadequate and many of our systems — built for a bygone era — are not just failing to address today's challenges, but are often exacerbating them. The climate crisis, along with other complex social and environmental issues such as plastic and chemical waste, inequality, and aging and shrinking populations demand a fundamental rethink of how we live within our societal and planetary boundaries.

This has been conceptualized by economist Kate Raworth's “doughnut” model, a visual framework for sustainable development consisting of an inner and outer circle: The first represents the social foundation "needed to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials" and the second is the ecological ceiling that we must respect to "not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting system."

In response to these challenges, some are advocating for a new approach that combines systems thinking with design principles. The former encourages us to see the world as a series of interconnected and interdependent systems, as opposed to isolated parts. Design, with its ability to handle complex, open-ended questions and frame new opportunities, enables us to bring new, regenerative systems into existence.

This approach, which the U.K. Design Council calls “systemic design,” goes beyond making existing systems more efficient; it is about envisioning and creating new frameworks that are fit for current and future challenges. In essence, instead of trying to get better at hosing down forest fires, we need to try and figure out how to stop blazes from starting in the first place.

Our current approach to environmental challenges often falls into the trap of linear thinking. We identify a problem, devise a solution and implement it, often in isolation from other initiatives. While this approach may yield some short-term benefits, we overlook the wider context of the issue and potential impact of our proposed solutions — at our peril.

Take the development of biofuels such as ethanol, which are derived from biomass; these saw a surge in interest in the early 2000s as a renewable alternative to fossil fuels. However, the production of biofuels was later blamed for rising food prices as crops grown to produce ethanol competed with food crops, and for contributing to deforestation. These environmental and social costs stunted the development and adoption of biofuels, and efforts are now necessarily focused on a more holistic approach to developing such materials that accounts for potential negative impacts.

But what if we could identify these potential systemic impacts beforehand and even use them to our advantage?

My background is not in design, but my journey into systemic design began with asking myself why more wasn’t being done to tackle issues like the climate crisis or plastic waste in Japan.

Speaking to business leaders, I identified barriers to progress toward sustainability goals that included lagging customer interest and a lack of understanding of what a circular economy — which produces no waste and regenerates our natural systems — could look like. For example, growing opposition to single-use plastic bottles in Europe was driving investment in more environmental alternatives. But this trend was not mirrored in Japan, where beverage companies told us there was little consumer demand for change.

In fact, convenience stores and vending machines have normalized convenience and disposability: Japan consumes an astonishing 24.8 billion PET bottles every year, according to the Council for PET Bottle Recycling. While recycling rates are high, nearly 3.5 billion of these meet a different fate, including ending up in landfills.

Rather than stopping at such roadblocks, many initiatives around the country are rethinking systems to “design out” waste. For example, iKasa is tackling the huge impact of the estimated 60 to 80 million cheap plastic umbrellas bought annually in Japan — often found, disfigured by the wind, crammed into trash cans after a rainy day.

The startup has created an umbrella rental service, collaborating with rail service providers, retail stores and real estate owners to ensure the handy objects are accessible where most needed. But more than that, iKasa has demonstrated the potential of a model that provides access over ownership — one that may well be contributing to a wider cultural shift.

Another example is Totoya, a company focused on redesigning shopping. There are numerous benefits to bulk and “zero-waste” stores, but the initial inconvenience of bringing your own containers or for stores to implement a deposit-based container leasing system has limited their wider adoption in Japan.

Totoya has established model stores and collaborated with Teraoka Seiko, the developer of Point of Sales systems, to create a convenient zero-waste shopping system. The company is now sharing their model, adopted in over 100 stores across Japan, with those looking to start a bulk store themselves — pointing to the importance of giving other people access to groundbreaking ideas.

Another solution that does not merely improve existing paradigms but upgrades our systems to meet today’s demands is mymizu. In 2019, my team and I embarked on a mission to redesign the way we stay hydrated, which led us to launch the shared, co-created app and platform that maps hundreds of thousands of locations where people can refill their reusable water bottles, avoiding waste.

We have built a network of over 2,400 partner shops and cafes that provide free refills across Japan and a quarter of a million people have used and contributed to our platform. We have even generated enough consumer demand to warrant a collaboration with beverage giant Kirin — a big step toward our goal of shifting the wider industry and making it commercially viable for businesses to invest in non-disposable alternatives.

While there are many examples of initiatives led by government and larger corporations, the examples above are driven by entrepreneurs, often without the resources of larger organizations. What they all have in common, however, is the ability to leverage an understanding of how the relevant systems work, the power of design to develop, prototype and test solutions, and working with diverse partners who have the right networks and resources to tackle underlying barriers to change.

Though each initiative may be redesigning a smaller system, when you combine these impacts, you start to notice change at a societal level, in the ways we live and work.

I’m encouraged to see that more action is being taken to stop or reverse environmental damage in Japan. But is it enough?

With COP28 under way, we are reminded yet again of the vast amount of work required to tackle the climate crisis and the sobering reality that there is no longer time for incremental steps or superficial solutions. If we are to address the major social and environmental issues of our time, we are going to have to redesign the very systems that are causing them. No cutting corners.

I hope the work we and other like-minded entrepreneurs are doing shows that it is possible to think afresh, and to realize our collective potential and change course. We have an opportunity not just to solve these problems, but to design a world that flourishes for generations to come. Let us not waste it.