The opportunities: focusing on behaviours and processes to reduce our negative impact on the planet
Raj Mohan — Ashes of a Wetland | From Wildlife Photographer Of The Year competition
Last year, I published a post about the ways we could tap into service design to adapt to the planetary crisis. However, the planetary crisis we have to adapt to is the result of our own impact on the planet.
We’ve currently taken the approach to develop new technological solutions in the attempt to reduce this impact. Yet, by doing so, we fail to address the issue in a holistic manner, to reduce our demand on resources. As a result, we displace symptoms without ever tackling the root cause, and create new issues to deal with.
Approaching the planetary crisis with a service lens offers a more holistic scope and set of tools to effectively reduce our impact on the planet, not just displace it. It’s quite lengthy, so I’ll tackle it in two parts. In this first part, I’ll focus on the scope and the opportunities to tap into service design to reduce our impact on the planet. In a future post, I will focus on the service design strategies and tools to do so. Let’s start with some context: why a technological focus alone isn’t sufficient.
Why technological solutions won’t do the trick alone
In a statement in 2023, Lufthansa CEO declared: “It’d take half of Germany’s electricity for the airline (i.e. only Lufthansa) to run on sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs)” such as bioethanol or synthetic fuels. Germany could scale their energy production facilities, but it’d take more resources, more space, seal land, displace people and local fauna, induce pollution throughout the supply chain, as happened in Indonesia following USA’s 2007 law to foster biofuels. In addition to that, we need to account the emissions SAFs continue to generate when burnt, continuing to pollute, and that’s just talking about Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, and only about the 1st scope of said emissions.
The focus on technological solutions is, therefore, a dangerous approach for three reasons:
Firstly, such an approach bets on potential future reductions we do not have the luxury to gamble on: we need reduction now. They’re also not tested, so we do not know of their effect on reducing our impacts on the planet. Worse than being a bet we can’t afford, it actively delays action as the IPCC concluded we already have the technologies we need to tackle the planetary crisis.Secondly, it only targets the symptoms of an issue, such as too much carbon in the atmosphere, rather than solving the root causes of the issue: our excessive Co2 emissions. In worst cases, these solutions don’t even patch things up, as carbon capture & offset solutions have been shown to not live up the promises, worsen the situation and to create ripple effects.Finally, the efficiency gains resulting from technological progress lead to an increase in consumption, as Jevons pointed out with coal consumption in the 19th century. Which is something we might see happening as “electrification is efficiency”. The UN reports a projected additional 60% rise in raw material extraction by 2060 to support growth and transition to a green energy for instance.
Instead of focusing only on technological solutions, we need to approach the problem from a different angle. Reducing our impact on the planet can’t be confined to technological solutions as it’s massively inefficient at best, misleading at worst, and displaces issues in both cases. Instead, we need to look at the way we use the technologies that make up our Society. A service design approach is doing exactly just that, by breaking the problem in two parts: front-end behaviours and back-end processes.
Shedding a light on behaviours and processes
We’re constantly innovating, gaining in efficiency, yet we continue to increase our footprint on the planet. We consume more resources, produce more waste, generate more GHGs worldwide, and have produced more weight than all of the natural world. It has come to the point that we saturate our own systems as well as natural ones, breaking planetary safe boundaries and coming closer and closer to tipping points.
We need to change our focus from the technological solutions we use through our Society, to the way we’re using them instead. Looking at our Society through the services, we can define two ways we tap into said solutions: front-end behaviours and back-end processes. Let’s stick with planes to illustrate this.
Planes are mostly used to carry people, ranging from 71% to 85% depending on calculation. However, not everyone uses planes the same way, if at all. These differences influence the impact a single person has through its usage of planes. In France, 2% of the passengers represent 50% of the tickets sold. Similarly, in the US, 12% of the passengers represent 66% of tickets sold. Looking at commercial flight emissions worldwide, half of it comes from only 1% of travellers. Similarly, business travellers in Europe represent 12% of the users, but account for 30% of GHGs emissions resulting from passenger transport. The reasons for these imbalances come from different behaviours. Indeed, corporate travellers travel more often, for a shorter distance, which burns more fuel per km, and sometimes in private jets, which pollute more per capita.
However, planes do not only carry people. Nor do they carry goods either. Sometimes planes fly empty too. In the U.K. alone, almost 500 planes each month fly empty or under 10% of used capacity because of an airport rule referred to the “use it or lose it rule”. It requires attributed airport slots to be used by at least 80% of the allocated time or airlines are at risk of losing their allocated slots at a specific airport. Companies end-up flying empty planes so they don’t lose their slots. This kind of emission isn’t caused by the way people use a plane, its front-end usage, but is the result of a back-end process to support the service operation.
In both ways, regardless of the kind of fuel being used, if we want to reduce the impact the flying industry has on the planet, we need to look at the way front-end behaviours and back-end processes tap into planes as a capability to operate a service. Looking only at Sustainable Aviation Fuels isn’t scalable as highlighted by Lufthansa’s CEO and it invites an increase in plane and fuel usage as illustrated by Jevons paradox. Reducing the impact of aviation doesn’t come from more efficient planes or more efficient fuels, but from different ways to use planes.
Beyond planes, reducing our impact on the planet requires us to change the behaviours and processes that inform the way we use products, and therefore tap into resources. While products have a role to play in supporting new usages, it’s only with the relevant services that we can support meaningful change. For that, we need to walk away from linear services, to turn towards circular services.
Designing circular services to reduce our impact on the planet
I often refer to the four orders of design as a way to illustrate how the things we design are intertwined within wider contexts. An interaction is only relevant in the context of a product, a product in the context of a service, and a service in the context of a system. Which means in return, if we want to design for a specific system, we need the relevant services, products, and interactions. So, the question is, what kind of systems do we want to design for?
The circular economy, as illustrated by the butterfly diagram from the Ellen McArthur Foundation is a system which promotes circular loops of material usage throughout our Society and Economy to reduce the amount of material we extract and waste. The goal is to retain as much value for as long as possible from the resources we have. To do that, two key cycles have been identified, one technical and one biological, as explained on the foundation’s page:
The technical cycle (on the right) is about keeping products, components and materials in circulation in our Economy. It relies on practices such as sharing, reusing, refurbishing and recycling.
The biological cycle (on the left) is about reducing renewable resources wastes, such as food. to restore nutrients in the biosphere while rebuilding natural capital, also known as regeneration. It does so by creating cascades and synergies between different industries using by-products from a process as a key ingredient for another one for instance, composting food waste helps to create fertiliser and can be used as bioenergy.
The concept of a circular economy offers strong principles to use as a basis for reducing our impact: sharing, maintaining, reusing, recycling, cascading, and regenerating. These principles frame the opportunities to implement the concept of circular economy into tangible solutions through services: By designing the right services, and most importantly by designing them right.
Designing the right services
Services are the threads the Economy we live in relies on. If the Economy is linear, it’s because the services it’s woven from are themselves linear. To change towards a circular Economy, we need the right services in place. This means to design services to support circular lifestyles and life cycles.
A. Enabling circular lifestyles by supporting the relevant behaviours to get a job done
The way we travel, eat, dress, shop, commute, etc. have an impact on the planet. For people to embrace circular economy principles, we need the right services to support them. For instance, without a proper carpooling service in place, it becomes hard, if not impossible, to foster such a practice at scale.
Designing the right services to support lifestyles anchored within a circular economy means to design services that “get the job done” by supporting behaviours and usages that embody circular principles. It’s not about designing a single one-size-fits-all solution; it’s about understanding the different jobs to be done, the different resulting behaviours, and design support them by adopting circular design principles to design solutions.
For instance, people can carpool, rent a car ad-hoc, or simply use public transportations. All of these services are about people sharing a vehicle. Yet they do not all get the same job done. They therefore are designed to support the different behaviours from the different jobs people need to get done. Yet all support a lifestyle anchored into circular principles.
This is a user-journey approach. It’s about designing the right services to support circular lifestyles at scale, by supporting circular behaviours, to support people to get the job they want to get done throughout their journey. Supporting journeys that embody circular principles will support circular behaviours, from the way we go shopping, to the way we shop, to the way we bring back groceries, cook, etc. which in turn will at scale support circular lifestyles, from the way we travel, eat, dress, shop, commute, etc.
However, using service design for a circular economy isn’t just about supporting circular behaviours and lifestyles. We also need to design the right services to ensure we’re closing the loop of products, materials and resources’ life cycles.
B. Supporting sustainable product management throughout their life cycle
28% of the waste ending up in landfills could be composted. This waste causes major methane releases, one of the most potent greenhouse gases in the short term. While not everyone has the space, time or desire to have their own compost at home, this waste could have been diverted or composted with the right services to support each step of the process.
Previously we talked about developing the right services to support people through their journey to get a job done in ways that reduce the usage we make of resources and material. Here, it’s about focusing on the product’s, material’s, resource’s journey: its life cycle.
Coming back to why so much compostable waste ends up in landfills, adopting a service design lens is about identifying the reasons in the end to end waste management process. And there are many possibilities, likely to happen simultaneously: people not sorting waste at home, local waste management not having a process for compostable waste, a compostable waste management process existing but being overflowed or inefficient, or compostable waste being diverted to landfill to reduce costs, to name just a few reasons.
This end-to-end understanding is crucial to frame the problem to solve causes, not just symptoms. Most importantly, it’s about ocherstrating solutions, so each steps throughout the product life cycle are coherent with the expected outcomes, while delivering on a step’s specific requirements. The goal is to close the loop by looking at a problem holistically to design a coherent and relevant approach throughout the product life cycle.
User journeys and product life cycles are starting points to support behaviours and processes anchored within circular principles. Designing the right services is about fostering a circular economy through the lifestyles and life cycles that make up our Economy. While products can be recyclable, repairable, designed to transport 5 people at a time, we need the services to actually recycle them, repair them, and make best use of their potential. To design the right services is only one opportunity to tap into service design to reduce our impact. For the second opportunity, we need to zoom in, and design the services right, too.
Designing the services right
Adopting a systemic point of view, such as the Economy, services are part of a whole, designed to support lifestyles and behaviours, life cycles and processes within systems such as waste management or transportation. However, as we zoom in, services become themselves a whole, with their own behaviours and processes, requirements and impacts.
Let’s take planes, one more time, as an example. Forbes reported a practice called mileage runs. The idea is that the way loyalty schemes are designed, based on points, and the fact that they’re perishable, pushes people to fly for no reason other than gaining points that grant them privileges whenever they fly.
Similarly, as I covered in a post on the impact of e-commerce, the way e-commerce services are designed, allowing for express delivery for instance, create situations for delivery trucks to run almost empty, solely for the purpose of delivering something the same day.
Such service design decisions distort the functions services fulfil, creating unsustainable behaviours or processes, to the expenses of the planet and the people who operate services. This comes from the fact that projects are framed around business requirements, which itself distorts the design questions we try to answer: while we should be asking “what do people need to get a job done” we’re starting from a business need and are asking “what do people need to use [my product / service]”. This is something I covered in the past, in the way we frame design research, and in the way we frame innovation at large.
Designing the services right, means to understand the implications of the decisions we take at the scale of a service, from its impact on the back-end processes, to its impact on the front-end behaviours, and taking decisions in consequence. This means to design for services embracing circular principles themselves both at the behavioural and process levels, and to ask ourselves different questions before making design decisions.
For instance, at a process level, do we need to use plastic bags for grocery deliveries? Or can it be handed in a crate? If we have to use plastic bags, can we find ways to reuse them by collecting them upon the next delivery?
Similarly, we need to ask questions regarding tackling unsustainable behaviours, such as how do we prevent bracketing from happening when people shop online? Shall we design for convenience and allow 24/7 delivery options, or compromise and meet halfway, where a service isn’t fully convenient for the users, but doesn’t stress back-end processes either?
Ultimately, behaviours and processes are closely tied. A decision to accommodate behavioural requirements will have an impact on the operational side, and vice-versa. It’s a conversation. Designing the service right, is ensuring that at the scale of the service, we’re considering this interdependence and take informed decisions that do not result in negatively impacting the planet or people, while delivering realistic benefits to the operator.
Supporting circular behaviours and processes
For an Economy to be circular, it sure needs the products to be designed in the relevant way, but most importantly, it needs the right services, designed in the right way.
Technology alone can’t be the answer. We need to change the way we use products, materials and resources and that comes through circular services, supporting ciruclar behaviours and processes, to support circular lifestyles and life cycles.
By looking at user journeys and product life cycles, as well as encompassing front-end behaviours and back-end processes, service design offers a holistic view to transition from a linear Economy towards a circular one. It’s only by designing with a holistic lens that we can actually tackle the root cause of the planetary crisis: the usages we make of products, material and resources. As service designers, our role is to facilitate the conversation between lifestyle and life cycle, behaviours and processes, in a way that we find a compromise between the impact of one’s requirements onto the other, and deliver value for all stakeholders, not just the ones in the meetings.
This however, needs to accommodate for the third, and key factor in this system: the economic model and business models our Society and businesses operate with. Indeed, if our services are linear, it’s because our economic model and business models are linear in the first place. Both lifestyles and life cycles answer to business requirements.
Here we’ve defined the opportunities to tap into service design to reduce our impact on the planet. Designing and implementing circular services while considering requirements stemming from the economic and business models we live in is another conversation: one about the service design strategies. Something I’ll be addressing in the future.
I’m a London based freelance service designer who designs services to reduce the impact of the planetary crisis on people, and the impact of people on the planet. I publish The Blueprint, a newsletter about service design and sustainability. You can contact me for questions, comments or consulting requests at hello@sidneydebaque.com
Mitigating our impact on the planet through services was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
