Love Zero Waste Podcast Learning Guide
We're getting (truly lovely!) feedback that our podcast is an excellent resource for learning more about zero waste and circular economy. To create an even better experience for our listeners we’ve compiled a guide to discuss, analyse and learn from our podcast episodes: Love Zero Waste Podcast Learning Guide.
Throughout the guide, we've assigned episodes to broader themes and gathered questions to help our listeners (you!) analyse the content and what it means in your specific context, and convert awareness and knowledge into real action. You can answer the questions on your own, or together with a group of friends or colleagues. Feel free to return to the questions regularly, and note how your answers change over time. To improve your zero waste skills further, feel free to also join one of our zero waste challenges over at Deedster.
Moreover, we'd love to follow your zero waste and circular economy journey. Do share your learnings and insights with us! Slide into our DMs on Instagram and tell us how you're doing.
Join and co-create the zero waste movement
Learn more about zero waste and how we can work together to shift from a linear mindset to a circular.
Listen to the episodes:
Questions:
Which of the 12 R* of zero waste do you believe is most essential for creating large-scale system change?
The 12 R* of zero waste is a concept for approaching the zero waste vision, which includes all of society: how many intersections do you see?
What are the properties of zero waste that makes it such a critical game-changer?
How can you help your community recognise the value in existing resources: products, materials and flows?
* Remember, Respect, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Return, Refill, Rot, Restore, Repurpose, Repair and Recycle
Just transitions
Learn more about how we together can build a better future, what role policy plays and how we can contribute to the transition towards a zero waste society.
Listen to the episodes:
Questions:
How can a broad people-led zero waste movement create bottom-up change?
How can I or my organisation best contribute towards creating zero waste policy?
How can my organisation or I make sure that new policy doesn’t continue to reinforce already existing unjust structures?
Plastics & plastic pollution
Learn more about plastics and the massive challenge we now face in ridding the world from a material that is everywhere. (Mind you, it’s not only plastic single-use items we need to ditch, but we need to quit single-use items in general.)
Listen to the episodes:
How plastics revolutionised life and is now destroying the planet
Designing microplastics water filters inspired by manta rays
Questions:
How can you or your organisation best radically reduce the usage of plastics?
How can you or your organisations encourage local shops, restaurants and bars to minimise their sales and usage of single-use plastics: e.g. straws, bags, bottles, wrapping, packaging, cups?
How can you or your organisation best support and join local beach, park or city clean-ups?
Waste management 101
Learn more about waste, waste management, how incineration isn’t the answer, and what makes composting truly zero waste.
Listen to the episodes:
Questions:
How can you or your organisation encourage an increase in local composting? Can you start your own compost or advocate for pick-compost bins?
How can you or your organization improve your recycling skills by revisiting your local/municipal guidelines for cleaning, sorting, and safe disposal of recyclable goods?
What are some of the aspects that make incineration problematic?
Product & service redesign
Learn more about how we best can rethink and redesign products and services to approach zero waste and truly circular design.
Listen to the episodes:
Questions
Pick your favourite item in your pantry. How many loops will it last before it ends up on the compost or in the trash bin?
(Example: Your morning coffee grounds make for delicious hot coffee (loop 1) and may after that be used as a face or body scrub (loop 2) and meet its final destiny as plant nutrition or in the compost (loop 3).
What are aspects of your organisation's innovation process which need to be adapted to embrace a zero waste approach?
How can your organisation quit the use of virgin materials and make better use of already extracted materials?
What are future trends within circularity and zero waste that your organisation should take into consideration and even adapt towards?
Innovation inspired by nature
Learn more about the essence of a circular design, biomimicry learning from the natural world.
Listen to episodes:
Questions:
Visit the nearest green area, a garden, a park or a grove. Find a pleasant spot to sit still for a while quietly. Observe what nature does. What catches your attention? Do you see something new? Where can you draw inspiration?
Looking at the materials that you use daily, which have a linear life cycle, how can you create more loops and extend their life?
Leading every day with zero waste
Learn more about what you can do in your private life or in your organisation to generate less to zero waste.
Listen to the episodes:
A-year-of-trash-in-a-jar and the packaging-free grocery store
Let’s end food waste! Vol 2 (consumers)
Questions
Working your way through the rooms of your home or office, how can you create the preconditions for using your bins exclusively for biodegradable or compostable waste?
How can you eliminate the use of single-use items (e.g. cutlery, cups, plates, napkins, bottles, ready-made-food) the next time you or your organisation organise a party?
How can you introduce second hand and upcycled items in your life or organisation, rather than buying first-hand items?
By Evelina Lundqvist & Malin Leth
