The No Waste Challenge presented by What Design Can Do and the IKEA Foundation is now open for submissions! This global design competition focuses on addressing the enormous impact of waste and consumerism on climate change. We are looking for radical new ideas and design-driven solutions to reduce waste and rethink our entire consumption and production cycle.

Submit your proposals by 1 April 2021 and join us in accelerating the transition towards a just and circular society. To get started, learn more about the scope of the challenge, or check out the three design briefs available to participants.

January 2021, What Design Can is launching the No Waste Challenge, our third climate action challenge in partnership with the IKEA Foundation. This global design competition focuses on the impact of waste and consumerism on climate change. 

The climate emergency is not the only crisis upon us at the moment. COVID-19 may be more on our minds. The two are however connected. Human destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity loss are making virus spillover events, like COVID-19, much more likely. Our current wasteful lifestyles aren't just making the planet sick, they are making us sick too. 

Designers and creative entrepreneurs around the world are invited to submit innovative solutions to reduce waste and to re-design our systems of extraction, production, and consumption to be less destructive — or even to make them restorative. This deck outlines the scope of the challenge and explains how waste drives climate change. We have developed three design briefs that ask designers to tackle the underlying root problems and symptoms. For each, we have included some example solutions as inspiration. The three global briefs are broad enough to allow for diverse perspectives, and for solutions that are rooted in local contexts. To illustrate this we have included local perspectives from research we did in Amsterdam, Delhi, Mexico City, Sao Paulo and Tokyo. 

What Design Can Do invites you to become a partner or participant in this new, urgent climate action programme that aims to protect and restore ecosystems.

Categories

Proposals are to be submitted in one or more of the following categories:

Communications: information design, speculative design, campaigns, packaging design, films, music and other verbal or non-verbal messages, digital or physical.

Products: Sustainable product design, fashion design, food design, material design (made industrially or in limited edition).

Spaces: Interior design, architecture, landscape design and other forms of spatial design for the private or public sector, temporary or permanent.

Services&Systems: Digital or physical tools, services, platforms, programs and infrastructures to influence human (and non-human) behavior and facilitate interactions.

Award Package

The winners of the No Waste Challenge will be selected by an international jury of leading experts in design, climate action and social entrepreneurship. Next to a prize fund of €10.000 each, the centerpiece of the award package is the development programme designed to support the winning teams in further strengthening and scaling up their projects. 

Publicity On The World Stage

Each winner will get the chance to present their projects to a global audience during one of WDCD’s annual events on design and innovation. Besides gaining access to our extensive network of change-makers, winning teams will also receive valuable press coverage and media exposure through WDCD’s channels and those of our partners.

Timeline

Call for participation: 12 Jan 2021 — 1 April 2021

Selection of nominees: 5 April 2021 — 23 April 2021

Refinement Of Nominated Projects: 3 May 2021 — 14 May 2021

Selection Of Winners: 17 May 2021 — 28 May 2021

Development Programme: July 2021 — December 2021

Follow-up Programme: January 2022 — June 2022

Download competition brief from here. Read more about the competition on this page. 

Start your entry from here. 

Top image courtesy of What Design Can Do

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