Sustainable Food Practices

More than half the world’s food production is at risk within the next 25 years due to a rapidly accelerating water crisis according to a landmark review by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water Half of the world’s population already faces water scarcity, a number set to rise as the climate crisis worsens. Demand for freshwater will outstrip supply by 40% by the end of this decade, putting unprecedented stress on global water systems. Governments have vastly underestimated the amount of water needed for people to lead decent lives. While 50 to 100 liters a day are necessary for health and hygiene, approximately 4,000 liters a day per person are needed for adequate nutrition and a dignified life. Countries must collaborate on managing water resources before it's too late. Harmful subsidies must be removed to promote efficient water use and ensure they benefit those in need. Access to finance should be provided to developing countries to improve water infrastructure and protect natural ecosystems. Five Main Takeaways from the Report: 1️⃣ Without action, water problems could reduce global GDP by about 8% by 2050. 2️⃣ There are no comprehensive global governance structures for water management. 3️⃣ The climate crisis manifests first through droughts and floods, disrupting hydrological systems. 4️⃣ Water is artificially cheap for some (often the wealthy and industries) and too expensive for others (often the poor). 5️⃣ A global pact is needed to treat water as a shared resource, ensuring sustainable use and equitable access. It's time to rethink how we value and manage water. Recognizing it as a global common good is essential for sustainability, equity, and the well-being of future generations. https://lnkd.in/e3MdN77G

In Ghana, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, women in rural cooperatives produce some of the world’s finest shea butter- by hand, in conditions many global consumers will never see. Locally, it’s sold raw for $1 to $2 per kilogram. That same shea butter, once exported, repackaged, and labeled “organic” or “artisanal,” can sell in the U.S. or Europe for $30 to $50 or more. The difference? Branding. Packaging. Storytelling. Access to global markets. It’s not just shea butter. It’s coffee, cocoa, hibiscus, moringa, baobab oil- Africa exports raw, and imports wealth back in the form of marked-up goods. Meanwhile, the women who do the hardest work in the value chain often remain in poverty. This isn’t just an economic issue. It’s about power and narrative. The current system rewards ownership of the story, not just the substance. So what needs to change? 🔹 Investing in African-owned brands that can go beyond raw exports 🔹 Building infrastructure for local manufacturing and distribution 🔹 Creating access to retail markets, both on the continent and abroad 🔹 Shifting from “supplier” to brand owner, from “producer” to value creator Africa doesn’t need saving. It needs more control over its own value chains, and support for the people, especially women, who are the backbone of its raw material economy. Let’s stop asking why global brands profit from African goods and start asking what it takes to build our own. Image cred: @tanziehq #Africa #RawEconomy #ValueChain #Entrepreneurship #OwnTheNarrative

🌱 Sustainable UX Toolkits & Resources (https://lnkd.in/eT6ZR3qz), a large (!) repository of toolkits, Figma templates, books, case studies, articles on sustainable UX — throughout the entire product design process. Kindly put together by the SUX - The Sustainable UX Network, via Thorsten Jonas. Sustainable UX Database (Notion) https://lnkd.in/eyZjigBx As designers, we often are left wondering how to integrate sustainable practices into our design work. Most environmental impact happens on our user’s devices, so we can help our users by reducing waste. Typically, when we speak about sustainability, we mean at least 4 facets of it: 🌱 Reducing waste ← In publishing, heavy visuals, animation, PDFs, 🌻 Deleting content ← Un-publishing outdated, misleading content/flows, 🐝 Maximize reusability ← UI components, flows, processes, templates, 🌳 Sustainable defaults ← Help people make more sustainable choices. In practice, we could use simple but impactful design patterns: 1. Always prefer the lightest mode of communication. 2. Aim to reduce session duration instead of increasing it. 3. Encourage the reuse of existing templates and presets. 4. Auto-delete after 365 days what hasn’t been used once. 5. Discourage users from PDF exports in favor of URLs. 6. Always provide audio-only and transcript for videos. 7. Be intentional with default settings for your users. 8. Highlight key insights to create understanding faster. 9. Skip unnecessary pages: drive users to results faster. 10. Show filters/presets in autocomplete, not just keywords. 11. Nudge users to delete old files for 10% off that month. 12. Establish an archiving, deletion and clean-up policies. 13. Encourage and reward users for trying out dark mode. 14. Question font weights, stock photos, parallax, 4K-videos. 15. Question collected data, if it’s used and when it’s deleted. Individual actions can drive changes at scale. But they need a momentum. And momentum often comes through small changes: better defaults, reused filters and templates, reduced time on task. That’s also just good usability — and can have tangible impact for users and businesses at scale. Useful resources: Sustainable UX Toolkits, by yours truly https://lnkd.in/ePya82v3 Designing For Planet Knowledge Hub (Notion) https://lnkd.in/eiHtpkJH Product Design for Sustainability (+ Google Doc template), by Artiom Dashinsky ↳ https://lnkd.in/dDnujb-t ↳ https://lnkd.in/d95FWb4r *HUGE* thanks to Thorsten Jonas, Isabel Pettinato, Christoph Stark, Alice M., Bavo Lodewyckx, Poppe G., Stine Ramsing and all wonderful contributors to the project. Your effort doesn’t go unnoticed! 👏🏼👏🏽👏🏾 #ux #design

This is very cool: The world's oldest cheddar-maker is heating water with warm milk. And saving £70,000 a year doing it. Barber's Cheese has been making cheese in Somerset since 1833. Grass-fed cows, generations-old starter cultures, the whole tradition. But on energy, they're ahead of almost everyone. Since 2024 they've been running heat pumps from a UK startup, Arkaya Energy. The innovation: instead of pulling heat from air, ground or water, these draw it from fresh milk, which comes out of the cow warm. The system chills the milk to keep it fresh and diverts the waste heat to bring water close to boiling for cleaning equipment. The result is electricity use cut in half. Carbon down by nearly 66 tonnes a year. And a payback of under two years. Barber's is now converting all its milking parlours by 2028. Arkaya has installed 27 units so far, with 34 more coming this year. Small numbers today. But the UK alone has nearly 7,000 dairy farms, and every one of them has both heating and cooling needs on site. https://lnkd.in/enMW3dvN

Reel in Sustainability. The ocean's bounty is undeniable. So is its waste. Every seafood meal leaves behind scraps, shells, and by-products that usually get binned. As global demand for seafood rises, so does the pile of waste. It's not just mess but an opportunity we're missing. For years, fish skins, guts, and shells have been seen as leftovers. Now, they're being reimagined. Fish skins create gelatin for edible coatings. Guts are rich in enzymes like pepsin and lipase. Crustacean shells contain chitin, a natural polymer being explored as a replacement for plastic. That's where SEAD comes in. Born from seafood waste, this material-first project transforms discarded crustacean shells into biodegradable seed pods. No fillers. No binders. Pods that help plants thrive by boosting seed germination and reducing the need for synthetic additives. Structures that mimic fruit, making them functional and easy to tear. Laser-etched labels keep things ink-free and low impact. Clever, material-first design with a strong sustainability focus. But like most innovation, it raises important questions. Diverting animal by-products into food-related packaging brings health and safety considerations. Regulations vary across regions but often follow Codex Alimentarius and HACCP principles. The EU applies even tighter controls under specific legislation covering by-products in the food chain. And rightly so. If waste is going near food, it needs to be safe, not just sustainable. Getting that balance right is key to trust, and scalability. Then there's the socio-economic layer. Some cultures have dietary concerns around using seafood waste in non-food products. This requires careful thought, not assumptions. Importantly, circular systems like this don't just reduce waste. They reshape local economies. Coastal communities that rely on fishing could find new revenue streams. Not just selling fish meat, but the material itself. Add processing jobs, local manufacturing, and better resource use, and suddenly, it's not just about sustainability but about livelihoods. But none of this scales without the infrastructure, investment, and regulation to keep pace with innovation. So, this isn't just a materials story but a systems story. One that challenges us to rethink what we waste, what we value, and what the future of packaging could look like when we connect the dots. A glimpse at what circular design could look like when it's done with care, context, and compliance What's really standing in the way of progress? Regulation, perception, or simply a lack of imagination? 📷SEAD/Mara Zimmerman