Stories and insights from our Beyond Waste Lab

From September to December 2018 we collaborated with Sustainable Living Lab at Impact Hub Lausanne & Living Lab Lausanne at EPFL on a Social Lab called “Beyond Waste | Circular Resources Lab”. We are now ready to share many beautiful insights of our participants (individually and in their prototyping groups), extensive summaries of our Lab’s processes and also some meta topic articles. Read more about the context of this Social Lab on at the end of this article.

Caption: Getting to know the 2018 cohort in our Kick-Off workshop on Sept 14th 2018 (©Impacthub Lausanne)

The Lab’s blog content:

• Personal Stories: Read about personal experiences and insights of our participants and also the convening team. All of them went through a personal as well as collective transformation process und have a lot to share.

• Meta Learnings: In these blogs we share about insights that came along with this Lab experience as well as our Lab process itself.

• Group Blogs: In this section the four groups share about their team experiences about prototyping solutions for systemic change.

• Workshop Blogs: These blog articles summarize all the steps of this Lab’s process, 5 1-day workshops and a 3-day midterm retreat.

Some background knowledge on this Social Lab on circular economy

Current processes of production and consumption are linear and therein produce a lot of waste. A transition is required to move towards more sustainable solutions. Through some of its principles like reuse, recycle, repair and reduce, the circular economy concept offers an alternative model that treats resources in a smart way leaving reduced or no waste. Shifting to this model will require a systemic approach, a fundamental transformation of our production and consumption patterns as well as changes in our mindsets.

Beyond Waste | Circular Resources Lab offered a safe space for engaging into such a transition.We collaborated in this Social Lab with Sustainable Living Lab at Impact Hub Lausanne & Living Lab Lausanne at EPFL, with the support of the Engagement Migros development fund as well as the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Switzerland (SDSN).