Last week, we hosted a workshop on the topic of the circular economy and making things last.

Preparation for workshop

After receiving a brief from Zero Waste Scotland, we had only two weeks to pull together recruitment, brand, agenda, event activities and workshop facilitation. Snook was excited to work with Zero Waste Scotland despite the short timescale and pressing deadline for delivery of outputs.

With a sold out workshop, we held a four hour idea generation session at our studio attended by 13 enthused participants. Splitting the session in two parts (4-6pm and 6-8pm) allowed more individuals to attend as we were aware it might clash with their work and other commitments.

The workshop

The first part of the workshop focused on creating personas, exploring participant’s daily lives and the scope of introducing a new circular economy model to their day. We did this activity to encourage participants to move on from the traditional and well used models of the circular economy into looking at where in their daily lives the concept could be brought to life.

From this, we moved onto generating ideas within different circular economy models: recycling, re-using, campaigning, sharing, giving, renting, education, policy and others. After a vast colourful amount of post-it notes were stuck on our studio wall, it was time for a quick energiser in the form of pizza (we never underestimate the importance of nibbles and food during events we organise).

The second session was in the form of high speed prototyping and making ideas come to life. Participants came into groups of two and three to work on developing ideas they feel passionate about. Ideas developed included reusable greeting cards aiming to tackle card wastage, renting suitcases when travelling (you don’t own a plane, so why own a suitcase?), and an app to share your lunch (you’ve cooked a bit more? Well, sharing is caring).

Why our approach is different

What makes our process to ideation work is that we encourage prototyping throughout the process. By bringing ideas to life, we start to ask more questions and delve deeper on how products and services could work.

What’s next?

We’re in the process of finalising a report based on all ideas generated throughout the session which will shape discussion topics at an expert panel and inform the Circular Economy Roadmap policy document.

View our gallery of images from the event here and keep an eye on our blog for the report.