HUMAN BY WONDERLAND #22
Discover more from Creative Currents
HUMAN BY WONDERLAND #22
A newsletter about design and creativity, and how they contribute to a better world.
Hello, Friends. Welcome to Edition #22 of HUMAN.
For you today, we’ve got:
An Idea: Every company has a hiring process; and we wanted to share ours
The Internet: From Allbirds and space balloons to tomatoes and face fungus
An Attention Grabber: Waste management, from Singapore to Tilos
Beautiful Aestetics: Taschens new book, Menu Design in Europe
Enjoy!
Every company has a hiring process of some description, and Wonderland is no exception. At the same time, understanding the process can be hard, and it can make the job hunting experience frustrating or intimidating. That’s why we laid ours bare.
The new Allbirds x Adidas collab will show you the co2 cost of your new kicks.
Balloon rides to space are coming coming for outer-atmosphere rocket tourism.
Recently, in ad-land: bad news for fossil fuel companies; good news for earth.
Face fungus; the most recent solution to fossil-fuel-derived cosmetics.
The world’s tomato supply is at risk due to the worst drought in 1,200 years.
Another win for future city planning, this time from the French Government
Meta’s new chatbot isn’t a huge fan of Zuckerberg, or Facebook for that matter…
When a species goes extinct, there is a cultural connection that dies with them.
10 Rules & Best Practices when using Figma
Tackling waste; Greece and Singapore
our commercially minded, capitalistically driven society, one of the most common by-products of our busy and hyper-connected lives is waste, coming in all descriptions. e-Waste, food waste, plastics, papers, chemicals, clothes; we’re producing it all, and for the most part its disposal and management is invisible to the daily consumer. Unfortunately, this invisibility can lead to terrible flaws in the system as the world apparently clings tightly to the maxim out of sight, out of mind.
As these problems continue, small sparks of promise are beginning to shine through, using clever design or innovative thinking to tackle problems that are often just swept into the trash with the rest of the waste. Two examples that have caught our attention come from Singapore and the Greek island of Tilos, and we wanted to share them, along with out thoughts, with you this week.
A recent article from Greenly revealed that “over 30% of food is lost or wasted each year”, with the problem prevalent from production to disposal. Our food systems are as broken as the rest of our waste management system. According to Action Against Hunger, as many as 829 million people are still going hungry, despite a supply chain that is more than capable of feeding the global population. “World hunger is on the rise, affecting nearly 10% of people globally. From 2019 to 2022, the number of undernourished people grew by as many as 150 million, a crisis driven largely by conflict, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Enter Treatsure. Based in Singapore, Treatsure has created a unique way for people to enjoy food that would traditionally have gone to waste, while also giving them access that would typically be out of their budget. The example given by Wion News is the supper buffet at the Grand Hyatt hotel, which typically costs $70 and features an assortment of foods such as satay chicken, tiger prawns, and wok-fried mudcrab. Now, thanks to a mobile app, people with more conservative budgets can also fill a box, and save food that would otherwise have gone to waste.
According to Treatsure CEO and co-founder, Preston Wong, the company is collaborating with chains such as the Hyatt, Accor Group, and the Singapore Mariott Tang Plaza Hotel. Through this collaboration, the 30,000 Treatsure customers are able to pick out and collect a '“buffet-in-a-box” of food that would otherwise be relegated to landfill. Through this initiative, Treatsure customers have saved the waste of 30 metric tonnes of food since it’s launch in 2017
Further afield - 8,706 km to be exact - on the Greek Island of Tilos, the local 500+ residents have banded together to reduce waste on their island, recycling up to 86% the rubbish produced. A runaway success, Tilos has set the record in Greece and has seen the islands landfill closed for business.
In an interview with Reasons to be Cheerful, taverna owner Aristoteles Chatzifountas said that “it took only a month to get used to separating his trash into three bins — one for organic matter; the other for paper, plastic, aluminium and glass; and the third for everything else”. With the rest of the island following the same waste protocols, Tilos became the leader in the informal race between the islands of Greece as they work to meet the stringent recycling goals set by the EU. The success also places the island in stark contrast to greater Greece who, in 2019, only recycled or composted 1/5 of all municipal waste, and was placed 24th out of 27 countries in rankings by the EU statistics office. “That’s a far cry from EU targets to recycle or prepare for reuse 55 percent of municipal waste by weight by 2025 and 65 percent by 2035.”
The success of Tilos aren’t relegated to locals alone. Tourists and visitors are equally responsible for their waste, and are shown how to tackle the problem during their stay on the idyllic island.
So what does it all mean?
Often a solution to a problem only becomes obvious when we see it executed. Solutions like Wise and Uber, AirBnB and Tesla all become obvious only when we see it executed, and more importantly, when we see it exceed. When it comes to solutions for green problems, such as waste management, they should be taken as an example to follow.
The utilisation and sale of food that would otherwise be wasted should be lauded and shared globally; no one should live with food insecurity in this day and age, especially in the developed countries of the world. The same goes for the successful waste management of Tilos. Granted, this is much harder to execute in a city the size of Amsterdam or Tokyo, Mumbai or New York. But it can be done. It’s about finding a way of scaling the small and experimenting through trial and error. It’s about educating and rewarding, and looking beyond the balance in our bank account, or the need for profit.
Olivia Hingley of It’s Nice That has shared a selection of beautiful European menu designs from Taschens new book, Menu Design in Europe. Covering 200 years from 1800 to 2000, the folio covers everything from illustrations and doodles to David Hockney. Simply put, it’s a book written to fulfill the dreams of foodies everywhere.
If you're enjoying HUMAN, feel free to share it with friends and colleagues! We’re always happy to welcome new readers! If we’ve left you wanting more Wonderland, you can check out our latest work here, or follow us on social.
Thanks for reading,
Team Wonderland.
