Individual upcycling in the UK: Insights for scaling up towards sustainable development

Kyungeun Sung, Sustainable Consumption Research Group, School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment

Kyungeun Sung Supervised by Tim Cooper & Sarah Kettley Sustainable Consumption Research Group

School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment

Individual upcycling in the UK: Insights for scaling up towards

sustainable development


Table of contents

Introduction

Setting the scene

Method

Results

Discussions and conclusion


Introduction


Community-level innovations or actions for sustainability

Grassroots innovations (e.g. Davies & Mullin, 2011; Horwitch & Mulloth, 2010; Longhurst & Seyfang, 2011)

Community-driven development (e.g. Alkire et al., 2001; Binswanger & Nguyen, 2005; Dongier et al., 2003)

Bottom-up approach (e.g. Akpomuvie, 2010; Danish, 1995; Rayner, 2010; Smith, 2008)


Grassroots innovations

Social enterprises and social movements for greener economy in developed countries (UK and USA) Low carbon housing & community renewable energy (Seyfang, 2008;2010)

Organic food producer cooperatives (Bekin et al., 2007)

Hubs of innovation (Horwitch & Mulloth, 2010) & social enterprises (Davies & Mullin,

2011)

Transition towns (Longhurst, 2012)

Poverty alleviation and capacity building of the poor in developing countries (India) Honey Bee network (Gupta, 1995; 2000) & ICT for BoP (Heeks, 2012)

Eco-preneurs (Pastakia, 1998) & commercialisation (De Keersmaecker et al, 2012)

Capacity building (Middlemiss & Parrish, 2010)


Community-driven development

Cases in developing countries Problems and challenges (Bebbington et al, 2004; Platteau & Gaspart, 2003)

Obstacles to scaling up (Binswanger & Aiyar, 2003) & success factors for scaling up (Binswanger & Nguyen, 2004)

State-community synergies (Gupta et al., 2003; 2004)

Empowerment (Grootaert, 2003; Krishna, 2003)


Bottom-up approach

Cases in developing countries Self-help strategy for rural development (Akpomuvie, 2010)

Decentralised energy planning (Hiremath et al., 2010)

Sustainable urban development (El Asmar et al., 2012)

Subsistence marketplaces (Viswanathan, et al., 2012)

Inclusive development (marginalised people) (Danish, 1995)


Existing research

Focus on: Expert-led poverty alleviation projects Market-led social enterprises Activists-led social movements

Relative little attention to: Spontaneous, unorganised citizen’s collective actions


Aims

Introduce the example of spontaneous, unorganised citizen’s collective actions – individual upcycling

Analyse from the perspective of Design for Sustainable Behaviour

Link behavioural insights to strategy development for scaling up


Setting the scene


Individual upcycling

Creation or modification of any product out of used materials in an attempt to result in a product of higher quality or value than the compositional elements (Sung, et al., 2014)


Benefits of individual upcycling when scaled up

Environmental benefits (Ali et al., 2013; Goldsmith, 2009; Szaky, 2014)

(-) need for new products > (-) materials and industrial energy > (-) GHGs

(-) municipal solid waste > (-) additional landfill spaces

Economic benefits (Frank, 2013; Lang, 2013)

Money saving SMEs (e.g. Sarah Turner in Sung & Cooper, 2015)

Sociocultural & psychological benefits (Sung, Cooper & Kettley, 2014)

Learning & empowering Sense of community & relaxing …


Increasing number of upcyclers but still marginal practice

contemporary Maker Movement (Anderson, 2012; Lang, 2013)

Physical resources (e.g. Hackspaces)

Digital resources (e.g. Instructables, Etsy)


Research question

How can this emerging, yet still marginal activity, be scaled up into a mainstream everyday activity in households (and possibly also in industries) to make a bigger impact on the environment and society?


Aims

Introduce the example of spontaneous, unorganised citizen’s collective actions – individual upcycling

Analyse from the perspective of Design for Sustainable Behaviour

Link behavioural insights to strategy development for scaling up


Method


Methods and sampling

Semi-structured interview with 23 British residents (April-July, 2014)

Interview schedule: Behaviour variance – how often; materials (what, how/where to get, how

to choose); what to do with end products Context of the behaviour – when; where; with whom

10 Hackspaces/Makerspaces in 10 cities of 9 regions in England (based on

accessibility + activeness)

A recruiting advertisement on Google groups/forums

13 direct answer + 10 snowball sampling


Participants

From 9 cities

Between 24~66 years old

17 (74%) British and 6 (26%) non-British

15 (65%) male and 8 (35%) female

12 (52%) in science and engineering; 7 (30%) in art and design; 4 (17%) in other areas (health service, business and management) or unemployed


Analysis

Anonymised transcripts

QSR NVivo 10 software

Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006)

Categorisation into (1) how often; (2) what materials; (3) how and where to get materials; (4) why particular materials; (5) what to do with end products; (6) when; (7) where; (8) with whom

Grounded codes


Limitations

May not be generalisable to the overall UK populations/makers/upcyclers based on the sampling method + limited sample

Limited to the particular aspects of the behaviour understanding – excluding behaviour factors, skills level, tools involved, etc.


Results


Behaviour variance

Frequency: ‘all the time’ ~ ‘once a year’ depending on the project or job situation enthusiastic hobbyists (environmentalists) ~ pragmatists

Materials: (1) wood/furniture; (2) metal; (3) electronics; (4) fabric; (5) packaging.

Source of materials: (1) online shops + networks (males); (2) skips (males); (3) charity shops; (4) car boot sales

Material selection criteria: (1) potential value; (2) financial saving; (3) high quality; (4) easy to handle; (5) un-recyclability

Use of end products: (1) for oneself; (2) gifts to family/friends; (3) selling (with high aspirations)


Context of behaviour

When: ‘anytime that suits them’ (hobby) or ‘all the time’ (lifestyle)

Where: ‘home’ vs. ‘Hackspace/Makerspace’ (tools and bigger space)

With whom: ‘by oneself’ – difficulty in finding similar-interest people, previous bad collaboration experience, increased productivity, preferences towards no interruption and instruction


Discussions & Conclusion


Implications for scaling up (behaviour variance)

Frequency: ‘all the time’ ~ ‘once a year’ depending on the project or job situation enthusiastic hobbyists

(environmentalists) ~ pragmatists enthusiastic upcyclers > entrepreneurs + pragmatic makers > frequent upcycling + non-makers > makers/upcyclers

Materials: (1) wood/furniture; (2) metal; (3) electronics; (4) fabric; (5) packaging focus of materials provision improvement

Source of materials: (1) online shops + networks (males); (2) skips (males); (3) charity shops; (4) car boot sales

unified used material centre + online search platform

Material selection criteria: (1) potential value; (2) financial saving; (3) high quality; (4) easy to handle; (5) un-

recyclability materials information with the estimated potential value, estimated money saving and quality rate

Use of end products: (1) for oneself; (2) gifts to family/friends; (3) selling (with high aspirations) business feasibility test, technical safety test, niche market identification


Implications for scaling up (context of behaviour)

Where: ‘home’ vs. ‘Hackspace/Makerspace’ (males) tools hiring service and daily/hourly charge for the workshop

With whom: ‘by oneself’ – difficulty in finding similar-interest people, previous bad collaboration

experience, increased productivity, preferences towards no interruption and instruction community match-making events


Scaling up beyond hobbies and niche enterprises

In-house designers in MNCs: Products worth mass-production

+ production technique worth scaling up (cost-effectiveness and sustainability)

Effective & efficient systems / services to take back products/packaging (extended producer responsibility)

http://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/product-content/the-long-and-short/season-one/images/freitag7.jpg



Deepening, broadening & scaling up transition experiments in niches in relation to multi-level perspective (based on Geels and Kemp 2000, De Haan and Rotmans, 2009) from van den Bosch (2010)

Niches in the multi levels of sustainability transitions (Geels, 2011)

Broadening: getting different niches together (linking it with repair, reuse, other types of sustainable DIY activities) niche-cluster niche-regime (van den Bosch, 2010)


Quick recap

Relative little attention to more spontaneous, unorganised citizen’s collective actions in community-level innovations for SD

Individual upcycling in the UK

Interviews with 23 British residents with practical experience

Variance in behaviour + behavioural context

Behaviour insights strategies for scaling up



Future prospects

Developing, global ‘circular economy’ debate (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015)

Design movement for sustainable change: design activism (Fuad-Luke, 2013); design for social innovation (Manzini, 2015)

How every stakeholder (industry, government, NGOs, citizens) acts and reacts


Thank you! Any question?

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