Mass Consumption in a Low Carbon Society 2030

Role: Developer, Design Thesis Student
Date: 2010 - 2011

Download full documentation (in german) or read it on scribd

How will the growing population respond and stay within the planetary boundaries without sacrificing their prosperity until 2030, considering that we face today climate change and ocean acidification caused by rising carbon levels in the atmosphere, plastic pollution in the oceans due to lacking circularity and oil depletion due to a fossil energy system?

During my final design thesis I asked myself this question, analysed the carbon cycle, its interrelationships within society and our planet, societal future projections and the climate change and solution scenarios proposed by organisations like the ICCT and Wuppertal Institutes.

Based on the first analysis several main routes for improvement were defined and solution ideas proposed. Main ideas were:
  • Total personal resource accounting: What if CO2 would turn into a currency and if  I would have 2t CO2 per year free?  
  • Resilience: Products to live with climate change
  • Awareness raising through games
  • Resource decoupling consumer electronics through virtual reality.
  • Design for Recycling: Circular economy and redesign of single use items
  • Resource efficient pollution mitigation: Resource Efficient Ocean Cleanup solutions to fight marine litter.

As I asked myself if biologists were right if cleaning a vast ocean is economical not feasible while society and economy managed to pollute it and as marine litter is a prime signal that we do not manage the foundation of circular economy which is basic waste management, I focused my work in the second phase of my thesis on the development of a swarm based litter cleanup device fleet, scaled to cover the North Pacific Garbage Patch in around 5-6 years at lowest cost (approx. 300 Million EUR). 

The results of this thesis formed the knowledge foundation for my work today and of most of the projects listed above in particular Floating Horizon and my work at PlasticsEurope.