Think Act Regenerate Leigh Baker

One of the core propositions of Think Act Regenerate is that today’s regenerative design thinking enables a rich smorgasbord of smarter, faster, funner win/win/win solutions that go WAY beyond 20th century “sustainability” and “efficiency”.

What IS regenerative thinking?

To me, it’s a new place to stand – because we can’t solve 20th century problems with 20th century thinking.

Here’s my take on what regeneration is about and why it has a strong business focus, illustrated with a heap of examples.


LINKS

Think Act Regenerate INSIGHTS email series: http://thinkactregenerate.com/insights

Think Act Regenerate INSIGHT on OPPORTUNITY https://thinkactregenerate.com/insight-a-world-of-business-and-career-opportunity/


Books and general links

BUSINESS LESSONS FROM A RADICAL INDUSTRIALIST https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429997164/businesslessonsfromaradicalindustrialist


REGENERATION: https://regeneration.org/the-book

THE DEEP GREEN PROFIT HANDBOOK https://thinkactregenerate.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/DeepGreenProfit.pdf

Michael Porter: “Why business can be good at solving social problems” https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_porter_why_business_can_be_good_at_solving_social_problems.html


Project Drawdown: https://drawdown.org/solutions

Examples:

Precious metals being recovered from ewaste using the whey https://rpra.ca/the-hub/researchers-extract-gold-from-e-waste-using-a-cheese-byproduct/


Farmer upcycling excess produce https://thinkactregenerate.com/dried-bananas-food-vodka/


AMP upcycling skyscraper https://thinkactregenerate.com/upcycling-commercial-buildings-circular-economy-at-a-whole-new-scale/

Sundrop farms, using solar energy and seawater to grow tomatoes in the desert: https://www.sundropfarms.com/


Interface flooring, utilising land-fill methane to power a factory https://www.greenbiz.com/article/interface-flooring-powers-plant-using-landfill-emissions


Farmers installing solar panels to protect their crops and power their on-farm equipment
https://ceat.org.au/the-benefits-of-agrivoltaics-in-agriculture/


A Riverina renewable energy coop building a community solar garden https://switchedon.reneweconomy.com.au/content/australias-first-community-solar-garden-becomes-a-reality

Kua Coffee, utilising a social enterprise structure to serve its growers in Kenya https://kuacoffee.co/learn/why-does-kua-have-a-foundation-and-a-company


An Indian company making a vegetable-based “Leather” from banana waste: https://banofileather.com/



Plastic-free coffee pods utilising algae-based material to protect the coffee https://www.fastcompany.com/91056402/how-keurig-finally-made-a-coffee-pod-with-no-plastic



Waste processing powered by Black Soldier Fly for food waste: https://goterra.au/food-waste-management/



HarperCollins use design to reduce paper cost and save trees https://www.fastcompany.com/91071102/harper-collins-made-a-tiny-tweak-to-its-book-design-and-has-saved-thousands-of-trees-as-a-result


Totally Renewable Yackandandah – from solar panels to energy retailer https://totallyrenewableyack.org.au/


Melbourne business turns toner cartridge waste into road
surfacing material and vegetable garden modules: https://roadsonline.com.au/the-proof-is-in-the-pavement-with-close-the-loop/



WA farmer is using biochar and dung beetles to reduce operating costs, increase production :

https://www.wantfa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/WANTFA_NF_Summer2015_Biochar-002.pdf
A family-run building company in NSW building super-efficient housing that sells itself https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/news-from-the-front-desk/news-from-the-front-desk-issue-no-231/

A surprising number of people look at “sustainability” and “the environment” as onerous obligations instead of seeing it as a rich smorgasbord of business and career opportunity.

So they miss out on the wealth of commercial solutions coming to market – many of which are already scaling globally.

In the first of 10 Think Act Regenerate INSIGHTS, we explore the scope and scale of today’s opportunities and identify some starting resources.



LINKS

The Think Act Regenerate INSIGHTS email series: thinkactregenerate.com/insights

Project Drawdown’s solutions catalogue: drawdown.org/solutions

Ellen Macarthur Foundation for the Circular Economy: ellenmacarthurfoundation.org

Circular Design Guide: circulardesignguide.com

Project Regeneration’s Action Nexus: regeneration.org/nexus

Planning worksheet download of “An Ikigai for regenerative solutionists”: thinkactregenerate.com/an-ikigai-for-regenerative-solutionists



CREDITS

Original music composed for the show by Ian Hopkinson of HopkinsonCreative.com - used with permission.

I began this podcast as an exploration of the wealth of regenerative solutions scaling globally today that just about anyone can be part of. It was initially part of the Climactic podcast family, so it had a focus on climate issues.

However, my passion has always been design for regeneration and accelerating the spread of today's rich smorgasbord of commercial, actionable solutions.

Going forward, Think Act Regenerate will explore the design principles as well as the individual solutions being actioned by entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs and innovators around the world.



CREDITS:
Original music by Ian Hopkinson of Hopkinson Creative



LINKS:

Think Act Regenerate INSIGHTS email series

The impact of industry-supported climate solutions is not well recognised. The US ratification of the Kigali Accord is one such example - which passed the US Senate with bipartisan support in late 2022. It was a solution supported by the HVAC-R industry and lobbied for by the industry - and is expected to reduce warming in 2100 by 0.35 to 0.5 degrees Centigrade.



The most powerful place you can take climate action may well be in your own industry. For example, the computer games industry has a powerful role to play - one outlined by Project Drawdown's A DRAWDOWN-ALIGNED FRAMEWORK FOR THE GAMING INDUSTRY.



The more you know about today's wealth of regenerative business solutions, the better your chances of being a powerful change agent.



LINKS

A Drawdown-Aligned Framework for the Gaming Industry: https://drawdown.org/publications/a-drawdown-aligned-framework-for-the-gaming-industry

"The US Senate ratifies international climate agreement in bipartisan vote" by Tim Treuer in The Waggle: https://mailchi.mp/regeneration.org/the-waggle-issue-27-hoflhgby6e?e=33eee9b47f

"The Senate ratified a climate change treaty with rare strong bipartisan support" NPR September 2022:
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/22/1124590392/the-senate-ratified-a-climate-change-treaty-with-rare-strong-bipartisan-support



Original music by Ian Hopkinson of hopkinsoncreative.com

ReGenOmics Down Under is a podcast by Leigh Baker of Balance3 exploring the wealth of climate solutions happening on the ground in Australia and New Zealand, as well as around the world.

This episode explores what the human race already knows about how to reverse global warming – starting with the commercial, scaling solutions modelled and ranked by the independent not-for-profit Project Drawdown in 2017 (and updated in 2020)

Project Drawdown’s findings include:
We CAN reverse global warming – even if we just use the quantifiable, multi-benefit commercial solutions that WE ALREADY HAVE and are already scaling.
NONE of the 80 solutions require further policy change from national governments (while it would help, all the solutions ARE  commercial and  ARE scaling)
79 of the solutions are multi-benefit solutions that make the world BETTER (the only harmful solution of significance was nuclear).
The 80 solutions are WHOLE-OF-ECONOMY solutions that go way beyond electriciy generation and transport to include food, agriculture, construction, education, health and materials.
The high-potential new solutions that they didn’t have numbers for are likely to be every bit as powerful and even more regenerative than what we have now.

The list of 80 commercial, quantified Drawdown solutions can a bit overwhelming, and each one only gets 2 pages of explanation. 

So in this episode we dive in to a couple and see how they’re happening in Australia, with examples from two past Climactic episodes.
Tropical forest regeneration
Insulation

Forest regeneration ranked #5 and #12 on the original Drawdown top 80.   And here’s an example of what a small group of concerned Australian researchers created, told by Jess Panegyres from The Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network

Insulation ranked #21 on the original Drawdown list. We explore the action that one Perth insulation installer began back while Drawdown was still doing their modelling.

Drawdown only modelled solutions where they could find a robust, peer-reviewed data sets – so there are many, many more powerful, existing solutions that aren’t  that well-measured yet – from vortex water processing to cellulose-based building materials.  

So it’s more useful to think of Drawdown as a guide book of highlights rather than a definitive encyclopedia.

We live in a world where most of the mainstream media coverage on climate action is focused on either:
high-level action where big government and big business do big things; OR
low-level actions about consumers using less or spending more on expensive alternatives.

That’s barely beginning of the story.  Those two themes like the pastry layers on a vanilla slice – necessary, but not the main event.  There’s actually a wealth of accessible action when you get out and start looking for problems that need solving and the opportunities they create.

Solving the challenges we face has created a quiet design revolution –  the development of systems and processes that regenerate communities and ecosystems.   It’s a whole lot easier to see the best, multi-benefit solutions when you understand the straightforward principles regenerative design.  

Re-gen-omics Down Under explores the solutions happening and the thinking behind them – so if you’re interested in solutions, learn to find your action opportunities and listen to your gut. 

LINKS
Paul Hawken, founder of Project Drawdown, speaking on Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOTLtrt6OIE

Key pages from Project Drawdown's website (where their open-source finding are published):
Their current list of evidence-based solutions https://drawdown.org/solutions
Their downloadable updates https://drawdown.org/drawdown-review

The Climactic Live episode BZE - Fight for Planet A Panel for the forest regeneration story  https://www.climactic.fm/show/climactic/climactic-live-bze-fight-fo

INTRO

This podcast is called Regenomics Down Under - "Regenomics" is short for Regional Regenerative Economies – and in previous episodes we’ve looked at what’s happening – mostly locally in Australia.

Today’s a bit different – we’re looking at “What IS regeneration anyway?”  and “How can you learn to enable regeneration?”

I interview Kathleen Davies of Ekkremon – a freelance engineering HAZOPS facilitator – who recently finished a course called The Regenerative Practitioner with the Regenesis Group.

We took a deep dive into the practice of regeneration – from regeneration of self to global regeneration.

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LINKS

Ekkremon: http://www.ekkremon.com.au/

The Regenesis Group: https://regenesisgroup.com/

Paul Hawken talking about Regeneration and climate solutions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68fY0rSkhRo

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CREDITS

Original music and audio editing support by Ian Hopkinson, Human Hacker https://www.humanhackers.live/blog and serial digital entrepreneur.