![[2] Value in Sustainable design & Infinite growth](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.notion.so%2Fimage%2Fhttps%253A%252F%252Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%252Fsecure.notion-static.com%252Fa320818c-a3eb-4bdb-9f5e-727f7b79207d%252FTeun.jpg%3Ftable%3Dblock%26id%3Dba689fd9-ab64-40c3-b0db-0c254057f057%26cache%3Dv2&w=3840&q=75)
Conversation with Teun van Wetten
Design & Sustainability director @VanBerlo
In this episode, you’ll meet Teun van Wetten. Teun is Design & Sustainability director at VanBerlo part of Accenture. He will tell us about the different aspects of Value and the concept of growth - infinite or not - in Sustainable Design and beyond.
Listen to this episode on Spotify or with your favorite podcast app:
Reach out to Teun via the VanBerlo website
Links mentioned by Teun
- Cradle to cradle (Michael Braungart and William McDonough): Link
- How to avoid a Climate disaster (Bill Gates): Link
Raw Transcript
Note: This is a rough transcript that contains hiccups/typos. It could still be useful to the listeners that would like to come back to a precise point of the discussion.
Intro, Sustainable definition & vision
Baptiste: The first question on my end would be: would you be able to introduce yourself briefly in terms of name, age, job, background a quick, quick intro.
Teun: Okay. Yeah, I think you can do that. My name is Teun van Wetten . My age is 33 now. I have a wife and a son and they are my life. So my background is in both design and mechanical engineering.
Baptiste: And your job?
Teun: Oh, my job. I am the design director and head of sustainability for, from.
Baptiste: I'll go straight in. And maybe can you share a bit more about your vision on sustainable design and your definition of sustainability?
Teun: Okay. Although the definition of sustainability is a good place to start. So sustainability has a lot of different definitions and it's a really big meaning, but the definition of sustainability, which I use is the same one as the United Nations, meaning the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.
But if we translate that to, to design and sustainability and design, I don't think there's importance to not see them differently. I think it's inherently the way you should do things. So design should be embedded. Sustainability should be embedded into design. It's one of the criteria you should design for, and therefore they are the same.
We should not do any design process without it being a sustainable process, products, system, whatever. . Right?
Baptiste: And so that, that would be for the definition of it, and you would consider it your vision as well ?
Teun: Of vision is, is like in the, in the future. So I think this is the belief, this is, this is what we do today. This is what we will do tomorrow. This is what, what we'll do. So we'll keep on doing this about not talking about it, but doing it.
Baptiste: Maybe related to this, this vision on sustainable design and this definition of sustainability is there, from your expertise, any tool, any methods, anything that you found valuable in the approach of sustainability? From your experience, what would you, what could you share? Like if you had the opportunity with a sustainability community or a design community?
Teun: I think if we talk about staying in design thing, the most important thing is Realizing is that that value is kind of the, the thing which binds it all together.
So all the systems and understanding value within systems and how they flow into other systems or flowing into nothingness and they're kind of being destroyed. I think that those concepts are at the foundation of all the tools and all the processes and all the beliefs I have about sustainability.
So I would say the key thing to understand is value, and there's a lot of different aspects of value can be interpreted in different ways. And there's a lot of research which has been done about it already before. You know, you know, leave a link to sustainability. Just what value, what is value? And that's a lot of things which I would say is there.
And also the concept of, yeah, it cannot be, you cannot have infinite growth. Like there's, you can keep, be aiming for it and then also say it's sustainability. So it has to stay within some boundaries. So, When you talk about sustainability, you should consider it as in not infinite growth. Not always about being bigger or more also about it being less and that we have to maybe make, do it less, but make less feel like more.
Perspectives on value & infinite growth
Baptiste: Right. So as a mindset, doing less. And did you find ways to for example, for the, for the value perspective, did you find ways to design for value design with less value? Practically how would you, how would you approach it?
Teun: Well, there are different ways. So for instance, if you talk about a product life cycle, you can map the flows of value within that product life cycle.
You can indicate where from where to where something is flowing, how big the flow is. So you can indicate with sanky diagrams how know size of the arrow can indicate how big the value flow or loss. The value Hill itself is a very powerful tool and methods to make you realize, okay, we're adding value in these steps and we're losing value here, and how can I close the loops in those?
So those are two very powerful kind of ways to look at it. But you always look at the system level when you look at value,
Baptiste: Right, so that's the same with this idea of infinite growth and the connection, the connection to it. could you expand a bit on this idea of system and infinite growth? What are we talking about? Because to an extent, there has to be some growth in some areas of the system, right?
Teun: Why? Why the re has to be growth ?
Baptiste: In the sense of can you imagine that if you look at the system holistically, maybe some parts of the system can grow and some part can de- grow, or decay?
Teun: Yeah.
Baptiste: But maybe like as a whole, Infinite growth is something that we should...
Teun: we live on a planet and the planet has resources and they are finites, they're not infinite. So if we keep using more and more of it and they are finites, they will run out. So the, if we keep growing and we keep using more resources, we are gonna run out. So, so we can't have infinite growth. And this also not only works for tangible aspects, but also, but everything which is limited time is limited .
You cannot basically say, you know, we, if we are launching all these different services, which are craving your attention, there's that much time in a day for, for, you can all fight for the attention of it, but there is this much, and you can say, I want a bigger part of it. And like, you want keep getting a bigger part of it, but at some point you're gonna run out or of space and time and you can still be sustainable and, and prospering within a certain field you can prosper and thrive without having infinite growth. That's the core of it. So I think growth is very often linked to driving and, and prosperity, but you can also have prosperity without growth. .
Baptiste: Yeah. But if I, if I hear you correctly, it's maybe more of the, and I, I want to be careful, not paraphrasing, but the concept of infinite growth, which is the issue, maybe not growth itself.
Teun: no as, yeah, infinite growth. Yeah. This, that's true. So growth can, can at time be, be important or even required, but there's a time and a place for it and a level to it. And I think in our current systems, we think of growth as almost being infinite here on year, the year, having to have the results of growth.
And yeah, this is very much links to, to also design and what we do. So do we design for things being replaced and because it's, it's better for business-model or could we actually extend the lifetime? Could we make sure that people can upgrade, repair, and therefore also they have to ... it cost them less
Baptiste: yeah. Yeah. On, on those, scientifically, on this topic, like you mentioned the design again would you have examples where you've been using the, the methods we've been discussing, the value heal, those kind of things? Like could you, could you share some examples of successful and maybe unsuccessful applications of those methods?
Teun: Well, it depends. So next to everything, of course, which we publicly state and what, what we can talk about, there's a lot of stuff we do, which we cannot talk about yet because they're working on project for which will happen in the future and we can't disclose any information about those things.
I think one of the, the things we, we recently shared was a smarts meter for Dutch households where we mapped out all the value flows in the different systems, and then we considered also the reasons why these value flows were there. We went and quite in depth and in the field, and we tried to uncover the real reasons of why value flow is here and why it leaves there, and then also being able to use all of these things to actually change. Design of actually the smart meter. So to product it to improve the system flows, to reduce value loss, to increase values in different places. So one of the, the most recent examples, which we publicly shared is the smart meter we did together with Netbeheer.
Baptiste: Yeah. Typically. So for Netbeheer here we looked at the flow of materials in the sense like the value was very, very, Material related in that case. And maybe if we look at the value hill it's also very much of a material level.
Teun: Yeah, it's very on material level. But I think Netbeheer case also, there's the value kind of expressed in the need of certain experts to do certain task. So an expert which will come to replace your existing meter or, or fix or, or replace a broken one or think we might think to be broken.
And these are people which have a certain. craft. which we have too lit off anyway, we're going through an energy transition, so we're gonna even have a bigger shortage of them and letting them execute tasks which are in essence meaningless because they also, someone much less skilled should be able to execute this task.
If in the design you can execute it in a way where people can do it themselves, the expert doesn't have to come and therefore the experts are being freed up to work on other very meaningful tasks for the energy transition. I think this is value which is not expressed in material.
Baptiste: Right? Yeah. That, that leads me to, to the question like, do you have a definition of value?
Teun: Oh, in this interview might be difficult, but to, to name it, but we know that there's different factors of value and if I could name all eight of them, is it gonna be, be difficult? From the top of my. , but we use, within the company, we, we make a split between the different values we have and then, yeah.
So there we have a certain definition of it, but to recall it now very specifically, because it's quite complex.
I mean, we don't
Baptiste: have to, but indeed I think from the discussion where we, where we, what we see is that there, there is like the material value, we just mentioned, the value for the workers, which is maybe completely different type of value. We could think of the monetary value as well in the sense of like the cost of the products. So there are these three layers that we're, that we're talking about, and I know...
Teun: yeah, there's many more. There are more, many more layers. But, but for instance, and also different tools use different layers of the, of the value.
So when we use to repair mapping, we use three layers. Environmental, functional, economic value, so different processes also. Have different stakeholders or players in it and therefore different values are active or non-active in those when you do those projects. But the value can be broken down into to, and there's quite some theoretical and PhD where it could go along about, you know, saying this is what value actually means.
And understanding it is quite vital. And working with it is even more.
Okay. Yeah. So we've been talking about the concept of value in design and how well in that case, you and from that approach well sustainable design through the lens of value with disability layered conception or definition of value.
That will lead me to, to, to a question that I know we discussed also before, but. had Or how would call that? Like a white guard, like a free blank check. What? Blank check. Blank check. Sure. Blank check. Blank check. What would be the, the sustainable products you would choose to design and, and why? Like, can you, can you tell that that's a product that would bring maybe the most value or maybe the most.
It's difficult, a lot of things, but I think what I think what I would like to do most is for my son, who's currently three and a half, that I really like designing toys for him and build the toys ourselves, but also that the toys helps heal shape his reality so that they can teach him about if something breaks down, he can repair it.
P a better understanding about space or time or geometry. So I think what I really like to do is sometimes build, or if I would get my dream project, I would build children's toys, which empower or teach the children something about the values I have. , the fellows I believe in, and these are very much about living a meaningful life with less.
And something breaks down, you try to repair it if it can. Repairs, could you build something yourself to fill the same function? Can you grow your own foods? Many of these things are kind of in there. So if I would get to design a product that would probably design the children's storey to try to.
Yeah, embody and bringing across the values we have to, to play and, and experimentation.
It's insightful indeed, because we're now maybe approaching another dimension of the, the word value, which is, which are
the values Yeah. Is different. Yeah. They, they, they're very similar, but they're different. Yeah.
Right. So
Beyond material value
Baptiste: it's, it's by design and I, I know we've been working on this as well, but by design. Preserving the value of the products, the value, the, the product is actually generating value for the workers and those kind of things, but it's also conveying certain values that you embed as a designer for your child in that case.
Teun: Yeah, I think there's, there's sometimes also a sense of pride, like something breaks down and you can repair it yourself. You feel good. Sometimes you make something too easy, it's not really a challenge, and therefore is it rewarding if you, if you did the certain task or not? For my son, if it's too simple, it's not challenging, he wouldn't do it.
But there's quite some hurdles he has to do or he can use grownup tools and it'll make him feel empowered. So, yeah, finger part of the, the journey and understanding the values are also in the experience and how you interact with the product, but it's definitely not just. Durability or making something last longer.
Could also be that actually when the use of the product is done, the product should disappear, should move on, or should not even be there. Or, so values, I think are, we definitely will need all of people to believe and to, to kind of will put their shoulders under kind of changing some big societal.
Things in order to achieve the I PCC 1.58 degrees by 2100, 2 times by 2050. So we need a lot of people. We need a lot of kind of well paradigm shifts in socioeconomic reform in order to achieve that. And this is only going to happen if people believe get inspires by sh.
Baptiste: The inspiration. So inspiring, almost almost play example. So using as a segue
Teun: for it, it is, but also a love design of hide behind it. So you do ly say, oh yeah. But it's there to serve as an inspiration for then, so it's not perfect, but it's inspiration for it to move on. Yeah. This, this is important, but could have been better.
So it can be both. Can be really well done. It can be really well excluded, can be very data driven, can be. For all of the aspects can look at it in the system level, and then it can still be inspiring. So I think aspiring is more of an end function than an oral function. So yes, but I would like to inspire through giving the example and proving that it can be done and showing the excellence, which can be achieved, not just saving, maybe it can be achieved or you think shouldn't be backed up by action, right?
So it's
Baptiste: the embedded message and at the same time, the the delivery should be, Should be proper, right? Like so, so making the toy with the smallest footprint possible, but at the same time, like conveying a certain experience that, that
Teun: Yeah, it's part of it, it's part of, of doing it, right? It's part of the, the quality and quality is never negotiable, but quality is not expressed in just one value.
It's, it's in multiple values. But in the case of the toy, we wanted to be made made out of the right and of course, safe materials, which probably are, would be locally sourced so they don't have to travel over. I would wanted to outlast him and also conserve as toys for someone else to, to learn about the different things.
Maybe the fact that he might be able to also adapt them so that if he learned something and he saw certain enrichment possibilities in the toys and the experience to, to make actually the experience better and he could make those changes, and therefore the person effort would've a better experience.
So there's a lot of little different effects. Watch more than I'm mentioning now, but definitely considering it as not something static, but something dynamic, something which has to evolve also because needs will evolve. Yeah, I think that's a very important aspect to consider. And there's not one way of doing it.
There's many, many ways to do it. But
Modernist design philosophy
Baptiste: I'm wondering because I know it's a, it's a tricky topic, but it's almost like revisiting the, the, the quote like from follows function in the sense. In that case, the form is also the function. It's also the form is sending a message.
Teun: We haven't design much more form, but yeah, of course form sends message the, the but but form follow function.
I'm a very strong believer in a way we currently do design, believe that sense. I'm a, a very much modernist in the design philosophy, so I don't think form force function is wrong. I think sometimes we. Haven't really considered us fully what the function is and therefore the form was follow, it's in the wrong direction.
A point.
Baptiste: And and to that regards, feels that there is a lean dimension of exemplary or giving the right example not only in the products design, but also like as a person. Would you, would you believe in this like showing the right example and almost leaning, leaning to what you.
Teun: I think so to some extent, but also believing that, that I don't have all the alters and, and, and I have, my beliefs have been shaped by my experience, my frame of reference, my cultural upbringing.
And it's not necessarily the only right thing for it to to be. So I really believe that you can set example and think you should. So I think actions speak louder than words and therefore if you do something and, and should be really invested in it and being proud of it. Make it the best it can possibly be.
But you also realize that yeah, just you can achieve much less than if you, from bigger team, which have different perspectives from different backgrounds and different things, it'll become better. So it's difficult to answer your question in, in a proper way, but bullying values into something. Yes. And leading by example because of it making the product.
Express what you believe. Yes. But also always being open for conversations, dialogue, critique, because I think you don't know everything to that. Yeah. From that
Baptiste: extent. So, so creating a law about it is not, is not the way. At the same time, I'm wondering, so video talking, creating a law almost like en enforcing that this shouldn't be the right way to design more sustainably and this same thing.
So No, no, it always. It's what you're saying, right? Like,
Teun: but but you don't mean law in the regulatory sake, you mean? No. Or is it like dolphin for others? Okay. I think you should, should be very strict towards yourself. You should be questioning yourself all the time. Am I doing enough? Am I done good enough?
Could it be better? If it can be better? Make it better. Yeah. If I can, if I cannot make it better, could someone else make better? Let's involve them. So
Personal Discipline & sustainability
Baptiste: but so that would be for the design part, was that it's the. I dunno how to call it. The, the rigor or are, are you applying the same kind of yeah.
Stringent rules also to personal life, because you can, when you're preaching for sustainability, you can easily be attacked on, for example, taking planes, being vegetarian or not all, all these kind of things. So, so how do you deal with distension as well? That's
Teun: a good question. I think. We are very strict on ourselves, or I am very strict on myself and we are very quite vigorous.
I think in that sense. If you put a scale, you could say like a hundred people, we would probably be around top 0.5%. Although we're not, not necessarily extremists, but at least we try to, to do it holistically. And everything we do is we try to consider, so we don't, we don't actual impulse. We really try to consider everything we, we do.
So in our case, We try to, to grow our own food in my parents' garden. And we, we do that with all only biological crops where we have verified, where all the seeds come from, where all the plants come from. We check all the, the, the soil and the quality of the soil. We use only waste to enrich it when we plant it, where we plant it.
And that generates enough food when the, the garden is prospering to feeds my family and my parents and my brother and my sister's. When, when seasons are driving, but in winter we are not building up enough basically additional stock to, to, to take us through the winter. I think this, we, we, we cannot cover.
So I think we could, if our entire life would be dedicated only by doing that, then I think if we would have bigger lands, then I think we could, we could make that work. Yeah. We also have other careers in one of my career, well, in this case being design director of velo is also making sure that the impact we we have on moving towards the world we want it to be.
The impact I can have in the, my job and the projects I do there is much greater than just doing it in my private life. Let's do, of course, intrinsically linked telling clients like . Do something completely different when I'm at home, and I think this will also, in the end, in the long run, it will show.
So you know, people who, who pretend and to, to wear a mask, I think they, they were in in the end. That is not as, as true as in if they wanted. But we are not perfect. We, we, we make mistakes sometimes we, we make think we made the right decision, but later on in turn out the information, we base a decision.
So I think the main thing is that we are conscious about every single decision we take and we try to buy as little as possible, build most of the stuff ourself. And yeah, it goes into almost every aspect of life. But we f we are quite diligent, but we are not perfect. And even though even our footprint measured in two tons is too high.
You even have to be better. Yeah. Maybe just, just
Baptiste: following up on what we just said on this idea of like exemplary, a bit of a white knight things and like also your point of the consciousness. So at least the responsibility you could take for yourself is being conscious of your, your choices in term of consumption and the scale of things.
At some points. I can't imagine that indeed, like for some people I can know it also for, for myself. There is this, this idea of like, you keep loading your yourself with more responsibility of preventing yourself from doing certain things from the sake of sustainability. So you, you would almost go towards what I think would be called like a stable burnouts with like, ah, I can't do this, I can't do that, I can't do that.
Don't you think there is a bit of a tension here? Like you should become too extreme. Then you lose your influencing power, you lose your energy you become too minimalist. restrict, restrictive
Teun: to an extent. Yeah. It, it, it will be. I'm not sure because I don't think I've reached that point yet, so it's kind of speculative.
Yeah, I can imagine that this would happen. I think if you do certain things with, you derive energy from, maybe it's the opposite. So at the moment when something in our house breaks down, if it doesn't damage the entire house, actually, we see there's an opportunity for Otto to learn. So if something breaks down, we can take it apart.
He can learn how it works, he can learn why it break down and we can fix it together. And this kind of teaches him about it and kind of empowers him to do it on the, on his own. And, well, he's currently three and a half, but he can fix quite a bit of of stuff already. So quite proud of that. And I think that's, You can find the opportunities to, to see them in the light of all this, this is helping me to achieve certain things.
But for many things, having less actually focuses it and, and makes you enjoy the stuff you do have. And what I realized is here we have enough, we, we even have too much. So I I probably for other sustainability aspects, right, we could, we could even dive deeper. But if we talk about the amount of objects I.
It's relatively low and spot every single objects, which I do own. I, I love and I, I I, I, I take care of. But I used to care about my wooden floor. Like if it was the right, I still care about it. If it's the right wound, it's the right, or if it was made by a craftman that they enjoy the process of, of laying it.
But if auto damages it because he's playing, I don't care about it. I think him playing is more important than the floor. That doesn't mean that I would like him. destroy the floors he sometimes is doing, but his, his happiness and his growth path is way more important than this wooden floor and the wood can be repaired, right?
So the and also the fact of repairing it could be nice, especially if and of course if it's little, I don't want to cut down more trees for this floor. But this floor has been around for a while, and if we take care of it, it will be there long after where.
So it's also
Baptiste: like there is a graduation in in the, the value. You, you, you put onto experiences and things, and at the same time you are you are energized by taking this endeavor, this behavior towards,
Teun: no, this, this is about private life, but in work life. So there's a team of people working here and we try.
To really raise level of sustainability all the time. We try to embed it into everything we do. Again, we are not perfect, but we are quite far in the journey. And we have a bunch of experts and they're all very talented and, and great people, and they have great ideas are very often they, they kind of conflict with mine or they're different and then hearing their reasoning is so well defined and so well considerate that, that I grow because of it.
Doesn't mean that we always agree or There's also greatness in sharing the richness of, of these others. And I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by a bunch of experts, many of them which I hired or or which I trained. And for, for most of them or for almost all of them, yeah, I would be happy if they would be my boss the first day, other way around, like love to work for them and that they do it.
So in that sense, energy can can come from yourself and it is a very important. If your work is directly linked to what your belief and what you're passionate about, and you are surrounded by other people who share your beliefs, yeah, you can kind of take, take home these energy dips together and together you, you have more energy and also enough buffer to, to get rules.
Those things.
Baptiste: It's great. Yeah. So what you could, could you cool al maybe it's an extension of it. Could we say that what you. Losing term of carelessness or freedom in like the choices you make, you're actually gaining term of community or in term of connecting, like more and more fruitful, rich relationships.
Yes. Is that about it or is there, is there
Teun: more? I think there's, there's a lot of aspects to it. And the stuff you mentioned is our aspects of it center of community and kind. being the part and doing things together. Yeah, that's part of it. But also if you have less stuff, it costs less money. So you need less money.
So you need to potentially work less hours or and then you can make, you have to worry about paying the bills or doing all of the things. So the, I think it's kind of a shift in kind of what things do I value and which do things do. I think. Important and put those at the center rather than what society says, this is what you should value.
Have your own clear belief. Yeah. We got a couple more
Baptiste: well actually a bit more, but a few more questions. One is maybe a small one. So yeah, we privileged the thoughts like online also to, to, to a community. So of course we're talking here about the circular. I bit curious if we extend this concept.
When you say this concept of transition what would be the obvious, say you're currently making? Do you have like something that you could are you in the process, for example, of doing in term of learning, in term of building, in term of, is there just one thing that
Teun: you.
Wow. I think the, if, if I'm learning one thing is I'm diving more into electronics and, and kind of how also electronics are made, how they function on quite a deep level and what materials make them function. This links to, to things we. Want to develop our knowledge at Felo deeper, but this also links to, we want OTO to understand also electronics.
So we built him a generator so he can generate his own electricity and current, and then we build all of components of course safe, which teach him about electricity and electric components and how they work together and how you should do it. So we built them a generator so he can generate his own.
and then we have different lights. And if he turns the wheel faster, the lights will burn brighter. If he puts more lights behind each other, he has to turn harder to make them all to run. And we didn't explain him all of these principles. We just gave him the tools to start building it. We only explained he has to close the circle and then he can figure out all the stuff himself.
So he understands that if he takes his component, which he doesn't know is a capacitor, and he puts it in front of the light, they close the circle. If he stops turning, the light stays. He removes the capacitor, closes the circle, and he stops turning. The light goes off. So the, these principles and kind of understanding it to a very basic level and teaching him this, and on the same level, I can make it directly that at work we're much more diving into what it means to design circular electronics, how to embed them into smart and connected systems.
Understanding also the recycling systems for these electronics and how do they really work? Not what's the legislation states? What are the current infrastructures like, not just in here and in ELs, but around the world and what are they really like? What systems do they use? How do the systems work? How do they recognize it?
So I think that's where we're deep diving in on this odyssey of exploring and deepening my and are the standing about electronics. But I always find a way of them doing that and then linking it to teaching auto something, something new about.
Resources & piece of advice for younger generations
Baptiste: Okay, so we're approaching the, the end of of this interview discussion.
I got a couple, a couple more question and maybe, maybe quick ones.
The first one is, will you be able to share and you can, can think about it. Will you be able to share a book, a podcast, a resource that was valuable to you and that would be helpful. The people watching this this discussion or hearing about it.
And so that's the first question. And the second one is would you have a, a piece of advice for younger, sustainable designers sustainable workers who are entering this field and going in the the same direction that you did? Can can start with whichever you like.
Teun: Very, a lot of big questions.
you normally recommend books to me, so , but when I was graduating, you know, the great Cradle was, was kind of just came out the book. And this, this kind of, I think is, is where a lot of the, my philosophy also started and kind of shaped. So the Thinking in Cradle, I think is quite a really good foundation to, to start from, doesn't go too much depth on how you achieve it, especially in design.
But I think my philosophy would be that it's an enrichment of the design process and all the tools we already had, but if you apply a different lens by doing so. But if I would've to recommend one book to start with and I would say, oh, great Cradle is a very good place to start, but definitely soon stop there.
It's kind of your entry point and you should see kind of what things you pick up and create cradle and kind of start from there.
From that. I think also in the book from. The Bill Gates Foundation about where actually all of these greenhouse gas emissions come from, which industries and where, how can they be influenced? It's also good to kind of sharpen your focus. So say, okay, if I'm going to work in this fields, which part is gonna be most impactful?
Where can I contribute most? So I think that's also a very powerful study. Only multi focusing greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore the social foundation from the United Nation. Sustainable Development goals or from the Do Masons? Very well represented in. And actually, yeah, the Donuts economy book is yeah, I think it's almost we, we use it very a lot here as in the kind of setting our vision drives from many aspects of what they described in this book.
So those are some, some tips as a, a fight club, as a movie heavily inspired. My philosophies about life and also where to find meaning for life. So it's a movie which also has a lot of other things, but I took that part from it.
Baptiste: The meaning as in, can you expand a bit on
Teun: what's the meaning of life?
Why are you here? Are you special? Are you a beautiful, you unique snowflake? Are you part of the same protein compost hip to call Tyler d. . Yeah, I think it really brought perspective as in who are you and, and, and what, what's your role in society? And think, don't agree with things happen in this movie, but it opened my eyes to consider like, yeah, why, why do I crave these things?
Why do I need this furniture? Why do I need this object? And especially because also when I, when I started studying mechanical engineering and. Was I part of the problem or was I actually, could I be part of the solution and went through this kind of, yeah, I know identity crisis, like like should stop doing this design thing.
I said like being so, almost being like the anti-Christ. And I think for me, I actually felt, well actually no. It's a very powerful position to be in if you want to change some things around you or in a very powerful position in the process. For me, it also kind of opened my eyes of what if I was going to be this designer, which designer I wanted to be Advice to people Starting out, it's gonna gonna be twofold because on one end, just be a good advice to do.
Just be good at your craft and use sustainability as an additional criteria or key performance indicator or of something to achieve for yourself. Like, Put it there for yourself, but there's a lot of really good processes which already exist. And just use it as to, to judge yourself objectively, like, am I achieving what I want to achieve?
But also, yeah, we need a lot of more designers, engineers, lot of other roles as well, which are first in sustainability, not just in talking about it and doing it. Have a lot of people who can talk about it and it can use a lot of fancy words, but there's very few people who really take it serious and kind of try to embed.
We try to push for it and develop new methodologies and share those methodologies with everyone and make sure that they're action will keep improving it. So if you're going to be in this space, then be in this space. Then don't keep it for you. Share your ideas, share your things with others, but never forget that it's not about talking about it or being in just inspirational.
It's about doing it because these tangible deadlines we have, they're all. They're coming from somewhere and there's a reason why we have two tons of 2050 and we are not, not gonna get there by talking about it. And
Baptiste: Great.
Outro
The very final question would be to clap
Teun: or is No, just I think, I think it's all right. Where,
Baptiste: where would we. Be able to reach out to you if if people have questions or want to connect with you, where, how can we, how can we do that? Of
Teun: course, it's really good to know that they're interested and they can they can use the, the communications channels we have as a, as a company.
They can email to the general email address and we'll find some way to me, but I think it's great if they want to get in contact and it's great if they, there's opportunities. Mostly I want them to support you and your, your o so it's nice that they want to get into contact with me, but they should definitely keep track of you in whichever I'm going to do.
It's very inspirational what you're doing, so I think well, I will be keeping a track, please.
Baptiste: Thank you. Thanks for the time. And yeah, it's a wrap. Okay.