Leyla Acaroglu

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Leyla Acaroglu is an Australian designer, sustainability innovator, and educator. [1] [2] [3] She is the founder of two design agencies, Disrupt Design and Eco Innovators. She also founded the UnSchool, [4] a pop-up program that disrupts the mainstream way that knowledge is gained and shared; the program won the Core77 Design Education Initiative Award. [5]

Contents

Acaroglu developed the Disruptive Design Method, which is the backbone of her unique approach to design-led social change. In 2016, she was named the UNEP Champion of the Earth through the United Nations Environment Programme for her actions which have had a transformative and positive impact on the environment. [1] [6]

Education

For her undergraduate education, Acaroglu first was admitted to design school. After she found out about the harsh impact that the design industry had on waste, she quit design school. [7] She then began to pursue a social science degree in environmental sustainability, foreshadowing her career as a sustainability advocate. She later received a PhD through the Department of Architecture and Design at RMIT, in Melbourne, Australia. [2]

Awards and Acknowledgments

Published works

In 2016, Acaroglu was a keynote speaker in a TED (conference) in Long Beach, California. Her TED Talk "Paper beats plastic? How to rethink environmental folklore" has been watched over 1 million times, [12] deeming it as one of the top talks within the realm of environmental sustainability.  Other notable presentations include her talks at Google, "Disrupting the Status Quo by Design" [13] and for the United Nations Environment Programme entitled "Innovation Conversations: Inclusive Design for Social Change" [14] and her “Champion of the Earth” presentation. [15] [16]

As an educator, Acaroglu has published many videos and original animation through an interactive format. "The Secret Life of Things" [17] was a short animated series, aiming to promote life-cycle thinking and environmentally conscious decision making within the industries of design and product development. [18] In 2010, the first installment of the series, entitled “Life Pscycle-ology”, won the Melbourne Design Award [9] for its confrontation regarding the issue of hidden environmental impacts of common materials. [19]

In 2014, Acaroglu published two books: “The Good Design Guide” (co-authored) and “MAKE CHANGE: A Handbook for Creative Rebels and Change Agents”. Later in 2015, Acaroglu published an article where she narrated her new realized passion for making the design industry more eco-friendly, entitled “Why I Quit Design School”. [2]

Projects and exhibitions

From February 2010 to July 2011, she ran the "Repair Workshops" project. [20] Over the course of five days, 10 participants explored how damaged or broken items could be used for reinvention. Over the course of this exhibition, 2.5 tons of waste was saved. [21] Afterward, she ran another interactive exhibition from July 2011 to December 2011 entitled “How Ethical is your Home?”. It focused on social, ethical and environmental impacts that are generated through our homes. The next year, Acaroglu collaboratively developed the “UnWaste Bookcase” which emphasized the interaction between disciplines of architecture, furniture and innovation. Since its creation, the bookcase has been featured in design magazines including Artichoke and Green Magazine. The project was awarded the 2012 Melbourne design Award, and was nominated for an IDEA award. [19] [22]

Acaroglu has designed numerous interactive products that are aimed to educate the consumer on social and environmental change. Such products include the Designercise Ideation Toolkit, Game Changer Game, Design Play Cards and the Eco Innovators Mythbusting Sustainability Quiz app. Most notably, the Design Play Cards won the CORE77 Design Education Award in 2013. [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Nations Environment Programme</span> Agency of the United Nations focused on solving environmental issues

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is responsible for coordinating responses to environmental issues within the United Nations system. It was established by Maurice Strong, its first director, after the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm in June 1972. Its mandate is to provide leadership, deliver science and develop solutions on a wide range of issues, including climate change, the management of marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and green economic development. The organization also develops international environmental agreements; publishes and promotes environmental science and helps national governments achieve environmental targets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eco-Schools</span>

Eco-Schools is an international programme of the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) that aims to “empower students to be the change our sustainable world needs by engaging them in fun, action-orientated, and socially responsible learning.”

Cleaner production is a preventive, company-specific environmental protection initiative. It is intended to minimize waste and emissions and maximize product output. By analysing the flow of materials and energy in a company, one tries to identify options to minimize waste and emissions out of industrial processes through source reduction strategies. Improvements of organisation and technology help to reduce or suggest better choices in use of materials and energy, and to avoid waste, waste water generation, and gaseous emissions, and also waste heat and noise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Champions of the Earth</span> Annual United Nations environmental award

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established Champions of the Earth in 2005 as an annual awards programme to recognize outstanding environmental leaders from the public and private sectors, and from civil society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ecological design</span> Design approach sensitive to environmental impacts

Ecological design or ecodesign is an approach to designing products and services that gives special consideration to the environmental impacts of a product over its entire lifecycle. Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan define it as "any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes." Ecological design can also be defined as the process of integrating environmental considerations into design and development with the aim of reducing environmental impacts of products through their life cycle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacquelyn Ottman</span> American branding consultant (born 1955)

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This page is an index of sustainability articles.

Olga Speranskaya is a Russian scientist and environmentalist. She has been the Director of the Chemical Safety Program at the Eco-Accord Center for Environment and Sustainable Development in Moscow since 1997 and holds a master's degree in Geophysics from Moscow State University, and a doctorate in Environmental physics from the Russian Academy of Sciences. From 2010 to 2018, she was a co-chair of the International POPs Elimination Network. Speranskaya has led many campaigns against the use of organic pollutants, fought to ban the burial and transport of hazardous chemicals, and provided information to government decision-makers for policy changes in many different countries.

Environmentally sustainable design is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability and also aimed at improving the health and comfort of occupants in a building. Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment, the health and well-being of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Marshall (New Zealand author)</span> New Zealand author, scholar and artist

Alan Marshall is an Australian author, scholar, and artist working within the discipline of environmental studies. He is noted as a key scholar in environmental ethics and for his investigations into eco-friendly cities of the future. Marshall has for a longtime been a teaching / research fellow at two universities in Slovakia; UPJS and Prešovská univerzita v Prešove.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Resource efficiency</span>

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Pia Ednie-Brown is an Australian architectural theorist, researcher, and creative practitioner. She is also Professor of Architecture and Chair of Creative Practice Research at the School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Pia maintains the creative research practice onomatopoeia, established in 2000, and leads the cross-institutional Affective Environments Laboratory.

'Net positive', from Positive Development (PD) theory, is a paradigm in sustainable development and design. PD theory was first detailed in Positive Development (2008), and detailed in Net-Positive Design (2020). A net positive system/structure would ‘give back to nature and society more than it takes’ over its life cycle. In contrast, conventional sustainable design and development, in the real-world context of excess population growth, biodiversity loss, cumulative pollution, wealth disparities and social inequities closes off future options. To reverse the overshoot of planetary boundaries, a 'positive Development' would, among other sustainability criteria, increase nature beyond pre-urban or pre-industrial conditions.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Leyla Acaroglu". Champions of the Earth. United Nations. Retrieved 8 August 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 "Home". LEYLA ACAROGLU. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  3. ↑ Acaroglu, Leyla (28 September 2016). "Ethics isn't just for philosophers—designers need to take responsibility, too". Quartz. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  4. ↑ "ABOUT". UNSCHOOL. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  5. ↑ Slavin, Chandler (6 April 2016). "How can 'disruptive design' enrich sustainable packaging innovation? | Packaging Digest". Sustainable Packaging. Retrieved 12 May 2018.
  6. ↑ "Leyla Acaroglu". web.unep.org. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  7. ↑ Acaroglu, Leyla (31 August 2015). "Why I Quit Design School". Medium. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  8. ↑ "Patricia Guthrie Memorial Award". www.rmit.edu.au.
  9. 1 2 3 "2019 Melbourne Design Awards". drivenxdesign.com.
  10. ↑ "Melbourne Awards". melbourne.vic.gov.au.
  11. ↑ "Core77 Design Awards". Core77.
  12. ↑ Acaroglu, Leyla (11 February 2014). "Paper beats plastic? How to rethink environmental folklore". www.ted.com. Retrieved 30 January 2022.
  13. ↑ "Disrupting the Status Quo, by Design | Leyla Acaroglu | Talks at Google". Youtube.com.[ better source needed ]
  14. ↑ "Innovation Conversations: Inclusive Design for Social Change". Youtube.com.[ unreliable source? ]
  15. ↑ "Champion of the Earth 2016: Leyla Acaroglu". Youtube.com.
  16. ↑ "Talks + Videos". LEYLA ACAROGLU. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  17. ↑ "The secret Life of Things SUSTAINABILITY animation -- Life Pscycle-ology". Youtube.com.
  18. 1 2 "Projects". LEYLA ACAROGLU. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  19. 1 2 "2019 Melbourne Design Awards". 2019 Melbourne Design Awards. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  20. ↑ "The Repair Workshops". LEYLA ACAROGLU. Retrieved 30 January 2022.
  21. ↑ "The Repair Workshops". LEYLA ACAROGLU. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
  22. ↑ "Brilliant Rotating UnWaste Bookcase is Made From Reclaimed Plywood". 4 May 2012. Retrieved 26 April 2019.
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