Mariko McTier
Co-Founder & Representative Director, Social Innovation Japan
Co-Founder mymizu
Mariko is Co-Founder and Director of Social Innovation Japan and Japan's first free water refill app, mymizu. A former journalist, she has planned, managed and delivered international, multi-stakeholder projects for government, corporations and social ventures. Mariko now leverages her experience to build greater cross-sector engagement with social and environmental issues via her award-winning social enterprise Social Innovation Japan (SIJ), co-founded mymizu, a circular economy initiative borne out of SIJ, and is the Tokyo lead for the Circular Economy Club. She is a Council Member for the World Economic Forum’s “Global Future Council on Japan” with a focus on Circular Economy.
Judge’s selections
Redesigning Relationships Prize
nornnorn - Circular economy-based mattress subscription platform
nornnorn
I thought this was an excellent example of how one can increase the recyclability of a product and reduce waste by redesigning the products ownership model. In particular, I like the approach to work with hotels rather than individual consumers - enabling the project to quickly tap into an industry that uses mattresses at scale, and quickly show how the system works. I would be keen to know more about the recyclability of the mattresses, and about how it works from the hotel's / other customers' perspectives. If it can be proven to be beneficial for all stakeholders, I think this could inspire more industries to redesign the relationships between suppliers, customers and the products that move between them.
Design a Product's Lifecycle Prize
Bagasse UPCYCLE
株式会社BAGASSE UPCYCLE
I like how thorough and thoughtful this project is in designing out waste at all stages of the product's life cycle. Though it could be at risk of becoming overly complicated by focusing on doing too many things at once, this is a great example of how it is possible to design a product and the systems around it to minimise its environmental impact. I think the brand may be better placed as offering a 'subscription' service as opposed to 'sharing', but I believe both the business model and technology has great potential globally (in any region producing sugarcane, but also potentially with other raw materials).
Systems to Save Waste Prize
Social contribution shopping site "KURADASHI"
株式会社クラダシ
I appreciate the use of existing technologies to create new relationships between previously unconnected stakeholders in order to reduce waste, especially at this scale. This initiative shows an interesting approach to reducing waste, leveraging market forces and a wide range of partnerships to focus demand for products that would otherwise go to waste, and whilst I would be cautious to ensure that it does not end up reinforcing or excusing a culture of overconsumption, I think it has great potential to demonstrate how you can redesign systems to reduce waste. That a certain percentage of sales is donated to NPOs is an interesting social good initiative, but I see potential for even greater impact by using profits to further the company's core mission, e.g. R&D to enable partners to reduce their waste in the first place, or enabling customers to take action to reduce waste etc.
Access to Information Prize
Sustainable Materials Library
Plastic Industry Development Center - Sustainable Materials Library
You don't know what you don't know, and so I see great opportunity in offering a wide audience of designers and makers the opportunity to learn more about, touch, be inspired by and visualise how they might use materials that they may not have otherwise discovered. Though there are other online material libraries, I would be interested to see whether better online access could be facilitated to reach a wider audience. I also see great potential for crowdsourcing information on materials' properties and use cases to help others looking for inspiration, as well as looking to include locally sourced materials for local designers and manufacturers.
Creating New Value Chains Prize
Eco-Friendly and Profitable Auto Recycling System
Kaiho Industry Co., Ltd.
One of the biggest challenges in creating a truly circular economy is being able to retrieve materials and products once they are in the hands of the consumer, especially when you are dealing with global supply chains and huge regional differences in recycling capacity. I chose this project for the scale of ambition, its commitment to solving a waste problem through the power of business and partnerships, the focus on redesigning the system that is currently producing waste, and because I believe it demonstrates how even a small-medium sized business can have a global impact on reducing waste. I would love to see if Kaiho Industry could take their expertise in retrieving and recycling Auto parts and feed back to the manufacturers in order to improve the parts' durability, recyclability, and the systems that facilitate their recycling.