Design for Regional Resilience

Spring 2022

Design for Regional Resilience connects ten student designers with seven SMEs to produce deliverables that will have impact on their business and on local and regional circular economies broadly.

Spring 2022 company-student partnerships are:

Ellingsen Woods is a family owned and operated business located on Cortes Island, BC. We are proud to work alongside our local Cortes Community Forest Cooperative and the Cortes Forestry General Partnership to generate economic and social benefit for our community. We produce sustainable products from wood, while growing and aging the forests where our grandchildren will one day play.

Giulia Borba will work with Ellingsen Woods.

Janaki Larsen Studio: The focus of Janaki Larsen Studios is on process and exploration, delivering one of a kind tableware that speaks to time, place and ephemerality. Although the studio has grown to meet volume demands, Janaki’s work will always maintain a soulfulness guided by curiosity and respect for the intrinsic nature of clay as a medium and material. While the studio produces “functional’ tableware to be used and enjoyed daily, the creative vision addresses more complex concepts of the human condition, such as our relationship to objects, belonging, community and the sharing time and space with others.

Margo Sorbara and Christa Clay will work with Janaki Larsen Studio.

Jarr is a package-free grocery delivery company bringing customers groceries and household supplies in reusable containers (mostly jars). Our focus is to help people move from single-use packaging to reusables to help reduce packaging waste in the world.

Leea Nadeer Contractor and Zeynep Bozdayi will work with Jarr.

Reusables is a container sharing platform for zero waste takeout. Reusables was founded to help eliminate single-use plastics from our daily routines. Despite the convenience of single-use plastics, they present a threat to our planet and we would prefer to live in a world without them. We decided to break down the barriers between private, public and academic institutions and design a robust solution that is reshaping the way we consume.

Shelby Sixsmith will work with Reusables.

ShareWares is a circular economy platform that supplies, sanitizes, and tracks tech-enabled reusable packaging for businesses in Vancouver. The platform disrupts the single-use packaging demand and introduces a revolutionary system by providing containers as-a-service, sanitization as-a-service, and tracking as-a-service to businesses citywide. We aim to become a global solution to regain $80-120 billion annual lost in plastic packaging waste, but first, start with addressing the 1.1 billion single-use items going to landfill every year in Metro Vancouver.

Alexander Swanson will work with ShareWares.

Susgrainable is taking a bite out of food waste by partnering with beverage producers and upcycling their byproducts into delicious and nutritious easy-to-make baking mixes. Our initial product line sees us turning beer “waste” (spent grain) into upcycled barley flour & 3 baking mixes.

Soumya Mittal will work with Susgrainable.

Terraforma Systems develops and delivers innovative, on-site waste management systems, including on-site composting machines that provide customers with upcycling waste solutions for their materials along with real-time digital and dashboard data reporting on waste inputs and outputs for tracking and reporting their waste performance and GHG impact.

Wei Wei will work with Terraforma Systems.

This project is supported by National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program.