Kickstart of CARE’s Circular Heroes: Co-creation Workshops for European Households @care_circularhh#CareCircularHouseholds Picture this: In Germany alone, 11 million tonnes of food waste in 2020 could fill more than 1.800 Olympic-sized swimming pools*, while nearly half a million tonnes of used clothing could cover the entire city of Munich in 2022**. What if we could minimise these staggering numbers through everyday circular habits? Discover how households are becoming champions of change and learn how you can join them! Create, struggle, prototype, exhibit, celebrate, grow. These words greeted participants at Berlin’s event space “Playground” and set the tone for CARE’s human-centered design workshop “Circular Heroes“. But before we dive into the creative results, let’s start at the beginning. CARE is a four-year EU-funded project with the vision to inspire and empower households across Europe for a sustainable future where circular consumption – maintaining, repairing, sharing, reusing, recycling and reducing waste – is not just a practice, but a celebrated norm. With household pilots in Finland, Norway, Estonia, Sweden and Germany, CARE is developing advisory services to support citizens take up circular behaviours in everyday life, focusing on food and clothing. How should these advisory services look like? What truly helps people adopt circular behaviour? To answer these questions, we hosted a workshop in Berlin, led by Verbraucher Initiative Berlin, one of the eleven CARE project partners. The CSCP developed the central concept and materials to support partners across five countries to run similar workshops. The involvement of the participants ensured that the advisory services are co-developed with the target group. By involving households from the outset, we can tailor the services to their needs, increasing the likelihood of widespread adoption. Back to the “Playground”: Eleven household members, aged 23 to 72, eagerly contributed their ideas. Through interviews, visual brainstorming, and a hands-on prototyping session, participants created innovative concepts such as an App that offers food storage tips, leftover recipes, and even instructions for making fertiliser from banana peels. Another idea was an educational campaign for schools, highlighting the resources needed to make clothes and promoting thoughtful buying, sharing, and swapping as fun alternatives. The prototyping session was particularly enjoyable, sparking lively discussions and valuable exchanges. Participants used their creativity with paper, pens and scissors to create tangible representations of their ideas. “I could have prototyped at least one more hour”, one participant exclaimed, as others nodded in agreement. We are now curious about the results of similar workshops in the other four pilot countries. What ideas did households in Finland, Norway, Estonia, and Sweden come up with? We’re excited to find out and invite you to stay tuned. Follow the journey and learn more about how you can get involved or support CARE by visiting circularhouseholds.eu, sign up to our newsletter and following our social media channels. For further questions, please contact Katrin Hüttepohl. Sources: *Umweltbundesamt 2023 **Statistisches Bundesamt, 2023 Photo by © Verbraucherinitiative