You are in charge of running one of many experiments into plastic waste management. Your project aims to take non-contaminated hospital plastic waste and convert it into fuel through a process called pyrolysis. You work at a Melbourne-based innovation studio and your team win the pitch to implement the pyrolysis pilot. You need to work with an equivalent government team to execute the project, under the guidance of a politicised supervisory group.

 

You’ll need to steer your team through a complex project while pressures mount from every side. The current government doesn’t support an environmentally-friendly mandate and the supervisory group is motivated by higher-order political machinations. The innovation studio has recently run into dramas with the departure of a prominent staff member and need this project to go well. And the government team comes with its own strange set of dynamics.

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BACKGROUND

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Plastic waste in Australia

If Australia wants to arrive at a greener future, at some point on the journey we need to reckon with a major waste issue - plastics. Less than 12% of plastics used in Australia are recycled each year. Plastic travels into myriad ecosystems, including oceans, where it can’t be broken down full, is reduced to microplastics (pieces of plastic about the size of a sesame seed), and often cycles back around to us in our drinking water and seafood. In fact, the World Wide Fund for Nature estimates the average person eats the equivalent of one credit card in microplastics every week or 20 kilograms over a 79-year lifespan.

 

Plastics: a policy in progress

The Federal Government has begun to move on the issue but change is slow to happen. Largely, the legislative focus has been on single-use plastics. In 2018, the 2025 National Packaging Targets were released, facilitated by the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO).

 

The targets for 2025 are:

• 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging.

• 70% of plastic packaging being recycled or composted.

• 50% of average recycled content included in packaging (revised from 30% in 2020).

• The phase-out of problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics packaging.

 

As part of the stated goal to ‘phase out problematic and unnecessary plastics by 2025’, eight ‘problematic and unnecessary’ plastic product types were defined by the National Waste Policy Action Plan in 2019:

• lightweight plastic bags

• plastic products misleadingly termed as ‘degradable’

• plastic straws

• plastic utensils and stirrers

• expanded polystyrene (EPS) consumer food containers

• EPS consumer goods packaging (loose-fill and moulded)

• microbeads in personal health care products.

 

By 2021, every state in Australia had introduced a ban on lightweight plastics bags except New South Wales. In 2021, Queensland was leading the states and territories in the banning of ‘problematic and unnecessary’ single-use plastic products.

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The National Waste Policy Action Plan also outlined further waste goals, including:

• 80% average recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030

• significantly increase the use of recycled content by governments and industry

• make comprehensive, economy-wide and timely data publicly available to support better consumer, investment and policy decisions.

 

At the end of 2022, APCO announced “it is unlikely that the Targets will be met by the deadline, [however] businesses must continue to work towards them and implement sustainable action and change”. They announced the following progress:

• 85% (out of 100% target) reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging

• 18% (out of 70% target) of plastic packaging being recycled or composted

• 39% (out of target of 50%) average recycled content included in packaging (revised from 30% in 2020)

 

Public consensus

Plastics are only part of the picture for Australians who worry about the climate. In a 2021 Lowy Institute poll, Australians voiced their concern about the looming climate crisis:

• 91% of Australians say they would support the federal government ‘providing subsidies for the development of renewable energy technology’

• 74% of Australians say ‘the benefits of taking further action on climate change will outweigh the costs’

• 60% of Australians say ‘global warming is a serious and pressing problem. We should begin taking steps now, even if this involves significant costs’

• 63% of Australians support a ban on new coal mines opening in Australia

 

Plastics and you

Microplastics were flagged at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (known as COP26) as a major concern for the climate. The broader conversation around the role of plastics in the climate crisis has developed significantly with many Australians understanding the intersection of capitalism and climate. Plastic recycling programs like RedCycle, which collapsed in 2022, raised the question of individual responsibility versus corporate responsibility. 

 

The pandemic shake-up

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated an already complicated facet of the plastics problem as single-use plastic personal protective equipment (PPE) became a politicised issue. Single-use plastic products are necessary to protect health care workers, patients, and the general public but the unprecedented demand has caused problems in the supply chain both upstream in terms of generating goods and downstream in terms of disposing of goods. In an ABC article, Doctor Forbes McGain of Western Health in Melbourne suburb Sunshine, said "A nurse may go through 30 gowns in one day. That's just standard.” The public healthcare sector currently accounts for 7% of the country’s carbon footprint.

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Although medical plastic waste has not been defined as problematic and unnecessary, the 2025 NWPAP targets require the States to move towards 80% average recovery from all waste streams by 2030, a target that will be difficult to hit if single-use PPE continues to be consumed at current rates.

 

What’s next?

A plastics problem, a pandemic, and a government that won’t act quickly or decisively on climate change. How can anyone make progress among conflicting agendas?

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PROPOSAL AND TEAM​

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Pyrolysis in hospitals

Acorn Design Studio, an innovation agency with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, was commissioned by the Federal Government to survey the scope of single-use plastics in Victorian hospitals for the Department of Health, in collaboration with the Victorian Health Department and a consortium of stakeholders. After this project ended, it was decided that a small-scale pilot to launch a pyrolysis system in a Melbourne-based hospital was the most appropriate course of action although the decision is not without controversy. Embedded within the project is the need to define the way hospitals procure and process materials, typical use-cases for internal consumption, and any recycling and disposal processes already in place.

 

The project proposal

A collaborative team from the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital and a chemical engineering firm has developed an efficient pyrolysis system that takes uncontaminated, virgin plastic and converts it under heat into fuel. The output of the pyrolysis system, fuel, will be used for the hospital’s ambulance fleet, providing up to a third of their fuel requirements.

 

A prototype pyrolysis system will be installed in a Melbourne hospital The system requires approval for the location, taking noise into consideration. If this can’t be secured, the pyrolysis system will need to be located off-site and transportation considered.

 

Although the majority of plastic waste from hospitals is contaminated, and therefore not eligible for pyrolysis conversion, it is a significant recycling effort that prioritises accessible plastic waste reductions without interfering with medical staff’s use of PPE.

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Acorn has been engaged to deliver on the end-to-end implementation of the prototype project.

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The research project and proposal has listed key projects points (including gaps, processes and resistance points) that are your responsibility and that will need attention. These include:

• collection and sorting virgin from contaminated plastics

• processes and protocols around plastic use

• roles and responsibilities (who manages the new system?)

• safety issues around handling plastics

• supply chains (how far back can this go in the procurement?)

• environmental concerns and monitoring

• recovery costs and returns

• media attention

• key stakeholder management (including governments, suppliers, engineers, doctors, HR, hospital administration, unions, Ambulance Victoria)

• policy implications

• ongoing scientific research

• evaluation process

• impact assessment

 

A key part of the early negotiations will be around who is responsible for each key project point and how the project is communicated to all internal partners. You can decide which key project points your team will be responsible for and who is assigned lead for any points that fall outside of your team’s jurisdiction.

 

Remember, while there is a technical focus in the project, your role as the design lead is to highlight the HCD aspects of the implementation and to look for opportunities to extend the change beyond the simple implementation of a recycling system. And as a designer, you need to look for ways to make a mark beyond this project to serve the development of your own design practice as well as Acorn.

 

Your big break?

You are a senior designer at Acorn Design Studio. The research and proposal for this project were completed last year by your Acorn colleague, David, and has gone through the final stage of design approval. David intended to lead the project but has left abruptly. His research and the project proposal is now in your file. In the wake of David’s strange departure, you have been tasked with taking the proposal into implementation.

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David was married to the job and his leaving has sent shock waves through the office. Later that day, you're called in to join the management meeting which has gone on behind tightly-closed doors since David left. You sit down amongst far too many discarded coffee cups. Your heart is racing as they tell you David has unfortunately resigned due to personal issues and you're inheriting the big public health project he was in charge of. This is a huge opportunity for you.

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Your boss, Nancy, walks you through the project proposal. But before the meeting wraps up, your other boss (the not-so-nice boss) takes a moment to say, in front of everyone, how important this project is. Not only does the agency want to maintain a good relationship with the Federal Government and the Victorian Public Health Department, but the political interest in the project could be advantageous to the studio which has struggled financially recently. Without David, Acorn’s position is even more dire and you walk out of the meeting room feeling the weight of your colleague’s jobs on your shoulders.

 

About you

You are 33, and you live in Reservoir, Melbourne in a two-bedroom with your partner. You grew up in Bendigo before moving to Melbourne for uni when you were 19. You studied at RMIT before spending a year working reception at an aged care facility, partying all weekend, and looking for a full-time job. You then landed an adult job as a project officer for Hume City Council where you stayed for 3 years.

 

At 27 you returned to RMIT to complete a Masters of Design Futures. After graduating, you spent six months anxiously looking for work before accepting a job at Acorn, an innovation agency with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide.

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You've been working at Acorn for four years now. You felt a bit out of your depth at the start but quickly found your feet. It's a good place to work, with minimal politics and a good sense of camaraderie. You made some good friends at work and get along with everyone in the studio. You are generally thought to be a quiet and competent worker.

 

How to build a team

You will be part of a working group of four, including yourself, and your first task is to choose your team. There have been many studies done on what makes a good team. The dynamics of interaction and the benefits of psychological safety are two vital perspectives to consider when forming and managing any team.

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As has always been done at Acorn, you will be required to select your team from among your available colleagues. You will occasionally be able to draw on the studio for extra help and expertise, in areas such as technology, administration and management, and group care.

 

You will need to find a way to develop and divide the roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities. You’re advised to begin with a series of workshops with stakeholders This includes funding sources and acquittal processes.

 

Forming a team is a collaborative and creative process. Each member must be open about both:

1. their ambitions for the project

2. what they personally want to get out of the project

3. the limitations of their contribution
    

if they have extracurricular obligations (such as study, other work projects, family responsibilities, or external engagements) that might impede their perspective of the project.

 

Questions for team selection

When selecting your team, ask yourself these questions.

 

• What are the resources that the team will use to organise itself? These could include studies, current practices, or your experiences.

• How will you optimise the talent in your team? You may choose to do an analysis or 360s. Or you may choose to let the talent and dynamic surface organically. It depends on who is in your team.

• Is there someone in the studio or outside of work who could be valuable in helping you form the team or help the team form themselves? How would you involve them? For example, you could bring them in as a workshop facilitator.

• What are the responsibilities and accountabilities of each team member? Who is covering what tasks, outputs, deadlines, alerts, communications?

• Will your team change over time as the project moves through different stages? If so, how will this be managed? Who initiates the changes, what types of handovers will there be?

• What is planned for times in the project where the government team might change, or a significant pivot is taken by the partners?Impatient, doesn’t do detailed work

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GETTING STARTED

 

Media interest

As well as pressure from your agency to replace a tenured principal, this project will also be under a small amount of media scrutiny. There are specific enviro-focused journalists who are interested in the outcome of this project however no general media interest.

 

Meeting the government

The week after forming your team, you will move to embed yourselves with the team in the Department of Health and Human Services office in the Melbourne CBD. You’re introduced to Mark Gibson, your focal point within the government.

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The government team consists of Mark, the project lead, and two public health consultants who are at your disposal although not entirely (they have a handful of other duties). You’ll spend three days a week sitting and working alongside the government team--or so you thought. When you get into the offices, you realise that you won’t actually be sitting with the team. Mark tends to work from home and be out and about in meetings and the consultants work in an office down the hall from you.

 

Hospital rounds

After a few weeks of visiting prospective hospitals around Melbourne, Mark and the supervisory group decide on St Albans Hospital, in the northwest of Melbourne, is a good fit due to its sprawling, spacious campus.

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You and the team meet Mark at St Albans to tour the facilities. During the course of the tour, you observe several interesting tidbits:

• The staff at St Albans aren’t changing their PPE as often as you expected them to (this may be the result of funding cuts that have recently been implemented)

• St Albans has an ancient wing that’s largely disused (used only for storage) that’s a five-minute walk from the main entrance of the hospital

• You run into a nurse in the corridor who you went to high school with. When you tell her about the project she laments, saying she’s just taken a job at another hospital but would have loved to see your work in action here. You ask why she took another job. She says, “Between you and me, the way they manage the nursing staff here isn’t great. I have two kids and I just can’t put up with it anymore”.

 

Who pays?

Your regular visits to the hospital don’t fill you with confidence. Staff morale is low. You begin to question the viability of implementing a new recycling system, even a simple one, into this dynamic. 

 

You think about the following questions:

• Who makes the change happen - who puts the PPE into the recycling bin and carries the recycling bins across the campus and puts the PPE into the pyrolysis system? Who prints off and sticks up the posters explaining how to recycle? Who educates the staff if the system isn’t working?

• Who is asked to do more work as a result of the new way of doing things?

• Who holds the power?

• Who loses?

 

Stewarding the hospital through a new phase may be more difficult than you anticipated. The idea of transition pain is floated to you by a colleague and you read an article written by Kristina Bogner, Barbara Kump, Mayte Beekman and Julia Wittmayer titled ‘Coping with transition pain: An emotions perspective on phase-outs in sustainability transitions’. It says:

 

“Phasing out is politically difficult, related to questions of power, legitimacy, and equity, and implies “economic and social losses” (Rinscheid et al., 2021, p. 29). Losses often affect ‘followers’ in transitions, such as mainstream consumers, managers of incumbent firms, or societal actors who are no longer able to maintain their current practices (Geels, 2021). These losses deeply manifest in people’s everyday lives (Kohler et al., 2019), not only threatening existing social orders but also current individual practices (e.g. the need to stop intensive meat consumption), structures (e.g. the loss of economic infrastructures and certain jobs), and cultures (e.g. a shift in shared values of what is considered ’good’ consumption). Transition pain refers to a psychological state characterised by a variety of lasting unpleasant emotions conditioned by expected or perceived losses in phaseouts experienced as threats to core psychological needs.”

 

You start to feel you have a responsibility to confront these uncomfortable feelings.

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NEXT STEPS

 

Supervisory group

Soon you’re told the supervisory group has been finalised and there are no surprises. Five high-level advocates have been assigned to advise and safeguard the project. You’ve never worked with a supervisory group before so you ask Mark what the deal is.

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He says he’s worked with most of the advocates in the group and they’re nominally helpful - they don’t push an agenda, they seek help for you when you ask, and they support you. But they won’t go out of their way to push for progress because for most of them, there’s no political advantage to doing so.

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However before the week is out, one of the supervisory group members has accepted a job in a different department and has traded places with another colleague. You have to start the introductions all over again but at least the new member seems friendly.‍

 

Site selection

In the next few weeks, several key decisions are made (some with your input, some without). It’s decided the pyrolysis system will be trialled on-site at the St Albans hospital. The fuel output will be used by St Albans ambulances. And a staff focal point was assigned at St Albans, a nurse named Maria, to help with the project.

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