Premsela Lecture: Gunter Pauli

“Green” is a hot buzzword – but the visionary sustainable entrepreneur Gunter Pauli argues that many environmentally friendly production processes still aren't good enough. In his book Blue Economy, Pauli describes a new business model that's based on the use of local resources and consigns leftover materials and waste to the past. In the eighth Premsela Lecture on Sunday 4 November in Amsterdam, he talked about how designers could contribute to this new way of doing business. Listen to his lecture on iTunes.

Green Recycled Organics (GRO), a company that collects coffee grounds from the La Place restaurant chain and grows mushrooms on them, is an example of a Dutch initiative working according to Pauli’s principles. The mushrooms are sent to the restaurants, which use them in cooking.

In the Premsela Lecture, Pauli talked about why sustainable, lucrative production and consumption depend on awareness of the ecosystem. And he discussed the new role he sees for designers and what the new way of doing business means for process designers and design thinking.

Gunter Pauli
After a career in business and a pioneering role as the owner of the biodegradable cleaning products company Ecover, Pauli founded Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI), a global network of creative people working to find solutions to world problems. ZERI provides advice, knowledge and starting capital for sustainable initiatives, viewing waste as a raw material and drawing inspiration from nature.

Gunter Pauli is an author, a member of the Club of Rome, and a lecturer at leading universities.

The Premsela Lectures
Each year, Premsela invites a speaker to address current developments in the design field. With the Premsela Lectures, we seek to make an outstanding and valuable contribution to the design discourse. Past speakers were Michael Rock, Werner Sewing, Ann Meskens, Józeph Mrozek, Henk Oosterling, Nancy Etcoff and Richard Sennett.

The Dutch edition of Pauli's Blue Economy.

The Premsela Lectures

Listen on iTunes

Premsela Lectures, 2004–2010

We've compiled the first six Premsela Lectures, by Michael Rock, Werner Sewing, Ann Meskens, Józef Mrozek, Henk Oosterling and Nancy Etcoff, in a compact, beautifully designed booklet. For a copy, email rsvp@premsela.org with "Premsela Lectures book" in the subject line.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer adipiscing elit sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat