A Service Design Principle to add a bit of healthy complexity to our view of sustainability.

Imagine if the only thing you would do to keep a healthy relationship with your partner is to buy flowers. Sure, buying flowers from time to time for my wife is a great way of showing her that I love her. But it's not really enough. Making time in our calendars for moments without our kid is also important. Being interested in what she does is also important. And so on.

It's the same with sustainability. Reducing carbon emissions is what many services try to do these days. But ending there is basically like stopping at buying flowers to keep my marriage healthy.

Dr Jan Konietzko, a Sustainability Advisor and Circular economy expert at Cognizant, calls this the Carbon Tunnel Vision. Because yes, Carbon emissions are an important part of a transition to more sustainable services, but there are many more elements to consider: overconsumption, inequality, resource scarcity, education, health, water crisis, eutrophication, poverty, biodiversity loss, ecotoxicity, air pollutants, affordable goods and services, etc.

Action question

What other sustainability aspects aren't in your focus right now? Which is one aspect that you could work on in the following months?

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.