Thank you for recycling

Nov 2021

It was bin day in my house during a very downbeat COP26 and I found myself wondering if I should even bother sorting my yoghurt pots and squashing cereal packets?

So I went searching for numbers and found data buried in a Defra publication that says we definitely should keep up our home recycling efforts. It's working!

Clearly there is lots more we need to do to green our lifestyles but I think a bit more messaging on what already works is probably overdue. Small changes in personal behaviour can have a big impact.

When it comes to climate change, there has to be space for hope in amongst the doom.

Making this visualisation

A data visualisation tool I've come to love this year isn't a data tool at all. Figma allows you to edit vector graphics and unleash a little creativity with data visualisation. It pairs beautifully with SVG-ready charting tools such as Rawgraphs.io.

This is a simple bar chart re-oriented and hand drawn in Figma. I used masks to create the see-through effect that cuts through the cardboard to show the photo of landfill.

 A big thanks to my colleagues at Nationwide who attend our weekly Design & Visualisation session. I shared the first iteration with them and whilst they liked the concept, they rightly found some issues with typography, copy writing and layout. What you see here is a much more polished result based on advice from Eli Penny, Phil Hyland, James Hardie, Jamie Durup and Tom Mitchell. Thank you team!