Speech at the launch event for the Year of Science

• We Germans like to see ourselves as “world champions of recycling”. But despite an elaborate waste management system that, according to calculations by the Wuppertal Institute, costs us around 50 billion euros a year, only around 14 per cent of the raw materials used in Germany ultimately come from recycling.
• And speaking of recycling champions: although separating waste is made easy for us, monitoring has shown that 40 to 60 per cent of the waste we dispose of in the yellow refuse bins for packaging is “misdirected”. Only one in two pieces of packaging ends up where it belongs.
  

There are many other examples, but the tendency is always the same: despite notable success stories, we haven’t yet managed to achieve a real turnaround in sustainability. And this “we” includes almost every single one of us – with very few exceptions. It’s not only players from the worlds of business and politics who too often pay mere lip service to the concepts of sustainable production or recyclability. No, we all let ourselves be driven by our own needs for convenience and comfort and tend to choose the supposedly easiest path. Changing this is insanely difficult. If we really want to achieve the “great transformation” to a circular economy, we’ve got to tackle many issues at the same time:

• First of all, we need to understand that we can only make the leap into the bioeconomy by using innovative technologies. Therefore, we need openness to new things and the courage to take risks.
• Secondly, however, we must at the same time abandon the all-too-comfortable idea that sustainability can be achieved simply by converting previous production patterns to “green technologies”. Without key concepts such as “sacrifice” at the individual level and “regulation” at the political level, any desired resource turnaround will be ineffective.
• Thirdly, we need to have an honest debate about how we want to live. This also means pointing out the consequences of different possible futures. Are we willing to accept that by continuing our current lifestyle we massively endanger the existence of future generations? Or, conversely, do we accept that a radical sustainability turnaround will also call into question some of the things we nowadays perceive as an integral part of a modern, self-determined life? Are we really prepared to make sacrifices – or only to act symbolically in order to quieten our consciences?
• Fourthly, we must remember that democratic societies are characterised by complex and often contradictory opinion-forming processes. For example, there will be people who, while not fundamentally doubting the need to change course, have different ideas about the pace and scope required. It’s absolutely imperative to enter into conversation with these people and to let their perspectives flow into the commonly considered range of possible solutions too. Perhaps the result will, at least initially, not correspond completely to what science considers to be necessary. But what would the alternative be?

The “great transformation” from a consumer economy to a bioeconomy is therefore a challenging but ultimately indispensable task for us all. It’s one of the crucial issues of the future. And it requires a “grand narrative” about the envisioned future that doesn’t gloss over problems or minimise opportunities. So, will we succeed in crafting a narrative of sustainability that unleashes truly vigorous forces in society and can actually rival the doomsday or business-as-usual scenarios?

On this path, Futurium can offer assistance, no more and no less. At our House of Futures, we can sensitise people – and by that I mean individuals as well as companies, political parties and initiatives of various kinds – to the issues of the “bioeconomy”. We can cast the “hook” to reel people in to breaking comfortable routines and to provide ideas and suggestions for rethinking. We can show small-scale success stories that have the potential to mature into big solutions.

To this end, at Futurium we take action on several levels: in our exhibition, there are three thinking spaces that illuminate central dimensions of the future – Nature, Human and Technology. Obviously, it is primarily the thinking space “Nature” that deals with the topics of the bioeconomy:

• We show examples of renewable and biodegradable materials that can rival plastics. Microalgae become foam rubber and orange peel becomes heat-resistant bioplastic.

• Using a marble run, we illustrate the biological cycle of degradable materials and the technological cycle of rare materials.

• And we also involve ourselves with mushroom roots that are turned into biodegradable building materials.

These are just a few of the many exhibits related to the topic of bioeconomy. The other two thinking spaces, “Technology” and “Human”, also touch on themes of the Year of Science. Digital technologies can help us use resources more sparingly – although we mustn’t forget to always take into account here the element of data protection. And in the thinking space “Human”, we combine the topic of the circular economy with principles such as lending, swapping and repairing. We also explicitly address the sensitive topic of “sacrifice”.

Bioeconomy also plays a major role in our Futurium Lab, for example, in our popular workshops for school classes. And our programme of events likewise addresses the topic in numerous participatory formats. This House of Futures in the heart of Berlin offers an extraordinary opportunity to bring together the perspectives of many hundreds of thousands of guests with the findings of science and with decision-makers from politics. Of course, the road to true networking is still long. But we want to rise to this challenge, because the search for “common ground” – for the values and ideas that unite rather than divide us – is a key driver of our work.
The American visionary Richard Buckminster Fuller once said: “The minute you choose to do what you really want to do, it’s a different kind of life.” We should start now, while we still have time to do so. Futurium will make its contribution along the way.

Note: this text is based on an address by the author at the launch event for the Year of Science “Bioeconomy” on 16 January 2020 at Futurium.