Make it Circular Challenge

How can design make a circular future more accessible and attractive to all?

The Make it Circular Challenge calls on designers, creative entrepreneurs and startups from around the world to envision and build a circular society. From now until 11 January 2023, What Design Can Do invites you to submit imaginative ideas that prevent waste and radically rethink our way of life: from what we eat and wear, to why we buy and how we build.

When it comes to the climate crisis, there’s no time for cynicism. With millions of people already experiencing the effects of a warming planet firsthand, we need to move forward with optimism and momentum. This is the driving force behind What Design Can Do (WDCD)’s fourth challenge in partnership with the IKEA Foundation: the Make it Circular Challenge. From 11 October 2022 - 11 January 2023, this global design competition calls on all innovators - from designers to entrepreneurs - to submit their boldest climate solutions using circular design. Winning proposals will be made into reality with an impact-driven development programme. The end goal? To create products, services and systems that are both user-centred and earth-centred, showing that a circular future is not only imaginable - but actionable.

The winners of the Make it Circular Challenge will take home an award package designed to bring their projects to the next level. They will gain access to a six-month-long development programme which has been co-created by experts from the global impact hub network. Winning teams will also receive a prize fund of €10.000 each, as well as valuable press and publicity through WDCD’s channels and those of our partners.

What Design Can Do (WDCD) is an international platform that advocates for design as a tool for social change. Since 2011, we have undertaken numerous activities to promote the role of designers in addressing the world’s most pressing societal and environmental issues. To date, WDCD has hosted 15 successful conferences in Amsterdam, São Paulo, and México City. In 2016 WDCD launched an ambitious design challenge programme that engages the creative community with urgent societal issues such as the wellbeing of refugees and climate change. So far, the programme has resulted in €10m in funds raised by initiatives post programme.

The Make it Circular Challenge is active in six cities around the world: Nairobi (with partner Kenya Climate Innovation Center), Tokyo (with partner Shibaura House), São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (with partner Mandacaru Design), Delhi (with partner Quicksand), Mexico City, and Amsterdam.

For more information, you can check here.

Click here to apply.