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Laura Smith

@losmith

Designer | Researcher | Making sense of complex systems | Director of Unwaste.io, using data to tackle global plastic waste

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07.11.2024
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Latest posts by Laura Smith @losmith

Preview
Why the Post Office paid £600m to stay shackled to the faulty Horizon system Not owning crucial code has meant it has been unable to replace the system that led to a scandal.

You couldn't make this up.

BBC News - Post Office paid £600m to continue using Horizon
www.bbc.com/news/article...

25.04.2025 06:14 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Why the Post Office paid £600m to stay shackled to the faulty Horizon system Not owning crucial code has meant it has been unable to replace the system that led to a scandal.

You couldn't make this up.

BBC News - Post Office paid £600m to continue using Horizon
www.bbc.com/news/article...

25.04.2025 06:12 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I let my kids text certain friends from my WhatsApp. I can see their chats + they can't join groups. That's our policy until we're comfortable with them having their own phone. But now..f-ing Meta AI. They think it's their friend. I have muted, deleted repeatedly but you can't turn the fecker off

08.04.2025 17:06 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Cover image of July 2024 - several coloured PET beverage bottles

Cover image of July 2024 - several coloured PET beverage bottles

Unwaste.io published its monthly data report about #SingleUsePlastic and who produces it for July 2024

Although data is collected in real time, our data team typically spends a while validating and curating it

www.unwaste.io/data/2024-july

@tonyrwalker1.bsky.social @ronsteenblik.bsky.social

19.03.2025 13:35 👍 5 🔁 5 💬 6 📌 0

That Zelenskyy Trump Vance video...wow. If those two had the capacity to feel shame they would be quivering in a corner right now. Talk about disrespect...just, wow.

28.02.2025 18:32 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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How Saudi Arabia became the world’s plastic cheerleader The rich oil state has built a team of silver-tongued U.N. negotiators with a simple mandate: keep plastic production growing.

Just in case people aren't aware - as the world slowly comes round to the idea that we should reduce use of fossil fuels, oil producers spare no expense to fill the gap in demand with other products, plastic being a biggy. This is grim.

www.politico.eu/article/saud...

15.01.2025 11:57 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

The relentless focus on adoption seems to be putting the big AI cart before the human-shaped horse

13.01.2025 12:10 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Just today, I've been asked to 'unwrap my year' by both @tescoofficial.bsky.social Clubcard and Miro.

No, I don't want to be reminded how you're capturing data on my every move and using it to sell your product.

Can we stop this now please

10.01.2025 13:54 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

My daughter is learning about the Great Fire of London. This is basically what happened. IN 1666 FFS.

08.01.2025 11:56 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
A list of options to describe your title in an online form. It includes Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Dr, Rev, Sir, Lady, Mx. Lady is selected.

A list of options to describe your title in an online form. It includes Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Dr, Rev, Sir, Lady, Mx. Lady is selected.

Interesting selection of options from Avanti West Coast Delay Repay service. There is no good reason why they need this information. It's also making me even more p*ssed off that I have to define my marital status to claim a refund. Obvs I chose 'Lady', as that's what I am. #BadUX

06.01.2025 08:26 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Post image

Our little team at Unwaste.io has grown quite big this year. We've got a fantastic bunch working across marketing, engineering, logistics, funding and UX. Great to get together today (though jealous of Moz team in the Maputo sunshine).

Thanks to @cameronordsmith.bsky.social for the language lesson!

20.12.2024 17:59 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1

I also had 'do we have an citric acid and that really thick glue? No you can't help it's private I'm doing it all by myself. Just give me the glue.'

20.12.2024 11:45 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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To Hell With Good Intentions, Silicon Valley Edition The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No. 14

Fantastic piece, read twice already. Relevant for anyone working in tech, service design, user research and, most importantly, AI. Thanks @lmsacasas.bsky.social

To Hell With Good Intentions, Silicon Valley Edition open.substack.com/pub/theconvi...

20.12.2024 10:39 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Unwaste.io on LinkedIn: #merrycleanmas #litterpick #litterpicking #plasticwaste #plasticfree… JOIN our Christmas Clean Up Campaign 2024! 🎄🧹 We’re hoping YOU will pledge to picking up and scanning one piece of plastic waste in your area this festive…

I made a video of myself in a Santa hat to get people to sign our Christmas plastic pledge. Original, I know. I'm a geriatric millennial, I don't really get how to do this sort of thing.

www.linkedin.com/posts/unwast...

16.12.2024 21:06 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

🪂📍
Did a movie emoji quiz last night. This one stumped people. Fairly recent, very famous movie. Anyone?

12.12.2024 18:24 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
https://unwaste.io

Do you like Christmas AND data? Of course you do!

How about signing up for the Unwaste.io Christmas campaign? Make a pledge to pick up and scan a few items of plastic waste and add to over 425k data points on our global monitoring portal.

More info in here: www.linkedin.com/posts/unwast...

12.12.2024 10:33 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

A great response to this speech. When I read the example of WhatsApp, AirBnB and Spotify I was expecting another paragraph with some caveats. But...nothing. I mean, hello? Actual marches happening in Barcelona? Artist boycotts?
Thanks for calling this out.

10.12.2024 14:52 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Great to hear about the drive towards a 'test and learn' approach. I'll be interested to see how public procurements models change to support this and give government departments the tools and structures they need to work in this way.

10.12.2024 13:28 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Missing Pieces: The Lesbian Mothers Scandal - BBC Sounds An investigation into the legacy of court decisions separating children from lesbian mums.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... This is one of the most horrific stories of state-sponsored abuse I've heard in a long time. Very well produced. Hope these women and their children get a higher profile now.

09.12.2024 21:41 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Sometimes I feel like I need to read a book because the person sitting beside me is a reading a book and may be silently judging me for looking at my phone, even though I read lots of books. i just need to get through my Tesco order but I still might actually get my book out wtf is wrong with me

07.12.2024 14:03 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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I have a bit of an obsession with instructional signs. Just found this one in my 'archive'. So much said in so few words.

07.12.2024 11:35 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

"What’s more, the best designers I talk to don’t read method books or stick to a rigid flow when producing great work, they just do it." ➕

07.12.2024 08:22 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

👋 Hello new followers from the last few days (mostly service design peeps from @louisrosenfeld.bsky.social 's Advancing Service Design conference) but also a sprinkling of people interested in plastic pollution.

Feeling a lot safer to post here than on X, hopefully will say something interesting...

06.12.2024 11:02 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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You and Yours - Gap Finders: Fiona Macrae - BBC Sounds Fiona Macrae set up travel insurance brand InsuranceWith.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Fantastic episode - a founder who developed a specialist travel insurance company around the needs of people with health issues. 'User centred insurance' isn't a natural phrase...

05.12.2024 18:34 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Getting my son an iPhone when I use Android was a big mistake. Apple do not make it easy to do anything at all if you are not fully immersed into Apple World.

05.12.2024 18:08 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

But govts still seem to favour the louder voices of food industry lobbyists. NO CHILD IN THIS COUNTRY SHOULD HAVE RICKETS FFS.

The orgs quoted in the article are doing great things but must be exhausted from banging their heads on that wall.

05.12.2024 10:57 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

This is depressing. When I studied food policy almost 15 years ago, food banks were not yet 'normalised' and there were many smart people and organisations proposing systemic solutions to the complex problem of food poverty. It needs holistic thinking, wide ranging solutions.

05.12.2024 10:57 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I'm not sure why. Maybe it's a better way of talking about people in general and not putting all disabled people in this 'people with different needs' box which doesn't really exist.

04.12.2024 14:54 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

We talk about designing for blind people or people who are deaf or hearing impaired but there's something about this framing that made me think in a different way.

04.12.2024 14:54 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

"We tend to design for people with 5 senses." This sentence from @fastfinge.interfree.ca in his talk at #AdvancingServiceDesign really made me sit up.

04.12.2024 14:54 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0