Project Zero is a community organisation designed to make plant-based meat that’s a little bit different.

Eating more plants and less meat is the second biggest thing you can do to reduce your emissions, but right now plant-based options can feel like untrustworthy, bad imitations of meat that are exclusive to vegetarians and vegans.

If designers use a different rhetorical strategy to excite people about low carbon things like eating more plants, people will prioritise faster action from our leaders.

This is how I think we could do it.

Introducing the Badass Burger Mix: it’s plant-based meat done a little bit differently, made explicitly for meat-eaters to expand their palette.

It adds local ingredients into a jar and gets people to make the meat themselves. Just bring some beetroot, onion, and mushrooms. By having the ingredients rather than pre-making the meat, there’s a sense of trust, transparency and achievement when someone makes it. This isn’t meant to get someone to completely cut meat, instead to add exciting new options to explore in their diet.

Every aspect of the visual identity has been made to excite and intrigue meat eaters, from the strong colour palette and typeface to rough cut illustration and no bullshit personality.

Importantly, climate benefits are an added extra. This isn’t something you first buy because it’s better for the environment – you buy it because it is tasty.

This is the first step of persuading people – defying their expectations about plant-based meat to get them in door. From there, you can start adding value to climate action.

The key to behaviour change is making it easy to form a habit. Because plant-based meat works a little differently, you need to build confidence in being able to cook it.

That’s where Project Zero’s Smart Recipe Service comes in. Turns out you can use the burger mix for more than just burgers! This website learns your preferences over time, has easy to understand tags and understands natural language to provide a wide variety of recipes to share with others.

It also starts adding some value to climate action by tracking how much carbon, land and water is saved with every meal made. Then, it shows your overall impact in understandable terms.

The recipe service serves another function: making it easy to share with others. It favours group recipes in its recommendations and results to foster subtle social sharing.

Sharing is so key to climate action. Robert Frank has described that the behaviours of our friends is the strongest influence on our behaviours. If you can kickstart people authentically sharing new, low carbon behaviours with friends, you can spread these behaviours across communities and persuade people through socialising.

Best of all, Project Zero partners with local community groups to ground climate action in the place around us.

$2 from every purchase gets donated to them to keep taking action, making an easy way to passively make a difference and empower people to feel like they’re doing something bigger.

These partners also offer the opportunity to take more personal action, too – like composting, reducing food waste or buying local. If people can feel empowered to take more action themselves, they’re far more likely to demand more from government.

Key to all of it is a sense of being local. Climate change often feels like a gargantuan problem, and so can feel distant from our lives. By tackling its effects in our own back yard, it feels important to address now rather than later.

Project Zero has been incredible to work on this year. In it I’ve learnt so many things about how I want to be a designer as I leave university.

I’ve found the value in defying expectation rather than playing to it. By making something truly different rhetorically, you can break down assumptions and change people’s minds.

I’ve also found huge value in subtlety and empathy. So many of the things we need to do to address climate change are deeply personal and social – like eating meat. As designers, we need to have consideration and nuance to make these big changes exciting rather than frightening.

That’s because ultimately, designers have a responsibility to use our toolkit to solve big problems like racism, poverty and climate change. Design is crucial for political change, and I’m excited to continue my journey as a designer making that change.