Save to sustain: Frugal innovation & traditional knowledge in circular tourism

Angelo Sciacca was the first guest author to intro­duce the concept of the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy to this web­site when he argued for its poten­tial to make small island des­tin­a­tions more resi­li­ent and less depend­ent on travel & tour­ism. In this, his third “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Mr Sciacca adds frugal innov­a­tion and tra­di­tion­al know­ledge to his recipe for small islands’ sustainability.

As I have dis­cussed in pre­vi­ous “GT” Insights, the applic­a­tion of cir­cu­lar eco­nom­ic prin­ciples is becom­ing essen­tial to the val­or­isa­tion of — assign­ing high­er valu­ations to — under­ap­pre­ci­ated resources in the tour­ism sec­tor, includ­ing aban­doned her­it­age build­ings. I have also argued that cir­cu­lar eco­nom­ic prin­ciples are essen­tial to the resi­li­ence of small island des­tin­a­tions. I believe the cir­cu­lar eco­nomy is a prom­ising approach to increas­ing the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the tour­ism sec­tor as well as the sec­tor’s con­tri­bu­tions to sus­tain­ab­il­ity more generally.

In this art­icle I argue that in small island des­tin­a­tions the imple­ment­a­tion of cir­cu­lar prac­tices in tour­ism may be facil­it­ated via the concept of ‘frugal innov­a­tion’ and that tra­di­tion­al know­ledge poten­tially has a very large role to play. This will be a brief dis­cus­sion with the hope of stim­u­lat­ing fur­ther debate on the top­ic. I do not intend to gen­er­al­ise about small islands as I am mainly refer­ring to those that have a small-scale tour­ism sec­tor and an indi­gen­ous population.

First, I will intro­duce frugal innov­a­tion. Second, I will link the concept to cir­cu­lar tour­ism in small island des­tin­a­tions by explain­ing how frugal innov­a­tion and cir­cu­lar tour­ism might inter­sect and why we need think about ‘frugal cir­cu­lar innov­a­tion’. I will con­clude by point­ing out that there may be oppor­tun­it­ies embed­ded in tra­di­tion­al know­ledge that will require par­ti­cip­at­ive gov­ernance to fully and fairly realise.

What is frugal innovation?

Simply speak­ing, frugal innov­a­tion refers to pro­cesses in which bet­ter solu­tions (innov­a­tions) are arrived at using the least pos­sible resources (frugal­ity). These solu­tions should ideally be sus­tain­able in that they gen­er­ate social and envir­on­ment­al value while redu­cing costs in terms of wasted resources. Hav­ing ori­gin­ated in emer­ging eco­nom­ies, where such effi­ciency is highly val­ued, frugal innov­a­tion is now gain­ing rel­ev­ance more widely and in dif­fer­ent con­texts as sus­tain­ab­il­ity is taken more seriously.

An example of a frugal innov­a­tion is a fridge made of clay by the Indi­an pot­ter Man­sukh Pra­japati. The fridge uses evap­or­at­ive cool­ing without elec­tri­city to keep fruits and veget­ables fresh for days. Anoth­er example is when Mohammed Roza­deen con­ver­ted an old pres­sure cook­er into a cof­fee maker. 

Listen to Navi Rad­jou talk about “cre­at­ive prob­lem-solv­ing in the face of extreme lim­its” in this video:

Frugal innovation and circular tourism in small island destinations

The cir­cu­lar eco­nomy is oft-seen as a frame­work for frugal innov­a­tion. Although this is true, I would argue that a cul­ture of frugal innov­a­tion must (and does) come first, espe­cially in the con­text small island destinations. 

Small islands have small-scale eco­nom­ies and scarce resources, includ­ing scarce recyc­lable and reusable ‘waste’ resources. There­fore the applic­a­tion of some estab­lished cir­cu­lar prac­tices is unfeas­ible because small islands do not have the eco­nom­ies of scale enjoyed by cit­ies and main­land nations. Thus small islands need to innov­ate frugal small-scale solu­tions that apply to their spe­cif­ic circumstances. 

Also see Angelo Sciac­ca’s “GT” Insight
“From lin­ear to cir­cu­lar: Resi­li­ence in small island tour­ism destinations”

For instance, faced with recyc­ling chal­lenges due to the fail­ure of an incin­er­at­or, the high costs for waste com­pac­tion and freight, and the unfeas­ible applic­a­tion of main­stream re-pro­cessing tech­no­lo­gies, the Brit­ish Vir­gin Islands are devel­op­ing a new waste man­age­ment sys­tem that does not export everything. Res­id­ents are look­ing for innov­at­ive ways to re-pur­pose waste mater­i­al. These include using glass in art, Styro­foam in bean bag chairs, plastic in fen­cing, and card­board in com­post. They hope to retain most waste by part­ner­ing with loc­al busi­nesses and entre­pren­eurs to upcycle it.

For small island des­tin­a­tions, frugal cir­cu­lar innov­a­tion is neces­sary to viably pro­cess and repro­cess, dis­trib­ute and redis­trib­ute their scarce resources. Ideally, their frugal cir­cu­lar innov­a­tions will also gen­er­ate social value. Social value is as much expec­ted from a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy as envir­on­ment­al and eco­nom­ic value. 

The role of traditional knowledge in frugal innovation and circular tourism

Frugal cir­cu­lar prac­tices may already be rooted in the loc­al cus­toms of indi­gen­ous pop­u­la­tions, hav­ing been honed over time in order to adapt to con­di­tions. Assum­ing that such know­ledge and expert­ise is con­trib­uted in the con­text of a fully-inclus­ive stra­tegic plan­ning pro­cess that respects loc­al lim­its, deploy­ing it would cre­ate imme­di­ate social value. Not only would this her­it­age be bet­ter appre­ci­ated by soci­ety, but it would also become a valu­able resource for the cir­cu­lar tour­ism economy.

Also see Kristin Dun­ne’s “GT” Insight
“Plan­ning tour­ism with pur­pose & love in Bay of Plenty”

I would argue that tra­di­tion­al know­ledge rep­res­ents an oppor­tun­ity for small island des­tin­a­tions to facil­it­ate a feas­ible trans­ition towards a cir­cu­lar tour­ism eco­nomy, par­tic­u­larly where the main­stream cir­cu­lar solu­tions rely on eco­nom­ies of scale. Cap­it­al­ising on tra­di­tion­al know­ledge inclus­ively opens up new means of achiev­ing sus­tain­ab­il­ity in small island des­tin­a­tions that are effi­cient (frugal) and offer tre­mend­ous social bene­fit through the val­or­isa­tion of intan­gible cul­tur­al heritage.

To con­clude, the devel­op­ment of cir­cu­lar prac­tices via frugal innov­a­tion has the poten­tial to tap tra­di­tion­al know­ledge and elev­ate it from a cul­tur­al her­it­age curi­os­ity worth pre­serving for its own sake, to a neces­sary resource in a suc­cess­ful cir­cu­lar tour­ism eco­nomy. This is espe­cially the case in the con­text of small island des­tin­a­tions that engage in inclus­ive stra­tegic plan­ning pro­cesses that aim for sus­tain­able outcomes.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Island by Tomas Anun­zi­ata (CC0) via Pexels. Vine by gyro­mat­ic­al (CC0) via Pixabay. Fam­ily by Clk­er-Free-Vec­tor-Images (CC0) via Pixabay.

About the author

Angelo Sciacca is a PhD can­did­ate at Edin­burgh Napi­er Uni­ver­sity con­duct­ing his doc­tor­al research in the Orkney Islands, Scot­land. His work focuses on “the bar­ri­ers and ena­blers to a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy faced by tour­ism busi­nesses” and is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in how small island des­tin­a­tions’ “ter­rit­ori­al fea­tures may influ­ence a cir­cu­lar eco­nomy trans­ition”. Angelo is also a sus­tain­able tour­ism con­sult­ant “work­ing at the cross­road of sus­tain­ab­il­ity, tour­ism and com­munity devel­op­ment”. Since 2017, he has reg­u­larly col­lab­or­ated with NGOs work­ing in Myanmar.