Sustainability · A practice of HCD Institute
Sustainability audit, in practice.
Not a pledge, but an audit — a shared, teachable method for reading what any practice actually costs the earth, and where it can be repaired. Run live, on real Global South practices, in the room.
Activated with the Design Innovation Centre, HCD Labs at the Global South Design Summit · 13–15 Nov 2026
Nominate a practice See the programme
Sustainability here is not a technology gap. It is a measurement gap.
Most of what our studios, workshops and campuses do to the environment goes uncounted — because the tools of sustainability reporting were built for large firms in the North, priced and paced for their supply chains, not for a five-person craft unit in Kottayam or a design school in Hyderabad. So practitioners are asked to promise sustainability long before anyone has helped them see it.
An audit closes that gap with the cheapest instrument available: attention. Before certification, before offsets, before new machinery, a practice sits down and reads itself — what it draws in, what it lets go, who carries the cost. The Global South already holds deep repair knowledge in its materials, its reuse cultures and its livelihoods; the audit is simply the frame that makes that knowledge legible, comparable and improvable.
How we read a practice
Most sustainability work certifies an intention. We audit the evidence.
Sustainability is a measurement discipline before it is a badge.
The audit · Seven ledgers
A practice, read across seven accounts.
Each ledger is scored on evidence, not intention — coarse on day one, refined over time.
Programme · 13–15 November 2026
Three days, from seeing to scoring to repairing.
Run as the sustainability strand of the Global South Design Summit, on the HCD Labs campus. Each day opens the seven ledgers on live cases.
Seeing the Costs
- Opening address on the repair economies of the Global South
- Walkthrough of the seven-ledger method
- First live audit: a host craft practice, read in the open
- Material provenance library — hands-on stations
Putting Numbers to It
- Audit clinics — teams audit each other's practices
- Measurement workshops: carbon, water, waste on a shoestring
- Student challenge: audit a campus process
- Panel: what the numbers do and don't capture
From Ledger to Action
- Repair sprints — one costed intervention per practice
- Showcase of audited practices & before/after ledgers
- Draft of an open Global South audit toolkit
- Commitments & the next cycle
Possible activities · A menu to draw from
Formats chosen for participation over spectacle.
Audit Clinics
Facilitated small-group sessions where practices audit one another across the seven ledgers and leave with a scored baseline.
The Material Provenance Library
A pop-up wall of Global South materials — reclaimed, bio-based, traditional — each tagged with its ledger story.
Shoestring Measurement Workshops
Hands-on methods to estimate carbon, water and waste without expensive instruments or consultants.
Student Audit Challenge
Teams audit a real campus or city process in a day and pitch one costed repair. Open to design and engineering students.
Repair Sprints
Each audited practice commits to a single, funded, measurable intervention — the audit turned into action before the summit closes.
Keynote & Repair Dialogues
Short talks from practitioners who have audited and changed their work, paired with an open floor rather than a panel row.
The Open Audit Toolkit
A collaboratively drafted, freely licensed field kit so any Global South practice can run the seven-ledger audit after the summit.
Call for participation · Open now
Bring a practice to be read.
We invite studios, craft units, campuses and enterprises across the Global South to nominate a real practice for a live audit — and facilitators, measurers and hosts to help run the ledgers.
Write to dic@hcd.institute →Subject line: Sustainability Audit in Practice — Nomination
HCD Institute
Democratising human-centred design in India since 2011 — across schools, universities, professionals and government. Rooted in the NID lineage and the pedagogy of the late Prof. M P Ranjan.
Design Innovation Centre, HCD Labs
The strand's home. The DIC advances design research and innovation at one of India's premier institutes of technology — hosting the audit clinics, workshops and showcase.
Sustainability