Bottled at the Source: The Pando Days 2024/25 Blitz
Yes. You’re drinking delightfully refreshing sewer water. Or at least that’s something you need to be able to see yourself doing over the next few years. It’s key to a sustainable Southland.
The problem isn’t cleaning Los Angeles water so that it’s safe and healthy to drink.
The problem is getting you to drink it. Or anyone like you.
So, on September 21, we challenged some passionate young people at our newest Pando Days brainstorming Blitz and focused them on this challenge:
How can we get Angelenos to love recycled sewer water?
This year’s Pando Days sustainability spotlight is on water. A local water supply that could contribute to quenching LA’s thirst is possible so long as we can all get comfortable with drinking water that’s been reclaimed – that is, drawn from LA’s sewers and gutters (and then purified every which way a jillion times over), delivering as much as 150 million gallons of crystal clear H2O a day.
The problem: elites like their water to be mountain spring-fed (if it comes crashing down from the Austrian Alps or bubbling up from a Tibetan cave, so much the better), while those raised closer to the streets don’t much like the idea of municipal plans that have them drinking other people’s piss – however many filters it’s been through.
It’s a big challenge – and perfect for a Pando Days Blitz!
The basic idea of a Blitz is a group brainstorming opportunity designed to deliver anything but groupthink – but instead, unleash ingenious ideas with bold creativity confronting our biggest challenges. Conceived by legendary designer John Bielenberg, the Blitz is all about thinking wrong when thinking right isn’t up to the challenge. John wrote the book – literally, Think Wrong – on the subject and now every year teaches the methodology to Pando Days teams.
So we reached out to all Pando Days college and university teams enrolled in the 2024/25 season and asked them to join us for a couple of hours of creative brainstorming fun.
Blitzes can sometimes go on for days, but two hours is nonetheless sufficient to get creative juices going and teach the fundamentals of Blitz thinking. Our goal was twofold: 1) to generate amazing ideas about solving the challenge of getting LA folks to drink recycled water and 2) to give Pando Days teams the experience they need in our design thinking methodology so they can apply it to their own projects.
The day started with John giving a presentation on thinking wrong, followed by an explanation of the recycled water challenge. Benita Horn of the Metropolitan Water District highlighted the importance of the task – given that without people being willing to drink perfectly clean, recycled LA water, it is being dumped into the ocean every second of every day, unused.
The workshop started off earnest and serious but quickly gained a sense of humor (you couldn’t help it):
Rich Binell, Pandomaniac and copywriter extraordinaire, showed up and offered his 5-question secret for how to write good copy/devise a strong marketing plan/win people over to your side and change the world.
It’s essential, Rich said, to know these 5 things:
- Who are we talking to? (It’s the know-your-audience question.)
- What do they think (about what we want to tell them) before we tell them anything?
- What do we want to change their minds to, with what message?
- Why should they believe us?
- What do we want them to do?
“The kind of brainstorming we do,” John comments, “is designed to knock people out of their comfort zones, question the status quo, and think in new ways.”
The result? Ideas that likely never could have been conceived any other way.
By the end of the session, we felt we were just getting started, with a ton of ideas flowing. But undoubtedly the best was straightforward: make “LA Sewer Water” a thing, and make it cool.
We thought it could be done, too – like a bottled water company did with the brand Liquid Death and rode to billions in revenue (honestly, who would have thought?).
To whit:
“I’d drink it out of a can,” said John.
“I’d bet money you wouldn’t,” said Rich.
“Bet I would,” countered John.
“Then we’d all win” said Rich, “Pando, the Water District, and most importantly, the people of Los Angeles.”
So this is what we accomplished on Blitz day before lunch. If we had a few more hours, I guarantee you we’d have had the foundations of a billion-dollar company, too.
I hope one of the Pando Days teams takes this idea forward.