This side project I’ve been working on for the past few months is finally materializing! Read more about it below. There will be a Launch Party in Atlanta in a few weeks, more info about that to come!

CEO for Change is about reaching out to CEOs of top consumer products companies in the US and convincing them that industrial designers can transform their products to be more sustainable and innovative. I want to reach the CEOs of companies like Kellogg or Frito Lay where it’s hard to tell whether they are aware of the differences between designers and packaging engineers.

How can companies transform a product to be more sust…ainable? They can (a) alter the material to be recyclable/biodegradable (b) monitor their energy and material use (c) reclaim it from consumers and repurpose it …

Or my favorite option (d) utilize industrial design and redefine your product. It drives me CRAZY that so many companies do not know what industrial design is!

As an industrial designer, I’m setting the bar high for better and more sustainable products on the market. Companies cannot put out any more excuses, just great products. A major goal of this project is to inform more people about industrial design.

So, how am I reaching out to CEOs, you ask?

(1) I have created “CEO for Change” booklets that I am going to mail directly to 50 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. These booklets will be available for purchase at this event ($10 for professionals, $5 for students)

(2) With the talent of Jason Travis, we have created a brief “CEO for Change” video to tell my story. The video will premier at this event.

(3) With your help! If you support this idea that industrial design is an integral part of creating better and more sustainable products, come out to this event and spread the word. If you work for a company that you think doesn’t value design in its products, feel free to give them a “CEO for Change” book.

It’s crazy how much plastic shrinks. Look at how cute these shrunken plastic bags are!

I always struggle with the huge gap between disposable products and valuable ones. It doesn’t make much sense that some disposable products (like plastic bags) are made out of a material that do not allow itself to really be properly disposed of (proper disposal being in a closed loop of course ).

It is so fascinating that a man-made material like plastic is associated with cheapness…  when its chemical make up suggests the exact opposite — robustness. Plastic has so many favorable properties (ex – waterproof, doesn’t degrade) to make a robust, valuable product. Why are so many disposable products made out of plastic?

Is it because of plastic’s low manufacturing cost? Or it’s aesthetic properties? Probably a combination of both.

I’m experimenting with molding plastic bags into a new form (like over a glass cup in the photo above). When melted, the plastic bag takes on this really interesting translucent, fibrous texture. As cliche as it is, I think it could look pretty cool as a light.

I think I just found a project to work on this weekend…

“Our goal is to involve not only waste and industrial companies to the project but mainly gather society in the purpuse with local and national campains and educational program for puclic learning. We know that upcycling is not  revolutionary solution but by this way, involving the people in the main process and learn more about social, economical and industrial habits to go green without loosing money, wasting time or feel guilty about the enviroment.”

Upcycling is tricky. One one hand, prolonging the lifecycle of an otherwise trashed object is fantastic because it keeps volume out of landfills. On the other hand, if you upcycle an object to a product that is not robust enough to escape landfills for a significant amount of time — what is the point? Instead of upcycling, why not focus energies on creating products that cannot be thrown away?

So, I tend to think that on a large scale (like Terracycle’s partnership with Kellogg) upcycling is not effective, because Kellogg produces a massive amount of food packaging. Unless Terracycle is able to upcycle all of Kellogg’s food packaging waste into very valuable, robust products — there is just too much packaging! In that case, I think there is more opportunity to redesign food packaging than figure out an efficient plan for upcycling.

What Upcycle Belgium is doing is different — they are not just upcycling, they are trying to start a social movement. They want to education people about the lifecycle of products. From what I understand, they are not trying to mass manufacture new upcycled goods, but take an artisan approach and create new, unique products that last a lifetime.

I’ve always wanted to go to Belgium… who knows… I am going to Europe next month, maybe I should pay Brussels a visit!

It looks gorgeous!

What do you guys think? Should I write them back? I think I will!

I met some amazing people from all different fields; interior design, architecture, graphic design, engineering, and more. I was one of the younger attendees and can only hope that, in ten years, I measure up to some of the other folks — their accomplishements and careers were off-the-charts impressive. Design professionals shared stories about how they started new companies, went against the status quo of company operations, and did their own thing!

This is just a general synopsis of my experience at the DFC Summit, I am going to list some links to inspiring projects I learned about in my next post. There are some amazing start ups all over the country that are devoted to public health and sustainability. Radical.

Some photos from the conference:

Woo!

A break out session, where a topic is given [ex-how to break out of the status quo within your company] 

Lovely lunch on the terrace! Gorgeous Atlanta fall weather and view of the city.

Alan Balfour, Dean of the College of Architecture at Georgia Tech, was one of many fantastic speakers.

The conference ended with a tour of Perkins + Will new office space.

1. Sin of the hidden trade-off: committed by suggesting a product is “green” based on an unreasonably narrow set of attributes without attention to other important environmental issues (e.g., paper produced from a sustainably harvested forest may still yield significant energy and pollution costs).

2. Sin of no proof: committed by an environmental claim that cannot be substantiated by easily accessible supporting information or by a reliable third-party certification (e.g., paper products that claim various percentages of postconsumer recycled content without providing any evidence).

3. Sin of vagueness: committed by every claim that is so poorly defined or broad that its real meaning is likely to be misunderstood by the consumer (e.g., “all-natural”).

4. Sin of irrelevance: committed by making an environmental claim that may be truthful but is unimportant or unhelpful for consumers seeking environmentally preferable products (e.g., “CFC-free” is meaningless given that chlorofluorocarbons are already banned by law).

5. Sin of lesser of two evils: committed by claims that may be true within the product category, but that risk distracting the consumer from the greater health or environmental impacts of the category as a whole (e.g., organic cigarettes).

6. Sin of fibbing: committed by making environmental claims that are simply false (e.g., products falsely claiming to be Energy Star certified).

7. Sin of false labels: committed by exploiting consumers’ demand for third-party certification with fake labels or claims of third-party endorsement (e.g., certification-like images with green jargon such as “eco-preferred”).

Taken from an article in the June 2010 Environmental Health Perspectives Magazine. Click here to download a PDF of the full article.

Last summer I worked at Amerlux Lighting Solutions in Fairfield, New Jersey as a marketing intern. That summer I unleashed Closed Loop on the employees and offered them my help in making the workplace there more sustainable. For example, there was no paper recycling system in place, paper cups were abundant, and lights were left on in empty offices overnight.

I got a message from an engineer there the other day saying they still use ceramic mugs! Woohoo! What a great team. There was  fantastic group of about 12 that regularly attended Closed Loop meetings and were eager to make changes in the workplace.

I will have to follow up with them again soon and see how that paper recycling is going…

Lately I have been thinking about going vegetarian….

There are so many reasons to go vegetarian, but the one that really resonates with me is how much methane the animal industry produces.

I do not necessarily think eating animal products is bad or cruel, it is completely natural for species to consume each other in order to survive. However, the rate of consumption of animal products, due to factory farming, is much higher than necessary. These factory farms are producing more animals than people need to be consuming in order to live and destroying the ozone layer at the same time. We are way past the survival stage and living on the gluttonous rates.

This same idea applies to products too. There are so many products that are produced in billions that do not necessarily have a market or an audience who needs them. These useless products that are destined for landfills because they have no purpose. So we are damaging the environment WITHOUT ANY GOOD REASON.

The animal industry is damaging the environment in many ways, specifically by producing mass amounts of methane, when human beings do not even need that much meat to live.

I honestly only eat meat once a week and think that it would be a fairly easy transition for me. I am also lactose intolerant… maybe vegan is the way to go. A plus to going vegan is that all of my food waste would be compostable because it would lack meat or dairy products.

Hmmm… I have been thinking about this for a while but haven’t really had the guts to take the first step…

If anyone has any tips or experience that they had while going vegan or vegetarian– I will gladly take them