I personally have had a difficult time talking to people about what makes a product “sustainable”. There are so many complex factors to consider. I am currently taking a course about sustainable design and materials and it continues to raise more reg flags in my mind about how hard it is to be green! And I mean really green, none of that green washing. Any one can create a green-leaf-shaped logo and dump their product into a cardboard box and claim they are green. How can we really educate consumers so they can make good decisions? I think this is going to be a big hurdle for designers [now] and in the future.

Click here to read the article >> Colorblind: Understand How Consumers Think About the Environment

I found this recyclable laptop concept on Yanko Design today. It is a really interesting concept. It got me thinking about this idea of “disposable valuables”. What if the products we use every day and value a great deal were disposable? How would this change they we use them? How would it change their lifecycles?

It is the inspiration for my next studio project… stay tuned.

Hey, tortillas seem like a very effective way to protect your phone. The shaving gel cone kinda freaks me out though.

I took these photographs weeks ago of a chair that was created by a design student at Lund University. Does anyone know who? Let me know! I would love to speak to him/her and get the inspirations behind this piece.  It is really interesting. It reminds me of an old outdoor fireplace in my backyard that used to grow moss and weeds because no one ever used it. Maybe it could be an outdoor furniture line… like the concept of picnic-ing in the lawn? It could happen. I dig it.

(1) What does design have to do with collecting trash?

(2) What is so wrong with throwing something in the trash?

(3) How is keeping trash in your room helping anything… ?

Okay honestly, an invisible jaw of mine drops every time I hear these questions. It really pisses me off that people still think designers just “make things look pretty”. On that note, this research project is more about education rather than scorning, I just had to let a little of that designer fury out.

(1) Industrial designers make products. There is a whole life cycle of a product to consider in addition to aesthetics/appearance.  So when the appearance of a new product is all set, it is manufactured, packaged, shipped, and then sold. Then someone buys that product, uses it, and then (depending on what product) throws it away when he/she is done with it. A product that is thrown away is STILL a product. Someone designed it! It is an industrial designers job to consider the “garbage” process of his/her product too.

Sometimes I wonder, “If I had not gone to design school, would I even care about the life cycle of products?” Probably not. I would probably buy them and toss them out too without even thinking about it. But how many landfills can the earth hold? I don’t want to find out. In this generation, we all start off with a “consumer” mentality. Seriously, from our first diaper (which was designed, mass manufactured, and disposed of). It is kind of creepy to think about, but there is a certain standard of how to interact with products that we start practicing at a very young age>> (1) Buy. (2) Use. (3) Garbage. Let’s change this standard.

(2) Excess trash and overflowing landfills = pollution. Very bad. Very Very bad. A lot of products that have been disposed of (made of non-biodegradable materials like plastic) last forever. So if we keep filling up landfills with trash that we throw away, we are going to run out of space. Re-visit my research presentation for more on this: “Closed Loop” Experiment Presentation

I think eventually people will learn to see products as a USER rather than consumer. There is a big difference between the word “user” and “consumer”. The word “user” means that someone bought a product and is using it for a function/purpose. After they use it for that function, what happens? So perhaps the definition implies that a “user” has room to think and decide what happens after a product’s purpose is fulfilled. The word “consumer” is a bit misleading. If you “consume” something, it is gone; you have used it all up. But, this isnt true of most products, when you “consume” them they do not disappear. Yet, we use the word “consumerism” to describe the current economic movement (and mentality).

(3) Keeping the trash in my room is simulating the pollution that is occurring. As a designer, it is really making me think about the future products I may design. What are the things I want to throw away? How can they be designed differently so they are more sustainable and less disposable? Or how I can I make disposable items more biodegradable? How do I feel in this environment? What if every user did not produce any trash? Are there other purposes for items I throw away? It is a process and an experience that I am going through for inspiration.

Hopefully this post was a little educational about why I am doing this research project. Whew sorry that was a long one.