I inserted some of the photos from the article below:

Kiddies recycling.

What mixed recycling looks like before it is sorted into different types (plastic, aluminum, glass, etc)

Nantucket claims that composting is HUGE factor in how they are decreasing the volume of their landfills. Look at this huge room just for compost!

WALL-E anyone?

This Thursday I am volunteering to help out at the GreenBusiness Works Expo. I am not really sure what my volunteer work will entail yet… but I am excited about the networking opportunities. My title is “recycling volunteer”. I am not sure if that means I am supposed to educate people about recycling… or am I volunteering to recycle things for people? That is kind of funny considering this Expo should be full of people who love recycling. We shall see..

Anyways, there are going to be SO many companies with sustainable objectives that I could talk to. It is going down at the Cobb Galleria Centre on September 2nd and 3rd if anyone is interested in attending. Check out the GreenBusiness Works Expo website and program.

I am going to make up a ton of cards to give out. I wish I had more time to really fix up and organize the site to how I want it to be, but … it will have to do. I think in the future, It would be awesome to hire someone to re-organize it for me. First I need money though! So perhaps before Thursday I will set up my Paypal donation button and get some donations that way. Just to help the site grow. I just need to be 110% clear that it is NOT tax deductable and goes into a personal closed loop bank account I have to help the site/organization.

Think it will get too messy? I think it may…

But… right now it is just me, one person, with a cause doing some work in my spare time. So he suggested that the best bet for me would to just declare myself a consultant for design sustainability. I can help out companies, homes, schools (like I am with Amerlux), and use that as my consultant-portfolio. Since I need some financial help to get started, I can collect donations now from family and friends explicitly saying “this donation does not apply for any tax exemptions”. Then use that money to pay for marketing materials, website upkeep, and other things that you need to do starting off. Then later on, I can charge clients for consulting services. Then donate a % of the profits to environmental NPOs that I choose.

I think this plan could work…

Here is an excerpt from the site:

” Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging, a multi-year initiative designed to alleviate “wrap rage,” features recyclable boxes that are easy to open and free of excess materials such as hard plastic clamshell cases, plastic bindings, and wire ties. The product itself is exactly the same—we’ve just streamlined the packaging. Learn more. Want to help us improve Amazon.com’s and product packaging? Tell us via the Packaging Feedback Program and also upload images about orders you’ve placed with Amazon.com. Want to see how it all started? Check out the letter our CEO Jeff Bezos wrote to customers the day the initiative launched.”

Amazon is not only making their customer’s happy by providing them with packages that are easier to open, but also creating a more environmentally friendly way of sending items. Less materials, Less adhesives, Less packaging waste. It is so great to see big companies breaking design traditions.

Check out the list of products that are now “frustration-free”.

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.