It may sound very bold or even ridiculous, how can one thing help protect our planet, how can creating something so small and insignificant be a help at all in protecting our vast planet. Simple, because sustainable design is to create a product that is based on renewable materials and long life cycle. They are formed through the basic single emotion of helping the environment. They must be reusable, made of recycled or renewable materials, they must not emit any harmful substances into the environment, and even the energy used to produce these products or services must ideally come from renewable resources. When you add all these factors together then you can begin to see how one small object can start to protect our dying planet.
Our planet, Earth, is in danger of losing many of its natural resources due to carelessness and misuses. To counteract or slow down the effects pollution to the environment and depletion of resources we must act quickly and collectively, that is why sustainable design is crucial to this movement, as it can be done on a massive scale. For example by creating an improved everyday household item that will last twice as long as an ordinary item will automatically reduce wastage or rubbish by half, which will lengthen the time it takes people to fill landfill sites. Now we know what sustainable design is, but do we know how it is done, or what makes a good sustainable product.
Creating sustainable designs is by no means easy it is in fact extremely difficult. To truly make a good sustainable product the designer must first satisfy three critical points in order to design a sustainable product, environmental, social, and financial sustainability. Designers will first look closely at these three factors and how to satisfy them to create a new and improved product. Social sustainability is to satisfy the users’ requirements; it also means to protect the mental and physical wellbeing of the user. Environmental sustainability is to protect the environment, create new ways of producing and manufacturing such as using renewable resources like solar, or wind power. Financial sustainability is not to threaten the financial wellbeing of its users, and maximising the profits by minimising resource consumptions.
Designers are taking the initiative on starting at the forefront of this green campaign, designers are here to educate people about ways that can help our planet through adverts; products; services; and many other forms of communication. Designers are gathering in numbers to try to accomplish this monumental task, not only are they trying to educate they are also trying to invent new improved sustainable products right across the market, from clothing to cars; kitchen utensils to stationary. Anything and everything are being remodelled in this effort of saving our planet.
At the moment this campaign has yet to reach maturity as there are numerous difficulties and obstacles, such as cost; resources; support; and knowledge. When they are overcome one by one then designers will know that we have reached the goal of helping to save our planet.
If I were to tackle a project on sustainable design, then how would I start? I would first look closely at the product that I have chosen to see where I will be able to make it sustainable, it will not be on the surface type thinking but an in-depth study of the particular product. It will have to fulfil the three critical criteria of making a product sustainable. To help I would look at one of the guidelines that is available to sustainable designers such as; eco-indicator 99; simapro; and solidworks sustainability xpress. Then figure out which part of the product would really make it sustainable, it may be the material, the reusability, the disposable factor, or the distribution factor.
As you can imagine the difficulties designers and manufacturers are faced with is colossal, they are not only battling the consumers but also society itself, the trends of consumers are very hard to change or persuade, once they have been nurtured into a buying pattern it is extremely difficult to get them to change. The comfort zone that is defined by the financial outlay of the consumers on the items they purchase and the location they purchased from also plays a big part in consumer buying behaviour.
Furthermore in our current difficult financial climate, very few people will be willing to pay extra for an item with the same functionality as the ones they have become accustomed to, even if the new product can help protect the environment, but we cannot be brushed aside or ignored, as we will have to continue to push, communicate, and educate the people until they realise it is also their responsibility to help save our planet. There will always be a few people that will pay that little extra if it means helping our planet but that is not enough, actually it falls very short of the commitment required in order to change our ways which have caused all this destruction to our planet at the first place.
There are currently very few sustainable products available to the consumers; they are generally energy packages or recycling methods. But there are some companies already established like the clothes makers Nau of Portland, USA, a specialist in eco-fashion, they use materials that are more sustainable. The introduction of the reusable shopping bag by Asda in 2009, where they made it clear if you damage the reusable shopping bag then they will replace it free of charge. It was an outstanding effort to try helping the environment to ease the amount of plastic wastage. There is also “Milliken & Company” a textile company specialises in sustainable materials and reuse of old materials such as carpets; “TerraCycle” a company that takes unwanted waste from the consumers and turns them into new colourful accessories.
I found some new developments of sustainable designs that are beginning to penetrate our everyday living.
NoMix Toilets Separate Waste, Are Super Eco-Friendly
Karim Rashid Univeils Beautiful Energy Efficient " Trex" Lamps
Designer Karim Rashid just unveiled a beautiful new modular lighting system that continues his trek along the path towards greener designs. Dubbed ‘Trex’, the lamp has a soft and stunning aesthetic and utilizes efficient, eco-friendly circline fluorescent bulbs. Perfect as a stand-alone light or dazzling as a clustered constellation, the flexibility of these pieces can add out-of-this-world ambiance to any space.
Seek Rotary Faucet Lets You Dial Down Wasted Waster
Designer Eun Ji Byeon has come up with a new way to conserve water when washing our hands. Far more thoughtful than those pressure-packed push button faucets, the Dial is a stylish polished metal design that gives a nod to old-school rotary phones. Depending on your water needs, all you have to do is turn the dial to 5, 10, 15 seconds or more to manage the flow, and tad-dah! A successful connection to increased eco-consciousness!
These are just a few of the designs I saw, this is just the beginning and it is clearly a working progress towards our goal. I believe it is a difficult task but one that is crucial and critical in helping to save our planet, we as designers must continue to create new sustainable designs and pass on the message to the people, we need to communicate as a group that if we pull together we can accomplish anything, we shall prevail.
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