MDE2 Research Exploration
FAO: Taslima Begum
Name: Justin Gould-Davies
Student no: 20342705
Date: 07/05/2009
Word Count: 2250
Is 100% Sustainable Design Achievable?
Contents
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Introduction
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Chapter 1
Where Are Designers Going Wrong?
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Chapter 2
Where can designers improve
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Chapter 3
Is 100% design sustainability really achievable?
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Conclusion
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References
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Bibliography
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Figures
Introduction
When you go home today the first thing that will greet you upon your arrival,
after opening your front door will most likely be a fresh pile of ‘junk mail’. This poses the question “are ignorant designers helping to destroy the planet?”
“There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck”
(Nussbaum, 2009)
To understand the question or indeed attempt the answer, you first have to look
at how society adheres to its slavish reliance on consumerism. Human desire is
what feeds consumerism and this need to constantly be progressing and improving
ones self or ones objects is inbuilt into nearly all of us. The newness of
being new or owning new is a constant struggle with ones self and this is why
all consumers will constantly be disappointed with any product. It is
impossible for anything to be ‘new’ for long; such is the demand for products to be the latest and greatest that it
is impossible for any product to meet the expectation that consumers constantly
place upon them. Being content with what we have is something of an anomaly in
our modern society. This is ultimately very damaging and a profligate lifestyle
to follow (Walker, p59)
As a prime example you need not look any further than the ‘mobile phone’.
Figure 1 - The evolution of the mobile phone.
If you look at the progression of the ‘mobile’ in the last twenty years it is almost unrecognizable from its initial
incarnation. In this modern era it is no longer acceptable for your ‘mobile’ to merely be able to make or receive phone calls and even send and receive
texts. The mobile is expected to be able to take pictures, send and receive
emails, play music, play movies and navigate you from A to B at the very least.
Anything less than these ‘basic’ functions are unacceptable to the public, a mobile without these features would
be seen as being ‘old-hat’ or too basic for the consumers needs.
Where are designers going wrong?
The general perception of how a product designer works is that they work to a
requirement that is fundamentally based on the clients needs as opposed to the
needs of the world. A product designer will look at the elements of design such
as the aesthetics, the ergonomics and the technicality of the design but almost
always avoids the longevity issues of the design. Most designers avoid issues
such as the products’ “end of purpose”, the products disposal after “end of purpose” and the environmental affect that their product design will have upon the
environment during construction and deconstruction. . In Canada there are over
272,000 tonnes of computers, small appliances, TV’s, mobile phones and these are just the tip of the iceberg of electrical waste
that is dumped into landfill every year (Walker, 63)
Unfortunately, most products are designed to waste huge amounts of natural
resources and energy, and this has become daily practice. Product packaging is
a prime example of human wastefulness. Most of the time the over-extravagant
use of materials are only created to serve the pointless aesthetic rather than
serve a practical use. As an example you just have to look at the chocolate
Easter egg.
Figure 2 - Over packaged Easter Egg & a chart showing actual Egg Volume.
The Easter egg is usually 2 pieces of hollow chocolate sealed together with a
bag of further chocolates sealed inside the egg. The egg is then covered in
foil to keep it fresh. So far you can see that although the egg is pointless,
its makeup makes sense. Now that you have your Easter egg you need to be able
to transport its fragile frame. This is where form over function goes crazy and
mass resources are wasted. The simple Easter egg now has a plastic vacuum
sealed casing placed around it and then an over-elaborate cardboard box that is
five times the egg’s size is placed around the plastic cased Easter egg. This seems like a lot of
protection for something that is so unneeded. The plastic surrounding the egg
is primarily made from our ever-diminishing resource, ‘oil’ (1). We all know the effects of diminishing oil supplies; higher fuel prices
(2). Moving on to the cardboard packaging around the egg, a lot of which has
been sourced from trees taken from China’s depleting forestry or has been illegally imported into China from the Brazil
and Indonesia amongst others.
“We are in a situation where we have no wood to cut”
Dong Zhiyong former vice-minister in the forestry administration, 2009.
So you can see that yes all this packaging is completely over the top and
wasteful but it doesn’t stop there. When you factor in the shipping of the cardboard from China and
the extra cost of transporting the wastefully over sized Easter egg boxes to
shops, it again furthers concern. In Easter 2008 over 80million Easter egg
treats were thought to have been sold in the UK. This generated 4,370 tons of
card, 3,470 tons of plastic and 160 tons of foil (Poulter, 2009).
"The eggs take up just 9 per cent of the volume of the packaging and the Nestle
egg has actually increased the amount of packaging used compared to last year” (LibDem MP Jo Swinson, 2008)
When you look at this one example of the packaging process it’s easy to get frustrated at the thoughtless neglect of designers not factoring
in all the consequences of their designs.
