WEEK 11: ETHICS AND SUSTAINABILITY

Lecture: the lecture considered the idea of 0 waste and sustainable design. The biggest points I took away were to look at the big picture, and think about what is actually the best option as far as sustainably living and designing. One example that really stuck with me was the options there are for newspaper once it has been used – my thoughts were that recycling the paper was the best way to go for sustainability, but was unaware that this process leaves us with what is essentially a bucket of toxic ink that has no purpose. Using the newspaper in the garden in some form is a much better option, returning it to the soil as carbon. This started me thinking about what is actually the best way to do things as a designer, and how I can genuinely reflect the idea of being sustainable and having a low impact with the work I do.

A term from the lecture that I looked into further was “industrial symbiosis”. The concept is pretty straightforward: when creating a product, the surplus/excess/leftover materials are repurposed and used for the production process of another item.

The lecture really made me think about what sort of packaging I’m creating in my studio work – my client is a chocolatier, and the products I’m creating are a takeaway cup and takeaway box. At this point it’s a bit late to change what I’m doing to make something more sustainable, but even sticking with the current projects, there are changes to think about in my work. It made me consider the materials I could use for the mock ups, and the intended materials I would use in a real life situation with this branding.

Tutorial: the question was raised of “how does this actually relate to our practice?”

Everything we do – not just as designers – must relate back to sustainability. Our practice has a ridiculously big impact on this though, as we literally create everything in one way or another.

Creating multi-purpose items is a big way to counter the trend of unsustainability in design, for example, the company “Bakeys” creating edible cutlery. Bakeys has created this cutlery to help cut down on waste, specifically in India, where plastic cutlery is the norm and is filling up landfill.

How we create and what we create are the big ideas I took from this week. As designers, we need to conceptualise and create objects with the smallest possible impact in the process and outcome. We must drive change.