Greengaged

Exciting news! Greengaged has been nominated for the Cooper-Hewitt People's Design Award 2009! A huge thank you to everyone - curators, speakers, tech team, twitterers, volunteers and all our audience members for raising the Greengaged profile Stateside.

Please login to the website, add a comment about any events you've been too, and vote before October 20, 2009. The winner will be announced live online from the National Design Awards gala in New York, on October 22 at 10:00 p.m. EST. "What is good design? You tell us!" Vote Greengaged for the 2009 People's Design Award!

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During day four Crafting Mass Production at greengaged last week (full coverage coming soon), Anna Gerber told the story of our day spent with newly founded design agency Workshop, at their letterpress studio in East London. I'm pleased to be able to share a short video of the day, kindly edited by Varvara Zaytseva.

Featuring in the film (in order) are Anna Fidalgo (Crispin Finn), Lawrence Zeegen (Kingston University), Sanky Sankarayya (All of Us /  D&AD), Adam Cheltsov (Sara De Bondt Studio), Greengaged competition winners Matt Mear and Holly Webber, and Workshop Founders Alexander Cooper and Rose Gridneff.

Photographs of the letterpress workshop can be viewed on our greengaged flickr channel and full coverage here .

photo by: Walter Parenteau

What any print designer is interested in is the product that they can hold in their hand at the end of the day; and yet design must now consider the bigger system which that finished product fits within and is born out of. In print terms, about 4.7 million tons of fresh, unused paper is thrown away by UK print companies each year as sometimes large unused off-cuts. 4.7 million tons is an unimaginably large amount; production of each ton of paper requires in the region of 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and more energy per ton than glass or steel. Do the maths on the large numbers by all means, but it’s clearly very significant.

On average, paper represents 80% of the carbon footprint of a piece of print, which makes paper one of the largest contributing factors to the environmental performance of a company. Before all the print buyers and designers evacuate the room, there are intelligent approaches that don’t mean doing away with print, by instead making its production much more effective!

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photos by Travis Drever

Showcasing great examples of award-winning British design, the "Window on Design" at the Design Council offices in Covent Garden had a green inspired project on display during the Greengaged 2009 week! For those of you who didn't get the chance to see the display, we wanted to share the project with you.

Founded by Richard Sabin and Mark Laurence, BioTecture Ltd is dedicated to designing and implementing green wall systems for buildings and the built environment. BioTecture’s modular green wall system* have enabled sphagnum moss, spider plants and salad leaves to be grown up the sides of office blocks and schools and even inside shops. The green walls can help keep spaces cooler in summer and warm in winter.

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photos by: Travis Drever

For those of you who have been at Greengaged this week you will have spotted a curious looking confessional booth, and probably have been wondering what that was for. Well... on Monday at Greengaged, Ed Gillespie brought with him Futerra's "Earthly Sins Confessional Booth"! Ed didn't (until after hours) adorn the priest attire, however during the day on behaviour change, many of the attendees entered the booth to confess their 'earthly sins'. Alleviating guilt as a barrier to action, the booth allows us all to unveil those sins we are all guilty of. I'm sure, the more we all confess and talk about such environmental misdeamours, the more we will be able to reconsider alternatives. See more confessional evidence on flickr and do keep your eye on earthlysins.org 

So, what's your earthly sin? 

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photo by: Chiara Terraneo

Earlier this week Greengaged was pleased to welcome Sheena Matheiken of The Uniform Project to Ed Gillespie's panel on behaviour change in fashion and travel.

The Uniform Project is all about one ambitious and highly creative woman, who is wearing one black shift dress for 365 days. The project has two aims; 1. To raise awareness about sustainable fashion and 2. Raise money (through donations) for the Akanksha Foundation, a nonprofit group providing educational programs to children who live in Mumbai’s slums. At Greengaged, Sheena explained how she wanted to make an "extreme statement about consumers", "change perspectives about shopping and fashion", "to bring back the creativity into fashion" and prove that "with imagination and through creativity, sustainable fashion can be stylish." Keep up to date with Sheena's project (and outfits!) on her pictorial website and twitter feed (@UniformProject).

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photo by: Chiara Terraneo

On Monday evening, Greengaged held its first co-ed Swishing night. Swishing is a sociable, friendly (usually) form of clothes swapping, with very specific rules. Organised by sustainable marketing communications company Futerra, everyone was asked to bring one piece of clean good clothing which could be swapped for someone else’s top, dress, shoes or tee-shirt. 

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photo by: Travis Drever

Early yesterday morning, Greengaged 2009 at the Design Council, kicked off for London Design Festival! Following a warm welcome from Greengaged co-founder Sophie Thomas and David Kester, Chief Executive of the Design Council, the day was seamlessly handed over to the first of this weeks five guest curators, Ed Gillespie, Founding Director of sustainable communications agency Futerra.

Full coverage of "Design for Life: Barriers to Behaviour Change" - the inaugural day of Greengaged 2009, will be online here shortly, authored by Ed himself and from our guest authors Dan Lockton, and Bonnie Alter of Treehugger.com

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