Greengaged

It is estimated that over 90% of production materials do not end up in saleable products and 80% of products are discarded after a single use. This is causing us to rapidly consume the planet’s resources including metals, minerals, clean water and fossil fuels. Sustainable chemistry technologies are being used to reduce the impact of our lifestyles.

On Friday 19th September, in a disciplinary twist to the Greengaged events schedule, we welcomed Dr Mike Pitts (Manager of the Sustainable Technologies Priority for Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network), who held a masterclass that discussed how chemists and designers can work together to reduce the impact of the products we design (and buy).

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Early on Monday morning, Greengaged’s penultimate day kicked off with an informative discussion about the future of design education. Speakers included Tracy Bhamra (Loughborough University), Ian Capewell (Practical Action), and Emma Dewberry (Open University).

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During Monday’s educational session Greengaged welcomed sustainable design reader Dr Tracy Bhamra, from Loughborough University. Bhamra began her presentation with an overview of her sustainable design teaching and expressed how she believes that “a sustainable design module needs to be something that everyone has to think about and not considered as a separate niche.”

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Did you know that recycling one tonne of paper can save 7000 gallons of water, 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space and 4000kw of energy!? On Friday afternoon, non profit enterprise Three Trees Don’t Make a Forest held a three hour sustainable print and paper workshop to explore how different print processes affect recyclability, and how you can reduce the impact through the design process.

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“Its dirty, its dusty, it smells. Welcome to the world of rubbish!” In the most innovative excursion of the Greengaged week, here we all were on Thursday morning at Powerday waste recycling plant. What an eye opening reality for designers to witness. A full review of the trip coming shortly! If you were on the trip on Thursday though... and eager to see all the photographs, you can find them over on Flickr. 

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In November 2008, Professor Michael Braungart will launch a new UK edition of ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things’, the prolific and best-selling manifesto “calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design.” Greengaged are excited to announce that the new edition will be published by Random House, and in the new introduction Michael writes;

“In the nineteenth century various writers used the phrase ‘the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world’ - and to them this meant that the way we raise our children would do more to change the world than empire-builders and new industries. The hands that rocks Cradle to Cradle today fit the phrase, I think, as our agenda is also about finding nurturing solutions very different to the often outrageous initiatives that harm the environment, sometimes by the same sort of institutions. Cradle to Cradle tried to put human being in the same ’species’ picture as other living things - and to us, a misuse of material resources is not just suicidal for future human generations but catastrophic for the future of life.” (Braungart, M. 2008. Cradle to Cradle).

On Monday evening, Professor Michael Braungart will close the penultimate day of Greengaged, with a lecture at the Royal Society of Arts that will highlight fields of materials assessment, waste and energy balances, and life-cycle design. Braungart’s lecture will be followed by a conversation with science and culture of materials writer Philip Ball.

On Wednesday night at Greengaged we welcomed Pio Barone Lumaga from LOFT Bookazine in Stockholm for an inspiring hands on session, exploring design, psychology, innovation and emotion. Using a quick thought experiment, he encouraged participants to break down our existing thought patterns in order to unlock creative potential and allow for real change. Using examples from his broad and varied international experience as a designer and innovator, he showed how re-thinking the brief given to designers - from what? to why? - can lead to unexpected and positive breakthroughs. Pio talked of his work designing Railway stations to cars, furniture to houses, and now a magazine to keep - a Bookazine.

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Many discussions over the past three days here at Greengaged have questioned the validity of the word ’sustainability’. What does it really mean today? Do designers have differing perspectives of its definition and meaning? And possibly more importantly, do the public listen and how do they react when they hear such terminologies: green, eco, sustainable and so forth? Is the title sustainable, creating a market niche that offers only a ‘for’ or ‘against’ decision?

“I’d like to change the word sustainability. If you were to ask someone about their marriage and they say ‘its sustainable’, what would you think?!”- Sophie Thomas, thomas.matthews

If sustainability is to be embedded into all aspects of everyday living, why create a niche? Why have “eco” events at The London Design Festival if the future success of the entire creative sector is dependant on its recognition for good practice? As the Design Council recently pitched in The Good Design Plan, sustainability should be inherently built into our understanding of good design.

“We need to get away from the language that isn’t working for us?” - Sarah Johnson, [re]design

Is it therefore time for a revised umbrella of terms or descriptions? We’d like to hear how you introduce sustainability to your clients and how they react?