Week 11: Sustainability

Week 11 Reading notes:

Croker, R (2017). ‘Unmaking Waste’, in Chapman, J (ed) Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Product Design. Part III: Materials and Processes, Chapter 17.

The development of science and technology, the reduction of the cost of production of products, and the capitalist's desire for profit, these elements have affected the consumption of consumers, causing many products that are clearly still usable to be discarded and replaced. For example, some telecom operators have introduced so-called concessionary contracts where signing a contract can get a new phone to tempt consumers. But in fact the consumers themselves probably don't need a new phone, and the one being used can still work just fine. At the same time, marketers in the marketing sector "tricked" consumers with their excellent sales programs. In today's society, most people have good financial means, and everyone is looking for "better" and "newer", and for material enjoyment. The search for the "better" and the "best" needs to be constant because it is ultimately impossible to achieve, each "best" will soon be overshadowed by the next, and I think the sellers are very aware of the consumer's consumer psychology to develop various sales strategies to get consumers hooked. Like a renovated house, the new version of the same-brand product is necessarily 'even better' than the earlier one. Perhaps a year later, two years later, a new iPhone model was introduced. As far as I know, many Apple fans are so loyal to Apple that they go to the overnight queues to buy new products whenever Apple launches them. But in fact their "old" phones still work. All these phenomena have led to serious environmental pollution problems.

Fortunately, some countries and regions have now begun to take this issue seriously and have introduced some policies. By the way, I strongly condemn certain current businesses and producers who ignore environmental costs only for their immediate benefit. Cutting down a patch of woods and polluting a river is just an instant thing. But it will take decades, if not centuries, to plant another forest, to cleanse the rivers and oceans. We are all inhabitants of this global village. So to speak, we, the human race, are just tiny creatures borrowed a place to live from the earth, and if one day the earth will not tolerate human beings, and that will happen in a way I dare not imagine.

Week 11 Lecture notes:

Zero Waste and sustainability 

When we look at sustainability, we look at the capacity to endure and if we are not careful and don’t make the changes needed, the modern industrialised world will continue to threaten our ability to endure. Sustainability from a designer’s point of view is important because there are many man made things created by industrialisation that contribute to a linear waste system and are using up our resource streams in a manner that is unsustainable.

If no change is made to how we live, we have the capacity to run out of everything we need on this planet  Zero waste was first derived from a chemist named Paul Palmer in the 70’s who began bringing waste products from one industry to another and encourages better application of resources so that all products are reused with the goal of no waste to be sent to landfills, incinerators, or the ocean. We should think of zero waste as a precautionary approach to how to live sustainably and adopt this method as opposed to the post cautionary logic that humans have been following. One solution to finding a way to change this is to find opportunities to make money out of the sustainable way of doing things and no longer tie ourselves to the profits in the post cautionary way. Mimicking natural relationships and cycles and adopting a cradle to cradle system to the industrial chain is one way of doing this. Zero waste strives for a cyclical flow of resources and energy that aims to eliminate the now typical linear flow.

 

Consumerism and waste are closely tied together and to make room for the latest and the best we have to get rid of the old. If the ‘new’ is the measure of value then if anything is slightly old it has less value and we have to get rid of it. This is one of the big generators of waste and further to the problem we have the attitude that waste becomes someone else’s problem once it’s taken out of sight.

 

If waste is determined by value. The decision on what is valueless is made by us the consumer, it’s a mental shift in how something can be used or reused that is needed to give it value. This is determined by the market and with everything being so cheap it creates less value for old things and incentivises throwing things away instead of repairing, reusing or recycling out items.

Since the 1950’s mass consumption has been greatly aided by cheap oil. Washing cleaning heating cooking and hygienic disposal practices all developed together, powered by electricity (coal, gas and oil) and having your waste taken away and processed by someone else was the new sense of being modern. This creates many downstream problems one of which is that it’s no longer the consumer's problem, it’s someone else’s problem. Funnelling waste down into one area creates issues where things are unable to be separated back into their original materials for reuse and they become toxic and end up having to be put into landfill.

 

The good news is that it is possible to revalue waste, getting back to recycling and finding ways to reuse waste, returning to an older practice. We have been trained since the 50’s to only consider the new things valuable, so we need to impart value in what is considered ‘old’ to people and by converting old to new and by making this attractive to people we can save energy in the process.

Sustainability is not just about avoiding waste, as designers we can apply a set of principles to achieve a circular economy and a zero waste system that:

Diverts costs of waste back onto producers.

Ends all forms obsolesces.

Durable, beautiful goals to be valued long term.

Ends cheap, trashy, disposable goods.

Adaptive reuse, designing for disassembly or upcycling.

Emphasis on intrinsic values not extrinsic ones.

Week 11 Tutorial notes:

Zero waste is an ideal world (unicorn) where people revert back to the sustainable way of living and replace the linear economy with a circular one. Hyperconsumption of things caused by companies marketing products that “fix problems” that do not exist (wanting coffee at home to taste like made by a barista) causes more problems environmentally. As a designer we have to make the ethical decision to make products that can be disassembled and recycled, while trying to survive and make money at the same time. 

Too much waste can cause pollution in the environment. Some business models do not aim for infinite growth and profit, but have an end goal like the Ocean Cleanup Company that cleans up rivers to get out of business. Fixing the pollution problem requires visionary thinking but often perceived as too naive or “Band-Aids”.  The real solution is to rethink and change the whole system.

Obsolescence is caused by people wanting the new and better things, and businesses make profit by constantly providing upgraded versions of products before the older model degrades. Some products have lifetime warranty but because the parts are not standardized, so a few years later the they are not replaceable anymore. Companies should change their business model to earn profit not from the new products but by making and selling replacement parts for products that they already have. An example of how to unmake waste is to transform the function of products at their end of life, such as this cocktail cabinet made from an old mac. 

Image by Teiki Design Studio (https://www.designboom.com/design/teiki-design-studio-apple-pc-tower-cocktail-cabinet-05-05-2020/)

Group Reflection and Discussion:

To make a sustainable product the policy makers, manufacturers, designers, sellers and consumers have to make a change which seems impossible now.

Living a sustainable life is difficult because people have other priorities in life (feeding kids) but a quote by Andrew is that: “What you give to yourself you have to give to the world” You can't acquire things, have a certain lifestyle and once it’s your then  expect the rest of the world to not want what you have.