Check out my friend Andrew Stansell’s metal furniture and lighting: http://www.andrewstanselldesign.com/
Excerpt from Care2: Ray Anderson, an icon in the movement to make business more ethical and environmentally friendly, died of cancer on Monday at the age of 77. The quintessential industrialist, Anderson underwent a complete change of heart and became an evangelist for the sustainable business. In 1973 at the age of 38 he started Interface,which manufactures carpet tile, a highly petroleum-dependent product. He admits to not giving a thought to environmental concerns until the mid 1990s, when customers started asking questions about Interface’s products and their environmental impact. As chairman, Anderson was asked to share his vision for the environment and the place of his company in it.
But he found inspiration and learned to make changes. From that moment in 1994, Anderson began leading his company to a goal of becoming zero waste by 2020. Interface’s sustainability efforts focus on the company’s footprint, its products and its culture. Success has come in many forms, including:
Europe’s goal is to become carbon emission zero by 2050. Although they created an impressive document, they also use some design to better illustrate the environmental impact if we delay action.
The cross-section of design and environmental change and impact can be best measured by action and hopefully this will ring true not only for Europe, but everywhere.
For more images: http://www.fastcompany.com/pics/beautiful-graphics-explain-master-plan-nearly-zero-carbon-emissions-europe-2050?partner=homepage_newsletter#4
(Source: roadmap2050.eu)
This year’s science camp competition for girls asked students to solve the e-waste problem. The winning team, who consisted of three high school girls, came together and built a solar-powered cell phone charger from recycled materials, specifically 30 secondhand aluminum transistors they collected. These young girls came up with creative solutions to lower their electronic waste and impact on the planet with limited resources, time and money. Their efforts reminded me about how my decisions on purchasing the latest and greatest technologies that come out also have an impact on people across the world. (to note, I bought an iPad and returned it 4 hours later!)
Check out the article for more information and inspiration about the winning team and finalists’ ideas.
(Source: thejakartaglobe.com)
Against Obsolescence
I came across this video and the company, Vitsoe, and fell in love with their mission as well as their design. Make quality items and buy less things. This is very much tied to the design ethos of Dieter Rams and his quality of work that is designed to last a very long time. It also reminded me of all the things I do have and do not need to buy. It’s hard to pass up on sales and go shopping, but making more thoughtful decisions is just part of the experience.
(Source: vitsoe.com)
World Water Day
In light of World Water Day on March 22, 2011, I wanted to share an infographic that my very talented friend, Cameron Reynolds-Flatt and I worked on together. We worked together on a business case challenge on the world water crisis for Water.org earlier, and got a better sense of what the problems are in developing countries. We continued our research and visualized the disparities of water access and use. Despite declaring water as a human right, it’s not equally distributed. If everyone was more aware of their water use and made small changes, we will begin to value our limited fresh water resource that the planet has left for everyone. For other interesting water visualizations, please check the link below.
Renegade Chef Ann Cooper
I saw this video last year for a project as I was challenged to redefine dining design experience and I watched her again. She’s very memorable and her passion for her work shows. Chef Ann Cooper spoke at the 2007 EG conference in the video and to many, known as the “renegade lunch lady”. She talks about the coming revolution in the way kids eat at school — local, sustainable, seasonal and even educational food. She also recreated the current food pyramid to the ‘Meal Wheel’ that actually supports healthy foods in the proper portions. School lunch is a big problem…millions of children are fed through this current system that is lacking nutrition. Check out her talk, which is an inspiration for change now.
(Source: chefann.com)
Last year’s multidisciplinary student team at Archeworks, an Alternative School of Design in Chicago, focused their work on creating a mobile food collective. What does that mean? A place where people can gather, eat, learn and cook food together. A place to trade information, recipes and educate. They actually built a mobile cart that folds up and traveled to various neighborhoods. They were also invited to Venice Biennale in August to show their great work. Way to go! Check out their continued work as well as their video: http://mobilefoodcollective.wordpress.com/biennale/
(Source: archeworks.org)
I’m currently in a design system class and the topic is food. A tough one at that (yet exciting to think about), but a very vital and crucial topic in everyone’s lives and 3 times a day. As a class, we are looking at the larger system of food production and consumption of U.S. and India. My specific task is to learn about the U.S. overproduction area. It was easy to find so many problems wrong with the U.S. food system, but much harder to break it apart and see the individual components and put it all back together to synthesize solutions. Since a lot of research is involved, our class had panel of experts from the field such as farmers, advocates, educators, chefs, and design. All came together in one room to help us get to know some of the core issues and challenges. We learned how passionate and important each one played in the food system…but with so many people tackling the issues from different angles, the challenge is still ahead: how to design a food system that integrated them all into the puzzle to create a sustainable food system that is affordable, available and nutritious.
I’ll keep you posted…suggestions welcomed!
