Hi,
I’m interested in the reasons behind the buzz word of “Sustainability”. Whilst I believe strongly in the principles and do not wish to harm the environment, I feel it is actually quite hard to truly live a sustainable lifestyle, particularly as a designer.
Being extremely cynical, are our concerns genuine, a fashionable trend, or merely a manifestation of our guilt?
I for one know I feel guilty, although I do genuinely care. What are other’s thoughts on this?
I feel the same way. It is difficult to preach sustainablitity at conferences knowing that I am going to return to the studio and chew through reams of paper designing stuff for wallmart that no one really needs.
We have taken a few steps to try to change this:
We have partnered with few clients with a genuinely sustainable position/history on a royalty basis
We have dedicated a few hundred hours of studio time to entering sustainable competitions (WWF, NASA Emhart, Xorel, Architecture for humanity, etc)
We have made an effort to more forcefully recommend sustainable polymers to our clients. This is especially true for packaging projects.
We have added a phase to our design process that focuses time on increasing the longevity/usability of the solutions we are presenting.
We update our internal office policy everyyear to try to become more sustainable and efficient as a studio