Environmental Design Predicaments
Objective: To what extent do you think designers are trapped in an environmental design predicament? Do you believe social entrepreneurship could be useful in easing the predicament, or is it a nice-sounding but futile gesture? Could the kind of culture jamming work you've been doing on project #3 help ease the predicament, and are there ways to combine culture jamming with social entrepreneurship? What kinds of other social interventions and redesigns might substantially ease designers' predicament?
Paper summary: For the most part, designers create new products to generate a profit, so they tend to market their products as catalysts to a better lifestyle. Because of this, products tend to exhibit themes such as aesthetic appeal and efficiency. However, as designers work towards creating their products to that standard, they end up sacrificing green and environmentally friendly methods and use artificial materials or processes that are harmful to the Earth. This process is called an "environmental design predicament." In this essay, I discuss whether it is better in the long run to create environmentally-friendly products that are more expensive to produce, or create cheap products that are harmful to the environment.
Title: Easing Environmental Design Predicaments
Due Date: November 21, 2007
Word Count: 1,551
In our society, designers can be defined as those who create a new idea, concept, or redesign, and guide a team towards bringing the proposal to life. Generally, designers do their job to make a profit and create luxurious lifestyles, though oftentimes their ideas and social redesigns are used to benefit society as a whole or even raise money for non-profit organizations and relief causes. Designers often market their products as a catalyst for a better standard of living, so these products tend to exhibit themes such as aesthetic appeal, ease of use, convenience, and efficiency. Oftentimes, however, in an attempt to make their products appealing to the general public, designers sacrifice green, environmentally friendly methods and natural products for artificial materials and other substances that are bad for the Earth. In making these decisions, designers are putting themselves into an “environmental design predicament.” They have to make a choice – would it be better in the long run to create more environmentally-friendly products, or to generate a bigger profit while slowly destroying the planet in the process? In this case, social entrepreneurship could be useful in helping to solve the problem, as entrepreneurs have the skill set which allows them to find a social problem, and then create a new design to implement a change. Another solution to the predicament is to create new products and systems that are aimed towards showing society and culture the problems we face, by bringing them to the forefront of the design ideas. Some other solutions can range from setting caps on carbon emissions on cars and implementing alternate energy sources to greener product packaging and reducing production waste and pollution.
Designers are, to a large extent, becoming more and more trapped in environmental design predicaments. One of the biggest problems is outdoor air pollution. In 1990, car emissions from cars accounted for 72% of nitrogen oxides and 52% of reactive hydrocarbons, which are the main ingredients in smog (Bluejay, 2006). According to the World Health Organization, air pollution causes over 360,000 deaths in urban areas because of the steady increase of factories and vehicles (WHO, 2005). These release dangerous gases and particles into the air, causing smog, which enters the lungs and creates respiratory problems. Designers are attempting to solve the problem of air pollution by replacing solid fuels, such as wood and coal, with cleaner and more efficient usage. Also, the creation of new hybrid cars and fuel-cell powered transportation vehicles helps to promote clean air. A solution is to use hybrid vehicles, which encompass the range of plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cells, as well as biofuels, such as ethanol. When used in fuel-cell cars, hydrogen fuel proves to be two to three times more efficient, but both the car and fuels are too expensive for ordinary consumers to buy, so the designers will not be able to appeal to most of the general public (Morris, 2004).
This is why more companies choose to use renewable biofuels. Biofuels can be created from vegetable oils or sugars, and enough of it exists to support about 50 billion gallons of gas consumption annually, which is a significant chunk of the 130 billion gallons being used per year (Morris, 2004). Changing the system to ethanol fuel would be much easier than switching over to hydrogen fuel, as consumers can use the tank already existing in their cars. However, many designers focus on creating newer and fancier gas-powered cars, which end up having a negative impact on the environment. This is why while the aforementioned are good proposals, which would cut down on air pollution caused by automobiles, the rate at which society is purchasing new automobiles and companies are pumping out fresh cars is increasing much more than the use of solid fuels is decreasing.
Another large design predicament is the use of products made from non-biodegradable instead of environmentally-friendly matter. Over 99 million pounds of plastic trash is dumped into the ocean every year. These waste products include Styrofoam pellets, plastic bags, and plastic bands, which are dangerous for animals and often strangle and drown them. Styrofoam accounts for about 1,369 tons of our garbage per day, which is a lot, considering that Styrofoam is mostly made of air. It takes up 25-30% of our landfills and takes about 500 years to break down (Kremer, 2003). Styrofoam is hard to get rid of through other means, such as burning, as it releases over 90 different chemicals that are dangerous to our health. The biggest problem that causes the use of a lot of Styrofoam is the fact that Americans like disposable products for convenience. For example, take-out is usually provided in Styrofoam containers, which are promptly thrown away after the food is eaten. Also, disposable cups and plates are often made out of Styrofoam, which add a lot to our landfills. Designers have tried to create new ways to reuse Styrofoam, such as in bean-bag chairs and packaging fillers, as well as alternatives such as Eco-Foam, which is made from corn starch and it 100% biodegradable. At the same time, however, other designers are creating new items out of Styrofoam, or using Styrofoam to package their products. This puts them in a predicament, because while some designers are trying to help the environment by using other materials, other designers are creating fragile products that need to be protected in Styrofoam when they’re packaged. This also applies to graphic designers, who design fancy, expensive pamphlets and posters that waste precious resources, and are ultimately thrown away in the end.
I believe that social entrepreneurship would be useful in helping to ease this design predicament. The goal of a social entrepreneur is to generate a social impact, such as building new housing for the homeless, creating a cleaner environment, improving health care and education, and figuring our solutions to solve other issues and ultimately establishing new ways to improve the world (Dees. 2003). In this sense, social entrepreneurs could work with designers to point out factors in their designs that might harm the environment (McLean and Peredo, 2005). Then, they could guide them to discovering new methods and greener building habits. Also, social entrepreneurs could find problems with old products and improve upon them to help promote a better environment.
Another solution to help ease the design predicament is to create products that teach society the dangers that threaten the environment, also known as “culture jamming” work. This pertains to a method of designing by implementing a “bopper” into products that teach the consumers a lesson. For example, an idea would be to create a system that would punish the user when they forget to turn the lights off in their home. The user would wear a patch sewn into their underwear that would shock them after they left their lights on for an extended period of time. This method would hopefully encourage the consumer to remember to turn off their lights and save electricity in the future. Other ideas for culture jamming products will hopefully help to promote environmental awareness and pave the way for an overall improvement in the way we treat the Earth.
A possible solution is to look towards social interventions and redesigns to try and ease the predicament. The social intervention that I believe would be the most beneficial is to improve the way we educate students about the environment from the bottom up. This follows the idea that habits gained as a younger age would stay with them as they grew up. For example, students in K-12 schools learn that it is bad to litter and what garbage does to the environment, but real hands on experience would be more beneficial to the earth. One way is to encourage recycling at schools more then it previously has been enforced. The federal government can provide schools with a little more money to pay for janitors to spend time going through the garbage to see if there are any recyclable glasses or plastic bottles and can in the trash. For each day that the recycling thrown away in the garbage instead of the recycling is above a set level, the students could gain a point. The points would add up and over a span of time, if the students earn a certain number of points, and then they could get a reward. This would hopefully help to encourage students to use recycling bins for their recyclables, instead of tossing them into the trash cans.
Another intervention is to have designers create packaging out of biodegradable materials. This way, there will be less garbage taking up space in our landfills. Also, the government could also raise the taxes for buying a product packaged in materials that are not environmentally friendly. This would encourage consumers to go the products that are better for the planet, and in the long run, designers would aim to create more environmentally-friendly packaging.
Through these solutions and redesigns, designers would be guided out of their predicament and turn towards creating more environmentally-friendly products. In turn, this would lead to an increase in well-designed products that have the benefit of helping the environment. This will do a lot of good for the planet, prevent Earth from becoming polluted and keep it beautiful for centuries to come.
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© Copyright 2007
Tiffany Hu
Product Design and Innovation 2011
