Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable

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Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable

Written by:
Nathan Shedroff

Published by:
Rosenfeld Media

Summary:

Design makes a tremendous impact on the produced world in terms of usability, resources, understanding, and priorities. What we produce, how we serve customers and other stakeholders, and even how we understand how the world works is all affected by the design of models and solutions. Designers have an unprecedented opportunity to use their skills to make meaningful, sustainable change in the worldIn Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable, Nathan Shedroff examines how the endemic culture of design often creates unsustainable solutions, and shows how designers can bake sustainability into their design processes in order to produce more sustainable solutions.

Purchase at:
Amazon.com

Posted by The Living Principles Team on Tuesday, May 25, 2010

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When “Biodegradable” Isn’t

One of the topics we didn’t explain much in the book (there was no clear place to put it as it fell outside the main arc of the material) was why materials simply being “biodegradable” isn’t enough. The reason is in how landfills work.

Basically, nothing in a landfill decomposes much. Without sunlight, water, or organisms penetrating the tightly compressed material, there simply isn’t much hope of any decomposition. I’m attaching an image to illustrate this.

http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/sustainable-design/blog/when_biodegradable_isnt/

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by Nathan Shedroff posted on June 9, 2010, 5:15 am

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What about Water?

One of the increasingly important developments in sustainability is the focus on water. Some are even going so far as to develop “water footprint” calculators to track the use of this vital resource and draw greater attention to water use. To this end, here is another version of the lifecycle diagram in the book. Water was a component of the current diagram but it didn’t highlight or call-out water specifically and, instead, included it as part of the Materials use.

This version simply pulls-out Water to make it a more visible component of the dialog around lifecycle impacts.

http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/sustainable-design/blog/when_biodegradable_isnt/

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by Nathan Shedroff posted on June 9, 2010, 5:17 am

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