Can Eco Friendly Design Be Trendy
Last winter, to save time on cooking, I decided to try out a weekly soup subscription service. I received my deliveries in this awesome silver and blue bubble insulation packaging, and was immediately fascinated with it. My soup subscription service described it as "recyclable materials" to which I was highly skeptical. In my mind's eye this did not fit the notion of a "sustainable material"...it’s a shiny metallic plastic that does not occur naturally in nature, so how could it be sustainable? After digging a little, I learned that it was made from "recycled FDA approved plastic and reusable foil. I’m still trying to learn more about this material, but my skepticism got me thinking about what sustainability could or should look like. Since last winter, I've saved twelve weeks worth of silver bubble packaging from my soup subscription, in the hopes of finding a project to use it on.
Fast forward to this fall, when I was I was asked to choose and object, make it more or less beautiful and explain my reasoning. This was for a project that was about addressing notions of "beauty". I began thinking about consumer values in relation to beauty. I thought back to my own prejudices when I first started working as a fashion designer. Fashion is a tough industry with lots of ups and downs along the road to finding your ideal job. In order to pay bills and build my resume, I would often taken on jobs where I was required to design clothing that did not fall in line with my aesthetic preferences. It seemed like a compromise at first, but over time I grew to find joy in the idea of creating something that could make someone else happy. As a designer, I think this is a powerful asset.
So back to the beauty assignment. Eco-friendly design is a key design criteria for me. I believe that regardless of what market or type of consumer a product is being targeted to, it can and should be made with environmental and human health (meaning no toxic materials or processes) as given design criteria. In looking at the current landscape for sustainable products I’ve noticed that in terms of aesthetic appeal, the products all seem to be targeted to the same consumer, while the consumers with the potential for having the largest impact on reducing landfill build up are largely being ignored. I suppose this is largely because designers tend to design for themselves, and perhaps the vast majority of designers who are driven by "sustainable values" tend to have a similar aesthetic. Or perhaps because as a culture, we tend to associate certain types of materials and aesthetics with sustainability. I'm not 100% sure. I making assumptions here, but this topic definitely requires some further exploration. Either way, I believe that if we are truly serious about making a profound impact on saving the planet, we need to start looking more at addressing the needs of the trend-driven consumer who tends to consume the most.
So for my “beauty” project, I decided to look beyond my own notion of beauty and ideas about what an eco- friendly product should look like. I began thinking about the values of the trend driven consumer. The consumer who wants the shiny, of the moment thing that is often disposable, and with regular use is likely to not last very long. Rather than creating something that was more or less beautiful, I used the amazing silver recyclable packaging material that I'd been collecting, to create something that I hope would be of equal aesthetic appeal to my trend-driven consumers. The main idea being that the product is disposable, so the material(s) should also be disposable, by either being biodegradable ( biological nutrient) or able to be recycled into new things (technical nutrient).
Materials used were: recycled plastic packaging, cotton and aluminum zipper, linen lining and 100% wool felt padding.