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quarterly newsletter For inspection copies,
Reader Comments "A couple of years ago I attended your discussion at Emily Carr University about your book the Designers Atlas of Sustainability. I was so inspired; you’ve had a lasting effect on me." - Amanda Fetterly spacer text
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Newsletter August 2009 The theme of this newlestter is “lifecycles,” inspired partly by discussions on the sustainable design teaching list. Lifecycle and eco-design tools have been the single most talked-about subject so far. If you have anything to add on the topics covered below, please get in touch (ann at designers-atlas dot net). Pass the newsletter on to anyone who might be interested. Subscribe in the column to the left. Thanks for reading, Feature: Book review: Teaching tools - Downloadable slides: (1) materials in a pair of jeans & (2) Lifecycle of a waffle iron - Eco Literacy teach-in for designers This article describes a range of now “classic” LCA tools along with more recent offerings, including attempts to “open source” some aspects of LCA. Lifecycle Assessment is an approach to design that tries to take a product or building's entire lifecycle into account at the time of conceptual design to try to reduce environmental impacts throughout. The "lifecycle" starts with the initial designer ideas and includes harvesting materials, manufacture, packaging, distribution, use, and end-of-life.
Joel Makower recently highlighted the resurgence of Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) as a strategic and supply chain management tool, but he didn't mention some of the newer LCA/Eco-design tools aimed more specifically at designers. For those new to LCA, Makower references an interesting (downloadable) Deloitte report that highlights the strategic role of LCA. architecture/buildings Autodesk, a company known for Building Information Management systems, also offers a "Guide to Sustainable Design for Architecture, Engineering & Construction" which is tied to a 6 stage "lifecycle" that covers: requirements development, conceptualization, design, implementation docs, construction , own/operate/sell. I've asked before, but will ask again here...am I missing anything on the architecture side?
products US-based Sustainable Minds bills itself as web-based software that, as a design decision support tool, targets the earliest stages of design. Industrial designers who worked on the Okala Design Guide are involved in the development of this software and probably behind its emphasis on being designer-friendly. Greenfly is another online ecodesign support tool, developed in Australia, which also targets designers specifically and aims to inform new product development. The team there includes contributors who pioneered the successful ecoredesign program at RMIT's Centre for Design. There’s also a push toward making the data to support LCA more accessible, which parallels efforts to share other environmentally positive “intellectual property” through efforts such as Greenxchange. Two examples of “open” LCA are OpenLCA and Earthster a few more LCA resources: From the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency...the guide “Better by Design” (undated?) combines a look at environmental impacts with inspiration from the natural world to innovate. The report contains useful appendices covering area such as restricted materaisl (such as asbestos, certain pigments, textile treatments, wood preservative etc.), alternative flame retardents, eco labelling systems, plastics labeling and so forth. The web site also offers a series of short info sheets on issues such as fasteners, power, chemical and materials as well as successful case studies. Special thanks to contributors to this compendium: Curt Macnamara and Simon Orafferty Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable by Nathan Shedroff (Rosenfeld Media 2009)
There is much to like in Nathan Shedroff’s new book, Design is the Problem, which is a survey of sustainable design approaches that can be applied across the lifecycle of products. Shedroff also provides contextual and background information about sustainable design in a business context. The book succeeds at covering a wide range of concepts relevant to a designer or business person who wants to learn about sustainable design. In reviewing the book I noticed three main things about it: – It’s a really useful survey of methods and approaches. – The style of the book may affect how you can use it. – There’s an interesting tension running under the surface. In this review I look at these three aspects more closely. Good Survey In looking at both approaches to sustainability generally (for example, what it is, how it’s measured) and at methods (such as design for efficiency, buying local, or design for disassembly) Shedroff usefully goes further than the norm. For example, he goes beyond environmental concerns to look at social and economic indicators for sustainability. From an activist standpoint, Shedroff includes a remarkably interesting list of criteria used in social investment screening, noting that all of the issues “become the focus of protest at some point.” Here is yet another angle on the value of activism to design! Shedroff also goes beyond the “three Rs” (reduce, reuse and recycle) to consider “Restore” in which he discusses systems. He closes with a section on “Process” which also starts to weave together and support some of the previous, more check-listy sections, by looking at innovation, development, and corporate reporting of results. Another good aspect of the book is Shedroff’s frank, conversational tone, reminding readers that there are no easy answers to difficult challenges. His range of examples also covers many different kinds of products, such as tools, garments, electronics, vehicles, food, luggage and so forth. Where he succeeds best is in encouraging readers to step back and see systems, bigger questions and contexts, while tying these ideas to relevant user/customer experiences.
The Style of the book The book’s tone and content clearly make it the writing equivalent to “business casual” attire. Perhaps the author and publisher thought this stance would be compromised by detailed notes and references, but for whatever reason, sources for many of the book’s assertions are weak and potentially compromise the book’s usefulness. As an author myself I know how difficult it is to balance “notation” with the flow of reading, to decide which assertions require notation, and to manage and accurately credit sources. In the end it is always difficult to get the balance right and ultimately it depends on the readers. A few examples illustrate this issue. Consider the section on usability, where the author presents a diagram on the levels of meaning and follows it with a list of the 15 core meaning attributes. No source for these is given. In discussing product take-back programs, Shedroff asserts, “the packaging redesign (and material savings) that was necessary under these conditions [in Germany] was duplicated in places even without the same taxes and laws.” But there is no source to indicate what “places” these might be. In the disassembly section there is a list of techniques but no sources for any of them or for the general topic of disassembly. A list of general resources at the end of the book, though useful, doesn't correspond to chapters (such as “disassembly”) in a way that would help the reader further explore the topic. For readers seeking general inspiration, the lack of notes and sources is not an issue. But the problem is that the book will serve most readers as a “reference.” If I’m a practicing designer and I want to investigate the packaging or disassembly further, I have to start from scratch. Yet surely Shedroff had sources that he used to develop these sections of the book. Why not share them? If there aren’t many sources (which I suspect is sometimes the case) then it’s also helpful for the reader to know. Similarly if I’m teaching or if I’m a student, I’d like to have more evidence with which to follow up the various claims and methods described in the book. As Shedroff himself acknowledges, there is still lot of debate around sustainability and that makes evidence more important. The index is also weak for a book that is meant to serve as a reference. For example, although watches are mentioned, “watch” is not in the index. Similarly snap-fit and snap-on issues are mentioned, but “snap” is not in the index. The searchable, PDF version of the book solves the problem and is included with the purchase of the paperback…but you have to be at your computer to use it. On the good side the book has short “chapters” presented in a clear, well-organized table of contents that make the methods and approaches themselves easy to find.
Interesting tension From an activist perspective, Shedroff’s book is perhaps most interesting for how it tries to navigate the tension between what businesses can do and what actually needs to be done. Businesses can be activists in the way they use design. But there is a gap where the capacity (and willingness?) of businesses to advocate or act on sustainability ends and the interests and mechanisms of wider society are necessary (democracy, social movements, etc.). This tension manifests itself in the book, particularly in the contrast between the beginning and ending, which are by turns alarmist and revolutionary, and the central core of the book. At the beginning we find community resiliency compared with terrorism and rhetorical questions about reducing the world’s population in any socially acceptable way. Yet the core of the book carries the message: “we must change—but not too much.” Shedroff comments that, “getting too far [ahead] of your customers or the market can be more disastrous than being too far behind.” Case studies such as Cliff Bar and Apple Computer highlight how the companies undertake sustainability work, but covertly, to avoid “castigation from environmental groups.” In a BP case study Shedroff presents the lesson as “be ready to offer more information,” a recommendation quite far from the transparency that most public agencies and activists would prefer (consider the green chemistry movement). The book also resists investigating lifestyle changes even when they are quite obvious—do without a certain material, don’t eat a certain food. In these cases Shedroff tries to stick with the science of the comparison rather than stepping back to the societal level. For example in a discussion of buying locally, he presents the case of lamb and the counterintuitive result that “lamb grown in New Zealand and shipped to England had a lower environmental footprint than lamb raised in England.” What about not eating lamb? In laying out the scope of problems and the systems view, Shedroff seems to argue for transformation. He wants to see business, and designers within business, as central change agents, but the “stop short” nature of the book, which counsels reform, shows how limited businesses ultimately are. Emerging “social” elements (such as lifestyle changes, social enterprise, social innovation, and social movements) will probably ultimately drive transformation and outpace what business alone can do. Positive Recommendation I like Shedroff’s book as a very useful collection of information in one place. I wish he had been more thorough in his notation and bolder with respect to the business context. But perhaps we can see the book as trying to meet people where they are and take them forward. That’s a good step. Resource: Film, “Manufactured Landscapes”
What the producers say about it: “MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as “stunning” or “beautiful,” and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them. The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.” Downloadable slides
For this jeans slide (two versions), the text explains how the jeans illustrate the problem of recycling (diagram found on page 40-41). In the book I explain the fact that nature does not simply recycle. Nature adds value to material by using the sun's energy to concentrate simple ingredients and structure them to make them useful (upcycling). The jeans text then reads: "Design is usually an activity of unstructuring and deconcentrating energy and materials. Although we may argue that we use "pure" or "natural" materials, which are no doubt helpful in recycling efforts, the result of mass production is to sperad these materials globallly, often into places where they would not otherwise occur, where there is no mechanism to collect or reuse them. For example, a pair of jeans draws together materials from all over the world. Synthetic indigo comes from Germany, pumice for stonewahsing comes from Turkey. Cotton for denim comes from Benin and coton pocketing comes from Pakistan. Polyester fiber for thread comes from Japan and copper for fastneers comes from Namibia and Australia. Bound together in a pair of jeans, these diverse materials are deposted in European stores. The jeans represent the long process in which raw materials (cotton copper, poyester) lose their original structure and concentration, their potential, and get spread in less useful forms around the globe. Our current human systems offer no practical way to structure ans concentrate the materials from billions of pairs of jeans."
The text to accompany this slide, "lifecycle of an $18 waffle iron," discusses the general concept of Lifecycle approaches (page 38-39): "From a building to a small electronic device to a brochure, the general outline of a product life cycle is the same. From a designer's perspective, it is important to recognize that the life cycle starts with the idea of concept for the design. Next commes the collection and shaping of materials. Some people will choose to look as far back as the harvesting and transfer of raw materials; others will choose to consider only the processing and assembly of refined materials. Typically, after assemply there is some level of packaging and distribution. Once the end consumer begins to use he artifact, the "use phase" of the life cycle begins. The term "end-of-life" often is used to describe the last phase of the cycle, when the product falls out of use or is discarded. Beyond the life cycle, it's also helpful to understand each artifact as part of a system--both a natural system and a human system. We will explore this concept further in the upcoming chapters." If you like these, get the book and check out more text and images. Sign up for the newsletter for the next slides.  The 2012 Imperative Teach-in will occur on October 12th at the V&A in London and on-line by live Internet broadcast. All design disciplines are welcome to participate. Faculty and students are also invited to organize a decentralized Teach-in on the 13th of October at their own institutions. The event, organized by my colleague Jody Boehnert, is intended as a step on the road to helping design education move quickly to respond to urgent environmental pressures. |
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