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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Ecoredesign

Reflection - "Design for Life"

Design for Life is a competition style television show which pits designers against each with the goal of working with Phillipe Starck. I will reflect on Episode 5 of the series.

I have watched the first few episodes of the series before, so I knew what to expect from the episode. What I did not expect was my own emotional reaction to what occured on screen. I must admit, I had a wry smile on my face when watching, as the stresses and expectations thrust upon the competitors parallelled what I experienced during every Studio project, even moreso this year, especially the PSS project. It was ironically comforting to see others share the experience which I and my fellow classmates have gone through.

What made me laugh was when, only days from the deadline for the modelmaker, Starck forced the students to completely redesign their product. This is precisely what my group experienced during the PSS assignment, in fact, it happened with every week after consultation. It is very disheartening to have this happen, but I understand that its just something you have to accept as part of the job. This notion was reaffirmed in the episode. What the show probably neglected to leave out were the minor and major panic attacks which can happen with a looming deadline and lots at stake, but they probably edited those out for broadcasting time restrictions.

One of the most important lessons I've learnt during my time studying Industrial Design is that you have to have tough skin and accept and take on board criticism, regardless of how much pain, stress and sleepless nights it may bring, because if you do not take these criticisms on board, you will fail, whether it is failing a class or failing to impress a client, these are simply things you cannot take personally and emotional and get on with project. This was the downfall of one of the competitors, who refused to detract from his plan and stubbornly pushed forward despite Starcks comments, resulting in his booting from the show.

Reflection - Recycling

What this series clearly demonstrates is the extensive and exhausive process involved in the recycling of materials.

While recycling is one solution to combat the consumption of natural resources, I don't believe it is the best. Even though modern recycling methods have allowed recycling to be a much more viable option, the amount of energy expended in the process is still quite large, and this causes further problems with global warming. While we're solving one problem, we're contributing to another.

While the recycling process is considerably less involving compared to the harvesting or manufacture of virgin materials, it is still a very large scale industrial process, one of which the benefits can be argued. In a recent factory tour, it was revealed to us that the manufacturer only ever dealt with virgin plastics, as a quality control issue. Quality control may be the case, but the waste material was then shipped to a customer in China, which reuses the material for their own products. Is this the best solution? I don't believe so considering the required transportation of material as well, they could possibly be using just as much embodied energy to use this 'recycled' virgin material as they would purchasing virgin material in the first place, only at a fraction of the cost. What does this mean? Most manufacturers don't even want to touch recycled plastics, regardless of how well it is processed.

There are some recycling processes that I do see benefits towards however, such as the recycling of paper, tetrapak and glass since there are so many highly consumable products which can be manufactured from these products. And that is where I think recycling has its benefits, in products which are highly consumable and have a short life, not products which require vast amounts of energy to produce such as those which are manufactured from aluminium, plastics and tinplate. What I have taken from this is that material selection should not just be how recyclable or available a material is, but I must also consider the process in which the material has been manufactured, in order to reduce its environmental impact as much as possible.

If it would be possible to design products which use these materials which I believe are 'clean' recyclable materials, then I will endevour to do so.

Image: Recycling Logo
http://www.howtosella.biz/image.axd?picture=2011%2F1%2Frecycling%2520logo.jpg

Reflection - "Six Degrees Could Change The World"

Six Degrees Could Change The World is a National Geographic documentary which addresses and illustrates the impact global warming has just how dire the current situation is.

I went into watching this documentary aware of the impacts global warming has on the Earth; melting ice caps, floods, heat waves etc. What this documentary brought to light was that we're already in the s**t, this made me angry. These 'symptoms' are already occuring, recent natural disasters in this year alone further support this, but what the documentary revealed is that the global warming situation is now at a state where it is accelerating, feeding off the resulting conditions at an alarming rate, and what are we doing about it!?

Governments posture about their concern about the environment, but with all these arguments surrounding emissions trading and carbon tax, the truth is, nothing is actually happening, and to me it seems this 'concern' is just in the interest of winning elections rather than combatting climate change. All they are doing is delaying progress, with time running out, I believe something drastic must be done fast, before the impacts of global warming become truly out of our control.

This documentary displays the fragile balance our Earth regulates, and that every aspect is linked and repurcussions in one area can effect the entire world. The most confronting line in the documentary was the realisation that a six degree decrease in global temperature is what caused the ice age. This is a scary proposition.

Now, I've liked dinosaurs ever since I was a child, and the progression and evolution of wildlife and the transformation of the landscape from that time till now has always intrigued me. The dominance and then extinction of the dinosaurs to the rise of mammals, to me, that's cool. The resilience of wildlife and ability to adapt to a changing environment is what fascinates me, and I have no doubt that even with global warming, the world will still be inhabited by fascinating creatures. What scares me, however, is whether or not humans will be able to survive in this kind of world. The truth of global warming, the way I see it, is it could be the cause of the extinction of humans.

This may be a dramatic take on the situation, but, you know, it may not be so far from the truth. We have to take every step possible to STOP this from happening, instead of simply delaying the seemingly inevitable, whether it be designing sustainable products to providing methods in which sustainable behaviours can be encouraged, there is no single solution, it must be an amalgamation of methods which must ultimately result us as a species actually giving a damn about what is actually happening.

Image: "Six Degrees Could Change The World" DVD Cover
http://cdn1.iofferphoto.com/img/item/153/635/735/ru6b41FlUxHacAE.jpg

Reflection - Sustainable Consumption

"The Story of Bottled Water" and "The Story of Electronics" by Anne Leonard are an expansion of her series which began with "The Story of Stuff", a confronting series which aims to expose to the regular consumer what happens behind the closed doors of consumer products and their manufacture.

These videos emphasised the massive deficiency we have as a modern society, our greedy consumer behaviours. I understand this even moreso after studying consumer behaviour in marketing and the type of techniques employed in order to entice customers into products. What marketing fails to teach and provide an understanding of, however, is the repurcussions of such an approach, and this is where Anne Leonard fills the gap.

The Story of Electronics struck a chord with me more than The Story of Bottled Water, as I hold a personal interest in electronics and gadgets of that nature, it also emphasized what I never liked about Apple products, their very short products cycles. Having said that, it is undoubtedly a successful business model, which competitors, sadly, are beginning to or have already adopted.

What I learnt from The Story of Electronics was something I was not completely aware of, and that was the toxic nature in which these products are disposed of in third world countries. this made me truly angry. We as Designers, and as human beings in general can not let something like this simply become an accepted fact, not only is it not sustainable, but the damage it is doing to our fellow human beings and should be enough to make anyone change their ways, but sadly, it isn't. We must have a whollistic approach to our designs and consider EVERY detail throughout development, from material choice, consumption/use, to disposal. We must ensure that we are being realistic with what we are trying to achieve and seek to ensure that what we are doing is sustainable, otherwise we simply just contribute to the problem.

The Story of Bottled Water just made me embarrased for being human. Truly. I've never believed in buying bottled water because, well, its just water, and the fact that there are hundreds of multi-billion dollar businesses in it makes me laugh. To be honest, it's pretty stupid, and the amount of waste and toxins released in the manufacture and distribution of a NATURALLY OCCURING product is outrageous considering people in less advantaged parts of the world work so much harder just to achieve safe drinkable water. People need to wake up and realise what they are really paying for and understand the kind of damage the are actually funding.

To summize, these videos made me angry, embarassed and guilty. This kind of behaviour must be changed in order for us to reduce our impact onto the world and more thought must be put into every single product be it the next high-tech gadget or even a bottle of water (or get rid of bottled water completely!).

Whether or not this is possible, well, you have to stay optimistic.

Image: United Nations Symbol for Sustainable Consumption by Helmut Langer
http://www.helmut-langer.eu/images/logo/logo-sc.gif

Friday, June 10, 2011

Dog Waste Product Service System - Reflection

This was easily the most involving project I have worked on so far. Not just from a time management or workload perspective, but also the scope of the project far exceeded any previous work. Envisioning the product as part of a system was, at the start, not such a bad prospect. I deeply underestimated the difficulty involved and it was quite an eye opening experience.

I never expected that a dog bin would be so involving to redesign, but after examing the scope of the system it was involved in and the surprising damage it does to the environment, I was convinced that this was definitely the direction our team should pursue and strive to improve. The fact that such a large amount of waste goes straight to landfill and that no previous large scale solutions had been investigated shocked me especially when you consider that dog waste is a natural biological by-product, so why should it be regarded in the same way as consumer product or other man-made waste when it can be utilized elsewhere, and the fact that this issue is not isolated in Australia, but in fact a worldwide occurance further exemplified its necessity. At least, that was my rationale when approaching this project.

We experienced many difficulties along this project, typical of any project of this manner. From styling and visual symantec issues to regulations and logistics. As mentioned previously, the scope was tremendous and dealing with such a large amount was one of our largest hurdles, as if we could not answer these logistical issues, our project would be undermined. I recall my group spending hours and late nights simply discussing how we're going to deal with so much poo.

We discussed integrating it into existing sewage and waste management, but that would never be viable as that would involve a more expensive installation of the bin as plumbing would be involved, as well as the issue of plastic bags entering into pipes. Fast water soluble bags were found to be a solution, but there was no garauntee that other users will not just use regular plastic bags. Discussions with Sydney Water further led us away from this solution, as they said while the current system could theoretically cope with the increased load, it would decrease the current efficiency of the system.

Our composting solution was also an interesting investigation. We found current examples of dog waste being used for composting, albeit on a smaller scale, but the fact that these examples often took months to produce results was a cause for concern. During our discussions we faced the problem of the 'shit literally piling up', as dog waste would be collected, but then be backed up as it would not be turned into compost fast enough to export.

Further research found we could process compost in 2 weeks using a ratio or 3 to 4 parts carbon (plant matter/paper etc) and 1 part nitrogen (dog waste). The next step would be to find enough carbon for us to reach that ratio. We found that in existing organic matter collection facilities which already produce compost. The amount produced by the Penrith facility (78,000 tonnes per annum) was more than enough for our purposes.

I find working in a group difficult, in most cases, as members dedication or input is often not what you expect from them, but my colleagues in this project were exceptional. We fed off each others ideas and respected each others inputs equally while at the same time providing necessary feedback to progress the project. As the deadline approached we rallied together to finish the project, it was a very positive experience.