Weblog Consulting Register Login Subscribe to Free Influx Emails Join our Facebook Group Follow us on Twitter Branding Street Cred Technology Lifestyle Style Entertainment Interviews Art InfluxTV Map Widgets RSS — All Subjects RSS — More Feeds

Search

Advanced Search

Contact Privacy Policy

Coca-Cola has announced it's making chairs out of old PET bottles and aluminum cans and instead of giving these chairs away to high schools in return for vending rights, it's decided to sell them to the unhappy hipster crowd. Interestingly this is just one item from Coke's line of "sustainable goods" that includes pens, jackets, etc.



On the surface it seems like great PR directed at those worried about those islands of plastic in the Atlantic and Pacific because Coke can point to these products as living proof of its pursuit of the recycling cause. The reality is that the products reuse fraction of the PET that Coke produces in its many product lines worldwide.

What's really needed is something that's beyond a token effort- soft drink and bottled water players need to come together and sort this problem out because it isn't going away anytime soon.

It's likely to get worse and a few chairs aren't going to really change the minds of those who've been alarmed by Chris Jordan's photographs of birds in the Pacific.

Plastic bottles are a big problem and if the players are now finding themselves competing with tap water. So other than using PR spin to slam the quality of local tap water, a dangerous ploy since most of them use tap water for their water, they need to deal with plastic.

How about banding together and creating a market for used PET and using their marketing skills to persuade brands to use it and consumers to buy it? One small part of this effort could be a line of products, like Coke has done, but containing used PET from all the players in the business.

This would be a big shift away from creating a PR spin to benefit a single corporate entity that has very little overall impact to something much bigger in scale that could be a game changer.


Posted by Ed Cotton John Thackara was as provocative as ever in his recent talk given to the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Thackara believes that the world's creative people need to face up to the realities of sustainability and not just pay lip service to the concept. He stated that the idea of "new" is fast going to become old, and that the brains of the creative world need to be focused on how we get the most out of what we already have.

"The transition towards sustainability is not about messages, it's about activity. It’s not about proclamations, it’s about practices.

Many professional designers are in the representation business, so their default response in recent times has been to design a poster about sustainability. Or maybe a website filled with green things to buy.

But projecting more signals into an already cluttered environment is like throwing confetti into a snowstorm.

Advertising folk respond to what they call “the clutter problem” by adding to it.

Social media? They're part of the clutter conundrum too. Online communications are a mode of publication, not of conversation. The number of bloggers is growing at 35%; the number of people using the internet is growing at 10%. Do the math!

Emitting messages, however clever and evocative they may be, is not the same as being with real people, in real places, who are changing their lived material reality.

That's why I have a radical proposal: Consider speaking your words in a place rather than pressing "send""

Ok, I seems like I just broke the "send" rule, but stay tuned for more thoughts on real conversations.


Posted by Ed Cotton Puma has stolen a march on their bigger rivals by coming out with an interesting initiative around packaging. 

By working with Yves Behar's, Fuseproject, Puma has come up with a nifty solution to reduce much of the waste from shoe packaging.



It's highly likely shoe production has a bigger environmental impact than boxes, but you've got to start somewhere and it's smart to tackle an overlooked area.


Posted by Ed Cotton We've been sold on the whole idea that we need a constant supply of the latest and greatest.

Whether it's gadgets or clothing, many of us seemingly don't want to get caught with last year's model.

What if there was a new way to buy and a story based on longevity and durability?

Howie's has made a good attempt to do this with its Hand-Me-Down line of clothing and bags.

"We live in times of limited resources but unlimited desire to consume them. The answer though is real simple: to consume less as a consumer; to make a better designed product as a manufacturer.

Going forward we will have to take more responsibility for our consumption. The manufacturer and the consumer will both have to share that responsibility.

We live in interesting times.

From where we stand as a manufacturer, a product that keeps working for longer uses less-resources in the end. The key ingredients to this are quality and good design.

To make something well, you know, the best you can do, means going that extra mile. Every stitch, every zip, every little feature considered. The weakest points made strong. Then, and only then, can we say that we have fully understood the responsibility of making something.

This product is guaranteed for a minimum of 10 years from the date of original purchase. The chances are it will last a good deal longer than that. So now you have to decide whom you’d like to hand this product down to? Err??"

Can and will others follow?

Posted by Ed Cotton Last weekend's Financial Times has a good piece written by the editor of Country Life, giving us ten ways in which homes are going to change. Obviously, this refers mainly to homes for the wealthy..

Here's the list in brief..

1. More privacy because of increasing populations
2. Greener- less reliant on cars- the creation of communities that allow more walking
3. A return to traditional ways of building- rubble will be used, not thrown away
4. People will grow their own
5. Plastics will be ruled out and become like smoking and fatty fooods
6. A return to simple pleasures-small dinner parties, warn out couches, natural materials- the end of designer minimalism
7. Nature becomes more precious- so homes will blend the inside with the outside
8. Computers will run homes
9. Homes will become centers of interest and intellectual pursuit- it will not be about showing off- think of a lab as the next important room

Clearly, much of this stuff has been with us for years, but clearly the changing economy is going to be forcing this through at a faster pacer. Anyone in the home/housing business is going to need to take action.

One big example is Ikea, who has recently been pushing its sustainability policy pretty hard

Posted by Ed Cotton Stiven Kerestegian is a sustainable designer who lives in the South of Chile where he is involved in several projects most of them related to sustainable design. He's also a partner in a full service production and design studio in Santiago and a sustainable product company Essustainable.

1. Briefly describe your background?

My background is in industrial design but I have worked in almost every related field from hardware design for Microsoft to conceptual or "innovation" design for Kodak to brand, packaging and web UI design for startups. Today, the projects I take on are as diverse as the market but more and more, clients reach out to me because they have an interest  in sustainable or "green" design.

2. Sustainable Design is a current buzzword, how do you interpret it?

The concept has been around for a while. Victor Papanek and Bucky Fuller were among the first to start pushing for more responsible solutions to our everyday needs not because they were hard core environmentalist but because they realized that sustainable design, or design that uses nature as the developmental model is far superior especially as you look at long term solutions. Today I consider sustainable design that which incorporates social and environmental aspects holistically into the design process. The inclusion of these variables triggers unforeseeable innovations and cost savings.

Two key things are happening today that have triggered the green or sustainability movement, corporations are seeing value in more sustainable approaches and informed consumers are demanding more responsible products

3. How difficult is it for designers to think about sustainability? How do they know their actions are going to produce positive results?

The difficult part is getting informed you know, not only being on top of all the latest materials and processes etc., but  considering a products complete life cycle into your design process is an essential aspect of sustainable design so this means more research in related areas beyond just form, function and experience. The great part is that it brings much more meaning to what we do as designers because we can measure results beyond just financial success, we can see social and environmental contributions.

4. Shouldn't we be producing better products that last longer or even encourage people to get more use out of old things, rather than producing new stuff all the time?

Yes, having fewer but better things would help but the problem we have today is not just that we are making and using too many unnecessary products, it's that we are making and using them in ways that are destructive to us and our environment. I don't think we have to stop being consumers, we just need to implement more sustainable models like the service model. The fun part is that we as designers get to redesign everything, we get to re-think the way we do most things and this needs to happen now, in our generation.

5. Consumers are addicted to the shiny and new, it's part of the thrill of consumption. How could we encourage consumers to think about this and should we?

I think that slowly but surely we are all starting to realize that good design is inherently "sustainable" and corporations and consumers will evolve their understanding of what is good design and what is desirable. The only reason why we need to consume less is because most of our consumption is unhealthy but if we can design and manufacture healthy products that are beneficial to us and our environment, then there would be a reason to encourage consumption.



Posted by Ed Cotton