How can we practice design without harming the Planet?
How can designers build eco-conscious design practices? What exactly is designâs role in the climate movement? And what other communities and industries should we look to for the way forward?
Right now, we are taking more than we give from the Earth. The way weâre working through the worldâs resources is unsustainable and dangerous.
Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have released over 1.5 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide or CO2 into the earthâs atmosphere. In 2021, we were still pumping out around 37 billion more. Thatâs 50% more than in 2000 and almost three times as much as 50 years ago.
And itâs not just CO2. Weâre also pumping outgrowing volumes of other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide. Combining all our greenhouse gases, we emit 51 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents yearly. And emissions keep rising â but they need to get down to 0. Itâs not about saving the planet; itâs about keeping it habitable for all living creatures, including ourselves. Because with this speed at which things are changing, the future seems not bright for us.
To prevent the worst effects of climate change, we need to get to zero net greenhouse gas emissions in every sector of the economy within 50 years â and as the IPCC recently found, we need to be on a path to doing it in the next ten years. That means dealing with electricity, and the other 75% too.
Where do greenhouse gas emissions come from? Bill Gates breaks it down into five main categories â the grand challenges in stopping climate change.
Sustainable Design Strategies
Environmentally sustainable design (also called environmentally conscious design, eco-design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability.
âSustainable design is the approach to creating products and services that have considered the environmental, social, and economic impacts from the initial phase through to the end of life. EcoDesign is a core tool in the matrix of approaches that enables the Circular Economy.â
â Leyla Acaroglu, Quick Guide to Sustainable Design Strategies
The sustainable design intends to âeliminate negative environmental impact through skillful, sensitive design.â Manifestations of sustainable design require renewable resources and innovation to impact the environment minimally and connect people with the natural environment.
âHuman beings donât have a pollution problem; they have a design problem. If humans were to devise products, tools, furniture, homes, factories, and cities more intelligently from the start, they wouldnât even need to think in terms of waste, contamination, or scarcity. Good design would allow for abundance, endless reuse, and pleasure.â
â The Upcycle by authors Michael Braungart and William McDonough, 2013.
Design-related decisions are happening everywhere daily, impacting âsustainable developmentâ or provisioning for the needs of future generations of life on earth. Sustainability and design are intimately linked. Quite simply, our future is designed.
The term âdesignâ is here used to refer to practices applied to making products and services, as well as business and innovation strategies â all of which inform sustainability. Sustainability can be considered the property of continuance; that is, what is sustainable can be continued.
Leyla Acaroglu: Paper beats plastic? How to Rethink Environmental Folklore
Most of us want to do the right thing regarding the environment. But things arenât as simple as opting for the paper bag, says sustainability strategist Leyla Acaroglu. This is a bold call for us to let go of tightly-held green myths and think more about creating systems and products that ease the strain on the planet.
Victor Papane says design must be revolutionary and radical to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive.
A well-quoted statistic says around 80% of the ecological impacts of a product are locked in at the design phase. If you look at the entire life cycle of a product and its potential impacts, be it in the manufacturing or at the end-of-life stage, the impacts are inadvertently decided and thus embedded in the product by the designers at the design decision-making stage.
In the early 1990s, to reduce the overall human health and environmental impact of a product, process, or service, where impacts are considered across its life cycle, Anneke van Waesberghe, with her East Meets West, not-for-profit organization, wrote the initial guidelines for Design for the Environment (DfE).
It began as an innovative, non-regulatory initiative to help companies consider human health, environmental and economic effects of chemicals and technologies, and product performance when designing and manufacturing commercial products and processes.
It became a global movement targeting design initiatives and incorporating environmental motives to improve product design to minimize health and environmental impacts by incorporating it from the design stage to the manufacturing process.
The DfE strategy aims to improve technology and design tactics to expand the scope of products. By incorporating eco-efficiency into design tactics, DfE considers the entire life-cycle of the product, while still making products usable but minimizing resource use.
The critical focus of DfE is to minimize the environmental cost to consumers while still focusing on the product's life-cycle framework. By balancing customer needs and environmental and social impacts, DfE aims to âimprove the product use experience both for consumers and producers, while minimally impacting the environment.â
DfE studied the challenges posed to human and environmental health within industry sectors to accomplish this mission. Different software tools have been developed to assist designers in finding optimized products or processes/services.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least shortly, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. â Carl Sagan, Astronomer, Planetary Scientist, Cosmologist
This makes some uncomfortable, but design and product development teams are responsible for the decisions they make when contemplating, prototyping, and ultimately producing a product.
We must understand the outcomes of our actions. Think before design and consume. Everything we do individually, counts. Every choice we make has an impact on the planet. While this impact seems small individually, when you add everyone up and zoom out, the picture starts to look very different.
Respecting the earth is choosing to understand the gravity of our actions, and to think about the planet we stand on when weâre making them.
There is no Planet B. Now, it is up to you and all of us to preserve and protect this beauty, our only home, one small step at a time.
Happy Earth Day. đ Explore unique Sounds of Earthâs collection of ambient sounds of nature around the globe, which will help you relax, meditate, and raise awareness for the protection and restoration of our ecosystems.
â Thanks for reading.
Iâm Bora, an independent designer exploring practical design knowledge, principles, design thinking frameworks, cognitive biases, and how to use design for good.
As designers, by expanding our knowledge, we can increase our impact.
