Sustainability: A Sketch for Designers

One of the most elegant ways to forward market greening is to hold each design against a sustainability checklist -- breaking difficult and intertwined systems down into actionable choices. This simple step takes the uncertainty out of the process and frees the designer up to do the thing they do best -- create. If you're new to sustainability, we highly recommend taking the one day (or two evening) seminar offered here in the Upper Midwest by the Alliance for Sustainability.

Alliance for Sustainability
(At the Hillel Center -- University of Minnesota)
1521 University Ave. SE -- Minneapolis, MN 55414
Phone: 612-331-1099
http://www.afors.org

For those of you eager to get started, though we strongly recommend taking the full seminar to get a true understanding of the interrelated nature of sustainability, here's a primer with a few links geared to the design process pointing you in a positive direction. This list is literally a sketch, and has been highly simplified. This is NOT the FULL story, it is simply a TASTE of what can be done when you recalibrate your creative machine.

Overview of sustainability...
http://www.naturalstep.org
http://www.naturalstep.ca

The big, big picture...
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing:
1. concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust;
2. concentrations of substances produced by society;
3. degradation by physical means; and, in that society,
4. human needs are met worldwide.

The big picture through a designer's eye:

1) What we TAKE (mined materials, fossil fuels, LCA) http://www.indes.net/eco-ref http://www.eere.energy.gov http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/lcaccess > It takes 95% less energy to make an aluminum can from recycled cans, than from virgin ore.

2) What we MAKE (materials, manufacture, LCA) http://www.indes.net/eco-ref http://www.pneac.org http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/lcaccess http://www.epa.gov/wastewise > Nearly 30% of U.S. municipal waste is packaging.

3) What we BREAK (ecosystem impact, LCA) http://www.indes.net/eco-ref http://www.epa.gov/ORD/NRMRL/lcaccess http://www.environmentaldefense.org http://ceres.org > 84% of the trees cut in the State of Minnesota go for paper products and strand board. Over 40% of the total U.S. municipal waste composition by substrate is paper products and wood.

4) What we NEED (stakeholder empowerment) http://www.fairtradefederation.com http://ceres.org http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev > Over 10% of the waste collected in the U.S. is food. One third of all human deaths are poverty-related (starvation, no safe drinking water). Obesity related illness is one of the primary causes of death in the U.S.