Sustainability

Not just an add-on but a core part of a project

When thinking about sustainability, I always remember what Leslie once pointed out: That sustainability should not be an add-on in the end of a project, but a core part in the whole development since the design brief. Sustainability is an emotional concern for me and I was very happy to hear from Leslie that most of the industry projects she works on in her consultancy relate to this issue. This gives me hope that big companies in our capitalist world notice their responsibility to save our planet.

This semester, we heard one lecture to the topic of sustainability, in which 4 pathways for a social and sustainable design were introduced:

1. Responsible production

2. System of use

3. Democratisation of design

4. Shifting away from the commercial context

Inspired by these aspects I took over the role to refine our sustainable business model in the ocean plastic group project. The core of our project is environmental protection; therefore it was a big concern for us that we create a business model that uses resources sustainably and supports nature preservation.

Sustainable business model for the ocean plastic group project (Hinger, 2019)

Creating a circular system of use of our product was the basic idea to develop a better future for people and planet.

This started with a responsible production, using recycled plastic waste to create fibres that could be used for the production of our phone case with pocket and bag. The main purpose of our phone case and bag design is to ensure people use their reusable bag instead of consuming single-use plastic bags. Our product would help consumers to make the right choice, because having the bag always with them would be a convenient solution. We intend to even create a reward system to encourage reuse of our bag. Whenever consumers would bring their bag to cooperating supermarkets a percentage of their shopping value would get donated to an ocean clean-up company. Of course, we had to consider the lifecycle of a phone case as well. With an average lifetime of a phone of two years and average need of a bag every third day, we estimated to save 240 single use bags. At the end of its lifecycle the phone case and bag should close the circle and be recycled to become the resources for new products again.

When designing our solution, we always had the consumer needs in focus and based on a survey about which item people take with them when leaving the house, we chose the phone case as centre of our product. Then, with first prototypes we tested its practicability personally. Although we did not democratize the design process completely, at least we applied human-centred design.

In order to shift away from a commercial context, we decided to suggest setting up a not-for-profit organisation that would donate the margins to an environmental clean-up company like ‘The Ocean Cleanup’. This would contributes to additional waste reduction.

Even if in future I will be involved in projects that don’t have sustainability at their core, I will remember to incorporate the environmentally friendly aspect in the design process.