I started reading In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World by John Thackara, and half way through the first chapter, I thought to myself, “I gotta share this content, because well shoot, we’re screwed.” That is if we don’t rethink the way we make products and live our lives.

The sustainability challenge is a significant design issue since eighty percent of a product, service, or system’s environmental impact is determined at the design stage.

The internet did not lead to a lighter economy and a cleaner environment as expected. We supposed that an information society would replace the industrial one, when in fact, we’ve only added to it. When computers could talk to printers, paper use in offices rose eightfold after we thought we had “gone digital”.

The fabrication of a basic memory chip plus the lifespan use of a computer eats up 800 times the chip’s weight in fossil fuel. On top of that, thousands of toxic chemicals are used in the manufacturing process… and we’re just talking about a tiny chip. Many other electronic components require the use of high-grade minerals that can only be obtained through major mining operations and energy-intensive transformation processes. To put this in perspective, “The amount of waste matter generated in the manufacture of a single laptop computer is close to four thousand times the weight on your lap (Thackara, 11)” — and my “green, Apple product” lasts for at most, three years before becoming permanent waste. Who’s looking forward to the new “light-weight” Macbook Air? Surround your pullquote like this {“ text to be quoted ”}

Information networks

Information networks don’t just use a lot of stuff, they also consume a lot of energy. When this book was published in 2005 (so say, written in 2004), the author noted that “internet computing will soon consume as much power as the entire U.S. economy did in 2001″… I’m pretty sure we’re way past three trillion kilowatt hours now. He continues, “A single server farm consumes the same amount of energy as a city the size of Honolulu”…well whatever social network existed then probably doesn’t even use a tiny fraction of what Facebook consumes today. If fact, I heard #JustinBieber has his own dedicated server at Twitter. The sustainability challenge is a significant design issue since eighty percent of a product, service, or system’s environmental impact is determined at the design stage.

The sustainability challenge is a significant design issue since eighty percent of a product, service, or system’s environmental impact is determined at the design stage. Therefore, designers must think innovatively to change processes behind products and resources used (since we’re already using Earth’s resources way faster than we’re replacing them).

Putting it Together

Another important new task of design is to make these behaviors and changes within systems “intelligible”; we need to understand how they work, what stimulates them, why they change. We need to foster ecological and systems literacies since changing attitudes isn’t just about enhancing perceptions. If I knew I was carrying a “million pound backpack”, wasting roughly one million pounds of matter and energy per year, I’d want to save my posture and dignity by understanding why and knowing how to lighten the load.

Thackara points out that rational argument and scary figures alone aren’t going to make us change our old ways; the jump to a sustainable economy has to be a result of a cultural, not technological (and not just design), transformation. In 2000 at the Word’s Fair in Hannover, Germany, Architect William McDonough outlined a lightness-based industrial culture better known as the “Hannover Principles”:

1. Insist on rights of humanity and nature to coexist
2. Recognize interdependence
3. Respect relationships between spirit and matter
4. Accept responsibility for the consequences of design
5. Create safe objects of long-term value
6. Eliminate the concept of waste
7. Reply on natural energy flows
8. Understand the limitations of design
9. Seek constant improvement by sharing knowledge

As a start, I think I will focus on #4 and 9: accepting responsibility as a designer and therefore creating only useful products (not junk) and fixing whatever can be better… and sharing whatever I read and learn with others.