Refusing Refuse
by Steffani Jemison
Last September, seniors in the product design program at Parsons School of Design were asked to conceive and design a product that embodied one little idea—an idea so simple, everyone could understand it, but so complex, no two projects would ever be alike. The challenge? Imagine a project that embodies “a good life.”
Jenny Wong, a current Parsons student specializing in industrial design, knew where to start. She noticed that the syllabus for nearly every design course at Parsons devoted at least one day of discussion to sustainability. Wong was intrigued: “To me, sustainability means to create a new way of living that nurtures humanity and the planet.” A real challenge, she thought, would be to create a product that met basic design criteria of functionality and simplicity while also promoting sustainability. After a little digging around, she found Pop Sustainability, whose interest in pop culture strategies to raise awareness of sustainability fit perfectly with her goals.
But she still didn’t know what to design. How do you create a product that’s truly sustainable? she asked, sure that simply designing recyclable products wasn’t enough—she wanted to transform the way young people interact with the disposable stuff they usually use and discard. She found clues in the book Cradle to Cradle, a provocative manifesto by the progressive design firm McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC). In MBDC’s theory, “cradle-to-grave” products—from Styrofoam cups to desktop computers—are designed solely to be dumped in landfills at the end of their functional “lives.” “Cradle-to-cradle” products, on the other hand, are strategically designed to maximize their material value and minimize damage to ecosystems; if they’re not biodegradable, then they can be disassembled into raw materials for future industrial use.
Wong was inspired. “I knew,” Wong says, “that I wanted to execute the Cradle-to-Cradle closed-loop cycle,” in which products and materials manufactured from industry provide nourishment for something new. She perused scores of books and magazines for images of re-used objects, but her “Eureka!” moment finally came with a picture of a room divider handmade out of paper plates she found in a Japanese magazine focusing on do-it-yourself style very much like the American Ready Made Magazine.
Young People Changing the World
© 2004 POP SUSTAINABILITY
