It's already a hassle to manage all the emails that exist for a reason without adding new ones on top

jebus adobe doed not know how to code

@curious why do design schools evenm bother with sustainability themed courses?

@joojaa Hmm... We didn't have one single course dedicated to sustainability but we did talk about it, especially in the packaging class

It's been a while but I think I've read something about this in "Teaching Design" by Meredith Davis... I really liked that book if you happen to get your hands on it

@curious yeah but then design school courses need to have a project for some reason

@curious and ive never seen students do anything that was sustainable. They are all of type things that green washers would try to convince you are sustainable. In other words thinsg that intuitively seem sustainable but are far from sustainable.

So to me it demonstrates that they dont even know what sustainability is.

Why bother having a course if it demostrates that they failed to learn anything

@curious you cant design sustainability simply because we dont know how to even begin doing it. You can make more sustainable choices but that's far from trivial to do its morew likely that you are misled by your feelings

Yea... it's depressing. I can totally relate. I've seen that happen in that class... and the irony is, the more sustainable projects involved so little that the students were worried I'd flunk them.

Like for example, a student packaged a piece of clothing using a scarf that she tied in an interesting way, and so you could use the scarf that coordinated with the clothing

For the "graphic design" aspect, she made a label that was tied to it.

And then I had other students making very elaborate boxes, whining that their classmate only had to do a label :]

A lot of time also they don't think further than an actual product on a shelf (their experience of it, it makes sense). Like how do you transport it, how do you avoid contamination, etc.

I left "zero waste" groups because I kept getting in fights with people lol

Some folks were calling for a boycott of a grocery in my area because they had their cucumbers in plastic wrap

but if you show them evidence that cucumbers that are not wrapped go to waste way more quickly and that they are less sustainable than plastic wrapped cucumbers, they get super defensive lol

@joojaa, @curious, what if sometimes a designer would do the world a favor by not designing something?

@Wolff yep.

It's sad ... everyone's just trying to find a place in the world and make some money. But just trying to wring out some idea for yet another useless product isn't really what we need.

On the other hand, if things are both useful, durable and beautiful there's a better chance they won't be thrown out. I've had to get rid of many cheap products over time because they simply don't do their job well or are ugly.

My point is you need a lot of info to be sustainable. You nee dto calculate stuff you need to look at big picture. This si stuff for PhD level not bachelor or masters

Design is about solving trivial or complicated problems NOT inventing new technological fields

In other words not hard problems

True, but I think it's possible to design more sustainable products with the technology we have now. Things that lasts a lifetime. People still buy 70 years old kitchen equipment at flea markets. New stuff tend to break easily

So designers with truly good ideas are fighting against capitalism

@joojaa We had a client who wanted digital print on some sort of paper they believe is sustainable. Like bamboo or grass based or whatever. We make digital print at a subcontractor and it's way more complicated if we are to deliver paper to them. So we asked them about the quantity. 20 A4 prints. 😳

So they somehow believed ordering a package of paper from Germany and then driving it to our place so we could send it to the subcontractor which would then print 20 A4 would be sustainable. Just the mail correspondence involved would probably end up eating the CO2 difference. 😂

It's just naive for the individual to think they can impact the world on such a micro level.

@Wolff O_o

@Wolff im not saying you cant design something that helps. But its essentially not going to be a nice product

Its going to be something that changes how we see the world

It also does not change things to become sustainable to designa bed that gets used for 400 years.

its still not truly sustainable, it just postpones things but not sustainable

I seem to recall Heineken made their bottles thinner at some point... Per bottle it doesn't seem like much but if you added everything, it actually saves fuel for transportation because it weighs less

of course, we're still better off not buying any beer but... ^^

yes thats it. So a designer in the right place can do something for the better

But a student can really not

Well, you still need to start having that conversation at some point

Somebody working for ikea high up could do things like do a lot to lot recycling

Who knows, maybe one of those students will eventually make a difference

@curious conversation is different form a design exercise. A far better exercise would be to have expert evaluate the bbenefit of your idea

@joojaa yea I agree... we can have that conversation without making more waste

doing some other exercise that pushes critical thinking, without making an actual project that will end up in a landfill

I don't know if "true" sustainability is even a possibility. We know that the earth is slowly moving towards its end. And perhaps the universe too.

So right now we strive to make products that can be recycled with the minimal waste.

@Wolff it is. we know it. The planet used to be really long term susutainable for billions of years

Making a bed that lasts 400 years could enable you to use better materials as they wouldn't have to get recycled so often.

@Wolff yeah or you could just use materials that are replaceable

a supply chain that does not rely on oil etc

@joojaa So you think the future is making disposable products that are just easy to recycle rather than making things that last?

@Wolff no but could be

@joojaa Weren't humanity just working slowly but surely towards increasing energy consumption? Weren't we just in the seemingly flat part in the beginning of an exponential growth?

@Wolff we are getting to more sustainable energy production

Thing is steel and aluminium is entirely 100% recyclable

BUT NOT ECOLOGICAL

@joojaa Nuclear like you have? Or wind like we have? I'm getting a bit envious of your nuclear. I'm afraid wind might end as a big flop.

@Wolff our newest nuke is still in testing

probably in full production late september

@joojaa Yeah but you spend CO2 melting it. Organic sci-fi products might be able to take in the spent CO2 in some way. SmartPlants™ or something.

Plastics

mainly bioplastics

@joojaa I know it took many years to build, but its production will quickly surpass the wind energy we spent 30 years building (and have to keep replace constantly).

17% of our energy needs will be filled by thet one reactor

I don't know. Nuclear has been such a taboo here. I can't say what's best. It just seems like people think we can just build more windmills and it will all be okay.

But the batteries needed to store energy still seems like a fantasy.

I know. We can just build everything out of Lego. Disassemble and reassemble according to our needs. :P

@curious Just 3D print and throw the products back in the machine when you are done with them. We just need free energy for that idea to be sustainable so ...