Task 2b: Sustainable consumption

After watching the videos" The story of cosmetics" and "The story of bottled water", I had a strong feeling that consumers are cheated by manufacturers by various ways of marketing today.  Advertisements and sales people draw a beautiful picture for consumers and persuade them to buy more. However, the real quality and the fact behind the products are forgot by the consumers. 

In the system of sustainability, people, natural resources and money capital influence each other. Manufacturers use unrenewable sources to produce bottles and cosmetics packages, and then the cosmetics are toxic to people, finally most of the bottles and packages go to landfill and impose growing burden on the earth. This is a vicious cycle which is inefficient and harmful to human being. 

I think consumer's perception towards cosmetics is that using them will get better skin health, even though they know the truth that cosmetics are toxic to them. This is because people like young ladies don't want to have wrinkles when they get old, they can't live life as people in poorer areas, where cosmetics are rarely used. Getting beautiful is more valuable for them when they do not experience the disease bring by the toxic cosmetics. This is actually breaking the rule of nature as people are using cosmetics to slow down aging. There is conflict between urbanization and environment. People want higher standard of living, which means that the requirement of technology, materials are higher, but this living standard does not benefit the environment. It is said that carbon footprint is the lowest in the world's poorest areas. It is difficult to cut down the need for things when people's perception changed.

For designer, we should rethink the whole system and encourage people to use less or buy less. In the case of bottled water, a good design of portable water container could reduce people's buying bottled water, after they know the fact that bottled water is no difference to tap water. Water station can be provided. In the case of cosmetics, the standardization of cosmetics is important as well as reducing the impact bring by cosmetics packaging. We could design a reusable package or reduce the materials used in package. Various ways and solutions, and we are on the way to find out them, bearing in mind the pursue of sustainable living. 

Task 3 Ecoredesign - Kettle

Kettle before disassembly

Task 2a : Recycling

After watching all the videos about recycling, I find that sorting is the main problem in recycling. As it said in the last video " Recycling Plastic", 'Properly separate is hard for recycling'. The recycling process starts from sorting different  types of materials, and the further recycling procedures are classified according to different material properties. Some material like Paper, Tinplate are easier than others like plastic and glass to separate, because they are more easily to be recognized  by consumers. When consumers throw them, they know which rubbish bin to throw them in. However, as for plastic, the material family is too big and it is difficult for consumer to know what kind of plastic it is. As a result, they just throw them into one rubbish bin and leave the sorting job to machines. In my opinion, why not label the plastic and teach consumers to sort the plastic? It saves not only time but energy to sort the materials. In the 'Recycling Plastic' video, plastic wastes are sorted by films, bottles, extended polystyrene and mix plastic at  the first step. This can be easily achieved by consumers when they put them into rubbish bins. The videos reminds me of a way that cosmetics retailers encourage consumers to return back the package of cosmetics, which may directly go back to manufacturers and recycle. I think this way is applicable to diary like milk boxes, water bottles or other food packaging. Consumers can return them back to supermarkets or retailers, and the packaging can go directly to next run of production after some disinfection process.

Regarding to design, I think designer should look into the aspect of minimizing materials use and design products considering the disassembly process. Minimizing materials is certainly good for the energy saving in recycling process and sustainability  of the earth. Design that good for disassembly is helpful for consumers to separate the parts and also sort the materials, which shortens the recycling process. Consumers are not patient to pay hours and hours on disassembling the products that they are going to throw away, so minimizing small parts and label the materials will benefit the recycling. Design for sorting could be another main aspect of design.

My Ecological Footprint

My Ecological Footprint

I am surprised that People will need 1.34 Earths if lived my lifestyle. The capacity of the earth is much smaller than I thought. Every little habits we have influence the sustainability of earth. The word 'Save energy' had many more meanings than before.  Diet, shopping habits, transportation and housing are all things we can change to support the earth. It seems that buying less things and paying more attention to waste recycle will reduce my footprint in the future. Design for sustainability has been an important issue . Helping people to know more about the earth is also a good way of saving the world.