Thackara on Designing for Sustainability
Oh how we have destroyed the earth as we know it? Dire consequences of industrialization – we have reached the peak of so much energy, protein, motion …
So what are we going to do about it? How do we start working on these problems? Are we going to design ourselves out of it?
What we build takes up a lot of resources. Look at your cell phone. Pick it up. How much does it weigh? A few ounces? From the very beginning of the process to this point 500 kgs of natural resources have been consumed for that 1 phone.
There are organizations and movements that you can join so that you and other designers can work together to solve the sustainability problem. There are companies leveraging design to solve aspects of these problems. For ethics, moral and organic monitoring look into fairtracing.org. For water reuse look at Rainwater Hog.
What is it that you can do in your designs to ensure sustainability? I will go one step further and say what can you do at home and in your community to design a more efficient use of reseources?
I thought this would a perfect opportunity for me to go back into my temple community and organize people to design and manage sustainability within that community as an act of Tikkun Olam — repairing the world.