Design Intelligence #11: Gains and losses
This month: caveats, compromise and getting real about change.
The idea: ESG trade-offs
“It depends” is a well-worn phrase within ethics and sustainability work. Every story of an advance in material use, emissions lowered, or paradigm shift achieved comes with a trade-off, caveat or ‘but’. A brand has triumphantly reached its climate goals - but only for scopes one and two of its emissions. EVs are reaching a tipping point of adoption - but the mining of the materials needed to enable clean energy is rife with human rights violations and environmental destruction. By reducing air pollution, devastatingly, we increase global warming. If this were a game, it would feel rigged.
As my former colleague, materials and sustainability consultant Sioban Imms, pointed out in a piece for Dezeen earlier this year, seemingly-sustainable decisions run the risk of “creating a whole new set of problems”.
Conditional Longevity, a 2021 project by RCA graduate Charlie Humble-Thomas, compared the “gains and losses” of three different responsible design approaches by making three umbrellas - one designed to be recyclable, one repairable and one durable. The results are not straight-forward. Humble-Thomas writes, “solutions to our problems are diverse and imperfect. Every object we bring into the world has a contextual backdrop, and every design decision is a compromise. The challenge is finding which compromises are the best to make."
It’s a challenging situation for professionals, but equally for consumers, for whom the minute-by-minute responsibility of calculating the best decision can feel bewildering; no wonder some people simply opt out. They are not being presented with adequate choices or achievable behaviour changes.
Clothing brand Eileen Fisher's latest innovations include a Seasonal Planner, which shows customers on its website all the items it plans to launch through a season - so if you buy something, you know there won't be something more to your taste coming out in a month or so. This is a really interesting idea. It’s also a neat demonstration of what happens when a well-intentioned team wants to reduce its impact but can only address the symptoms of a problem (buying too many clothes because you never know if something better will come along) rather than the structural change that is needed - to the consumerist engine that drives fashion itself, and the economic pressures that companies face to deliver growth, not only yearly but quarterly.
The O2 arena’s recently-released plan to take accountability for its impact includes a list of reasonable and intelligent measures, including reusable cups, on-site cup washing machines powered by renewable energy, and Notpla biodegradable serveware that is broken down in an on-site biodigester and wormery after use. The plan also includes carbon removal, and its partners’ justification for that is telling. “We cannot have a live music industry where the only route to net-zero is to not exist,” says Mark Stevenson, co-founder of carbon removers CUR8. “By using carbon removals to mitigate the complex ‘audience travel’ or ‘scope 3 emissions’ problem, all within the existing business model of live events, these concerts demonstrate a possible future – one that speaks to life well-lived on a planet well-loved.”
People want to buy products that have been made without destroying the planet or causing suffering to others, but the centre of the Venn diagram in which you can meet these requirements, while also meeting other essential requirements - like making an affordable, high-quality and fit-for-purpose product - is vanishingly small. In many cases, it’s functionally impossible - within the existing business model, as Stevenson says above. There is always a compromise to communicate; the brands who do so willingly and transparently are at least being honest with their customers.
Is an honest compromise enough? Almost every chart is heading in the wrong direction at the moment (fossil fuel emissions are still increasing; plastic waste is set to almost triple by 2060). It’s easy to conclude that any action is better than none, and that perfect is the enemy of good. But at the same time, this is decidedly not the moment to reduce ambition. It’s time to think beyond existing-business-model, because our actions today could well prove definitive in setting the trajectory to 2050 and beyond, and we have to get it right at this (late) point.
Consumers are not “rejecting” sustainability; they are rejecting the disappointing dripfeed of less-bad choices that George Monbiot has termed “micro-consumerist bollocks”. The wicked problem of planetary systems collapse requires a joined-up solution, and when businesses and governments are not doing the work, shoppers will not be able to bridge the gap and solve the entire crisis themselves.
We will continue to pack our reusable cups and separate our recycling, but we really, really need more.
📄 Research notes
What deserves to be in a design museum? The Cooper-Hewitt on how its approach to collecting design has changed over the years. “We talk a lot about activism and labor practices, we talk about new materials and sustainability, we talk about the impact of design on climate change”
Microsoft’s new Recall feature records everything that happens on its new computers, taking continuous screenshots and organising information to create a visual and searchable experience that “feels like having photographic memory” (so much to unpack here, not least this)
Peel Port Group and NatPower Marine are partnering to create an electrified shipping route between the UK and Ireland, by installing charging infrastructure and access to clean energy at eight ports, and launching the UK’s first commercial electric ship to use them
From normative futuring to systems change: I’m fascinated by the growing discipline of Transition Design. Cameron Tonkinwise outlines its aims and thinking, and relates them to futures thinking tools and practices
Announced at Global Fashion Summit 2024, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Fashion ReModel initiative brings eight participants (including Primark, Arket and Arc’teryx) on-board to scale up retail systems based on reuse, repair, rental and remaking
🔋 My work:
I’m pleased to say I am now officially Certified Carbon Literate, having received my certificate from The Carbon Literacy Trust. I was trained by The Sustainable Life Coach, who I highly recommend
🐕 Interesting products
Unusually for an AI-powered product, Kabata’s dumbbells present a convincing use case. Sensors in the dumbbells quantify your workout, the software uses this data to put together your next training plan, and the resistance on the dumbbells is adjusted automatically
Bootloader Studio is combining advances in AI and spatial computing to create digital pets inside the Apple Vision Pro, which will function as “characters that are coexisting with you” and be able to pick up on your emotions
“There are plenty of seeds that need stewardship”: Reyhan Herb Farm sells traditional Iranian herbs and seeds for care and cultivation
📖 Reading
“Big changes take small experiments, public spectacle, pilot programs, testing, and patience. Who makes the city? Its systems are not easily mutable, and yet: people do make and remake its passages and textures.” What Can a Body Do? How We Meet The Built World by Sara Hendren examines disability, society, identity and design