Noise 13

AIGA recently held their annual conference on sustainability (compostmodern.org) here in San Francisco. Speakers included everyone from big names (like Alex Steffen of worldchanging.org and Adam Werbach of Act Now Productions) to some lesser-known people who are doing great things in the environmental design field (such as Mark Galbraith of Nau Clothing and Valerie Casey of IDEO).

I wasn’t sure what to expect coming in. I’ve long felt that the worlds of Design and Environmentalism were somewhat at odds. After all, as designers, we often find ourselves making products – or packaging or advertisements for products – that are marketed towards consumers. Sometimes these products are innovative, environmentally-friendly things. Sometimes they’re cheap plastic throwaway junk. Indeed, much of the environmental debate for designers in the past has been less about the big picture and more about smaller facets like using recycled paper and soy-based inks – things that, while important considerations, are pretty miniscule in the grand scheme of sustainability. So we live in a weird place as Designers. We all want to be environmentalists, yet we’re often directly contributing to waste and pollution.

That’s why I think it was so good to hear people like Valerie Casey, who started the Designer’s Accord, a group that challenges designers themselves to be more sustainable in choosing their clientele and in their own office practices. Jean-Charles Boisset, President of DeLoach Vineyards in France, also was very engaging in his presentation on being sustainable in every facet of his business, from sustainable farming methods to using terra-paks (similar to boxed soup containers) to package their wine, which creates less waste than glass and takes less fuel to ship (although someone in the audience made a very good point about the very unsustainable nature of shipping wine from France in the first place).

Other notable speakers were Alex Steffen, whose organization Worldchanging sheds light on many environmental issues, and Adam Werbach, the keynote speaker from Act Now, who gave a rather schizophrenic speech on the strides that Wal-Mart is making to become more sustainable (I don’t think many people were convinced, including Mr. Werbach himself).

Overall, I think the event was a great success in sparking a discussion and making many designers more aware of just how complicated and big this issue is (i.e. it’s not just about using recycled paper). I was a little distressed that nearly all of the speakers seemed to be saying that the way to fix our planet is through market-based solutions and more environmentally-friendly products. That is, create more products like the Prius and we’ll be fine. As Alex Steffen pointed out, “We cannot shop our way to a healthy planet”.