2021.01.31 / Viewpoint

Good Designs Don't Waste

Picturing a picnic under the Sakura tree, gazing at the beauty of the flower petals falling down. A fully blossomed sakura tree, though its petals have fallen, no one would ever comment to say that it’s wasteful. Its parts have only returned to Earth, becoming nutrients for nature.

The design of nature will always be perfect. Nature runs within the cycle of metabolism. In the process, there is no concept of waste. Everything is nutrient, capable of returning to the soil and continuing growth.

Nowadays our understanding of the natural ecosystem is very different from before. New research shows that the oceans, air, glaciers, climate and all the plants and animals living on the earth are highly interdependent, and that our ecosystem is more fragile than we thought. Insignificant changes are even possible to lead to irreversible disasters on our home.

But the modern industry still operates in accordance to the principles of the old era. The goals of commercial design does not consider maintaining balance within the natural system, nor is it aware of the complexity and beautiful interrelationship in nature. Today's design foundation and the most fundamental way of thinking have not changed much compared with the industrial revolution era a hundred years ago. Industry has always regarded efficiency as virtue, and its design objectives are concrete, practical. Linear design objectives are emphasized, products are produced, standardization are emphasized. Capitalists and industrialists try to grasp all possible opportunities in the process of social change, and deliver products to consumers in a cheaper and faster way. And not many other things are considered for. 

In our daily life, we use all kinds of things to make all kinds of garbage. In fact, we really only consume a small list of things, maybe a little food and a little water, while all other things are designed for us to throw away when we use them up.

According to statistics, more than 90% of the resources used to make durable goods in the United States are turned into waste almost immediately. Sometimes, the life expectancy of a product is not long, so it's better to buy the latest model, which is cheap and convenient, than to spend a lot of time looking for someone to repair it.

In fact, many products try to advertise the idea of "out of date" at the beginning of design, encouraging consumers to throw away the old and buy the new. In fact, the waste discarded in the garbage cans are only a tip of the iceberg. The product itself usually contains only 5% of the raw materials used for manufacturing and transportation.

Many things in our trash can are not thrown away, but wasted. Resources are mined, transformed, synthesized and sold as products, and then disposed of into some kind of "grave" (usually an incinerator or landfill).

When you go to a typical landfill, most of the old furniture, ruins, old TV sets, clothes, shoes, telephones, computers, plastic packaging, kitchen waste, paper... Are made of valuable materials. People spend man-power and financial resources to exploit and manufacture. They used to be hundreds millions of material assets that have now become the final products of the industrial system. Being casually tossed away into a landfill, many items can not be naturally decomposed within at least a hundred years, while containing a variety of toxic substances. These harmful substances are then released into the soil, air and water, eventually entering our food chain again through the natural circulation system.

July 2019, CNN quoted a study from the University of Newcastle in Australia that stated: the average person in the world consumes about 2000 plastic particles per week, with a total weight of about 5g, which is equivalent to the weight of a credit card.

Peter Drucker once said: the responsibility of professional managers is to "do things right", but the responsibility of leaders is to ensure that "the right things get done". Good design refers to doing the right thing, providing the right products, services and systems, taking serious consideration of redesign, and taking the triple standards of ecology, fairness and economy as strategic planning tools of enterprises.

A visionary leader or enterprise would know not to make superficial claims—saying to be using recyclable materials, yet in reality using economically beneficial, attractive, easily obtainable materials. Cooperations should not only try to reduce damage, but also actively work on how to do better.

On December 21, 2020, the Information Office of the State Council issued the white-covered book titled “China's energy development in the new era", which described the "route map" for China to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. At the central economic conference, “2030 carbon peak" and “2060 carbon neutralization" were listed as one of the eight key tasks in 2021, becoming an important stage for China’s move towards sustainable development. The traditional design and business model forces customers to bear the consequences of pollution, resulting in "privatization of profits and socialization of pollution", which is the fundamental problem of the traditional industrial revolution model. In the future, our redesign of green economy and innovative energy system will bring about an industrial re-revolution, and find solutions to the core problems ever since the industrial revolution.

Contemporary designs adhere to the principles of “ending as beginning" and are “people-oriented." Basing from the true needs of humanity, and considers effective improvement of environment, ecology and value system of the whole chain. Design results are not only the display of functional satisfaction and beauty, but also the dialogue and interaction between people and things, people and people, people and nature, Designers will produce new design connotation, use the concept of green design, rethink the design media and integrate resources, so that the idea behind a product has more rationality and significance.

When we design, we take more consideration to where it is from? How was it created? And how will it look like when it is no longer appropriate for use. 

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