Eco Design : Covid accelerates consciousness in sustainable design

Not long ago, reducing the use of single-use plastics has been trending in Thailand. People became more aware of their negative impacts. Trends like carrying your own reusable shopping tote bags and bringing old bottles to refill stations are also adopted. But the Covid pandemic has caused the inevitable use of plastics. Increasing amounts of waste from plastic food delivery packages and facemasks made from micro-plastic beads are due to the understandable unavoidable circumstance. But what we can do is choose to support eco-minded businesses that also include the correct waste management. So that the infectious waste can easily be disposed of and other recyclable plastic waste can be reused to its full potential. Moreover, there are more ideas from different aspects that can be put to use and alleviate environmental issues. Let’s see what interesting ideas and designs are there.

 

Social Fashionista, without wearing the Fashion

Fast Fashion is a low-budget production process that has a massive negative environmental impact. Along with slave labour issues with unfair wages. So many brands are trying to reduce their negative impact on the Earth with other methods. Through methods like producing organic materials clothing, turning old products into new items and reusing surplus materials. Some brands just chose not to produce any more items at all. That is a Norwegian brand called Carlings, being inspired by the insights they found on how people only order clothes from online shops to wear once, just to take photos and post them on their social media. Once posted, they would return the products back to the shops. Not only giving the shops a headache but it is wasteful of resources as well. With the insights, the brand created the idea of 3D clothing, where the customer sends in their portraits and in return cool and fashionable clothes are retouched on the portraits and social media post ready. Not only the customer gets their likes but without wasting any production or transportation resources. It is such a clever and fun idea that the company received a Grand Prix award in Digital Craft at Cannes Lions 2019.

 

Eco-friendly Design from the Get-go

When we say recycle we think of repurposing waste. But there is another upcoming new idea, ‘Circular Design’ which incorporates design right from the start. Thinking of a piece of a product’s full cycle, how it will be reused easily to its full potential and still able to be put back into the cycle again. For example, PaperLab, developed by Epson, is an all-in-one printer that produces recycled papers. All you have to do is place used papers in and it will recycle those papers in minutes. It definitely should be a staple in your office.

 

Circular Design can be used and adopted in many industries. For instance, the fashion producers would focus just on beauty. Their material choices for production could be difficult to reuse and become unnecessarily wasteful. But if they have circularity aspects in mind and think about the reusability of the materials right from initial designs. They would be able to reduce unnecessary use of resources and not produce any more waste, which in turn creates a more sustainable production process.

 

From Waste Crisis to Substitute Materials

The Virtual Design Festival 2020 was set up by the New Designers group in England, showcasing interesting graduate works. One of them is the instant noodles packaging made with edible biomaterials. It is a work by Holly Grounds, a graduate from Ravensbourne University that created the noodle packaging from potato starch. And the package has already been fully seasoned, all you have to do is pour in boiling water on it without any fuss of tearing up the sachets. More importantly, no waste. Speaking of which, there are also similar ideas proposed by a Thai PhD student in Food Science and Technology from Prince of Songkla University, who discovered methods in turning gelatin in the fish skin waste from food processing factories into seasoning packagings or another research of students from Rajamangala University of Technology Phra Nakhon in Industrial Materials Science, who invented biodegradable plastics film from pineapple leaves. These innovations are killing two birds with one stone, not only reducing plastic waste but also repurposing industrial waste. Although these innovations are yet to be adopted by large scale businesses due to the high cost of the new technology investments. But for smaller-scale businesses which have more flexibility, these ideas can potentially top off the creativity for eco-friendly products.

 

“Carbon Label” is as Important as Nutrition Label

These days people around the world are more aware of carbon emission which is a major factor in global warming problems. Many brands are trying to present their eco-minded visions through campaigns. Like Oatly, a large oat milk company, trying to communicate its message by presenting plant-based products in a more eco-friendly light than dairy products. As many may have known, cattle raising is the main contributor to greenhouse gases. Additionally, Oatly also promotes sustainable farming which includes easy to recycle package designs and a “Carbon Label” campaign. So the consumers are able to see how much product carbon footprint is produced from the farm, factory and transportation. By showing their company transparency and their eco-minded selling points the brand is well-loved by the consumers. On top of that, they are also partnering up with famous coffee shop Starbucks.

 

There are still more innovations and eco-designs that address environmental issues. Every green-caring person should not miss out on Bangkok Design Week 2022 under the theme “Co With Creation” which is happening on 5-13 Feb 2022. Let’s find the answers and learn together about the challenges to our earth and how designs help solve the issues.

 

#BKKDW2022

#BangkokDesignWeek

#CoWithCreation

 

Reference

 

https://www.canneslions.com/enter/awards/craft/digital-craft-lions/address-the-future-case-study

https://www.epson.co.th/be-cool-paperlab

https://www.dezeen.com/2020/07/13/holly-grounds-dissolvable-noodle-packaging-design