One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure

When I first moved into my apartment 2 years ago, I was pretty short on furniture. About a week later I noticed a two drawer chest that was broken and had been set by the dumpsters. I grabbed the chest and took it inside, I was able to fix it up for about $11. It only took a can of spray paint, two handles, tools I already owned, and a small plate of plexiglass. I was able to fix it and use it for storage for cheaper than I could buy a chest of drawers brand new.

In the reading Cradle to Cradle, the part that really stuck in my mind was "If our systems contaminate Earth's biological mass and continue to throw away technical materials (such as metals) or render them useless, we will indeed live in a world of limits, when production and consumption are restrained, and the Earth will literally become a grave." This means that if we do nothing but consume and throw  things away, than our planet will be nothing but a giant landfill (or grave of trash).

The Rhoener textile video talks at the beginning about growth. The video asks us, What do we want to grow, I think the answer is products with little or no consequence for the environment. Rhoener textiles have taken steps toward achieving this by creating materials that can be turned into mulch when a consumer is finished with it. That mulch will then degrade within a six month time frame, leaving behind no trace that it was ever there before.

My design concept is for furniture manufacturers and how they run their businesses. Furniture manufactures should have a number to call so that when a person is tired of the furniture that they have a store employee could pick it up for free. Then the manufacturer could restore the furniture and redistribute it, and use scrap parts to go on other pieces. Being able to resell the furniture would make up for the price of picking up the old furniture piece and restoring it. I understand not all parts to all furniture pieces would be completely restore-able, but mixing and matching could easily be done.

Clearing the Clutter

Last week I informed people about a lifestyle that a few people have been choosing in the past couple of years. A lifestyle where we create little to no trash, and instead refuse packaged items and resort to reusable containers. I also described my vision of grocery stores making this lifestyle easier for people who wish to shop and live this way. My main concept for this vision is to limit packaging. The two principles that I applied to my vision were take waste and make it your resource and using  materials that have more than one end use.

I feel that stores should make an effort to reduce wasted packaging that no one really wants other than to make sure breakables stay safe and food from going stale. I have found that there are more than just two principles that can help support my vision. One of my new principles is to think about the environment when designing. Businesses could come up with more creative ways to package things, ways that make the packaging reusable instead of a waste of space. That also goes hand in hand with my other new principle, be spring with material usage. If a company must use packaging on something, then they can at least use the least amount of packaging possible. I found a really good example of this to be Aquafina (by PepsiCo) who in 2009 decided to use 50% less plastic in their bottles and also took out the cardboard lining inside the 24 packs. If stores started to only buy packaged products from companies who do this type of thing, than we could severely cut down on the amount of packaging in everything.
 

Not only is packaging a waste, but every package has something different printed on it and a different graphic. The printing process that all packaging goes through is also harmful to the environment. In the reading "Textile Futures", Becky Earley talks about how she came up with a fabric printing process called exhaust printing. It is a lot like exhaust dyeing because it reuses dye solutions already in the fabric. This helps reduce water pollution and also minimizes chemical waste. I know the fabrics she uses have already been dyed before she gets them, but I think this is something that could be mimicked for packaging of all kinds and not just in clothes.

The reading "Sustainable Fashion and Textiles", talks a lot about making local purchases and tries to steer people away from shopping online or anywhere where lots of energy is used to deliver products or materials.  If local grocery stores were to buy more of their products locally than I think that it would make it easier to keep the food in the bins fresh. It would be easier to get things without packaging and would be healthier for consumers in the long run.

I am not saying that packaging should be completely done away with for everything. I am simply saying that if we can reduce the amount of and the harmful processes of creating packaging, I think we can reduce the amount of trash going to landfills each year. If we can reduce the amount of clutter we bring into our home, we can reduce the amount of clearing out we will have to do later. 

Jars and Art

In my search for good ways to improve how everyone can be sustainable, I discovered articles on a family from San Francisco(The Johnson's) who literally creates only one jarful of trash a year. They take jars and refillable bags into stores and  uses them to buy and store cuts of meat and dry products at the grocery store. They also refuse products that come in packaging. This is the only amount of trash that the family has created in about a six month period. I think that this is going to become a lifestyle that more people will choose in the coming years. (If you want to read more about this family, here is the link http://earth911.com/news/2011/04/13/zero-waste-johnson-family/)

According to T.E. Graedel, who wrote Industrial Ecology, the concept of industrial ecology is basically the search for a balance between humanity and our surroundings. It is how people acheive industrial processes, extract resources, and then transform those resources into products that meet human needs. He also says that one of the most important factors in industrial ecology is that it rejects the creation of waste. He also hinted that overpopulation is part of the issue as well.

In the reading, How Will We Conduct Business, we also are told about industrial ecology and how manufacturers and humans in general should try to work with "substances that nature would recognize and be able to assimilate." I think that this is good good advice in some ways, although I do still favor synthetic fibers over most natural fibers. However, plastic is definitely one of those substances we should try to eliminate. I try to keep both of these readings in mind while coming up with an interior product I think would appeal to zero waste lifestyles.

I feel that a good concept would be to try and implement a grocery store section for people who have a lifestyle like the Johnson's. This section would be full of bulk food dispensers that people could get cereal, candy, or other dry foods from. There would also be glass jars full of condiments, peanut butter, and other commonly jarred items and they could be refilled for a certain, cheaper price next time the needed refilled. This lifestyle concept was not developed by me, but I envision that this is what grocery stores would do if this lifestyle does catch on. I think this is a shopping experience of the future if it does.

There were several good principles in the readings this week, but one that really stuck out to me was use waste as a resource. I would make sure any resource used in my product was directly from another product and kept in the recycling loop. Another principle that I think would be good for my product is get materials that have more than one end use. I think the main materials I would use would be wood and metal, wood and metal can be transformed into many different products with many different end uses. You can cut both materials into any shape and size you need' and you can also drill holes if need be as well. They are also very easy to re-purpose after each product use.

When deciding what would be a good interior product for these families who live the zero waste lifestyle, I thought it would be  fun to create them an art-piece that also serves as storage for their jarred goods. The art-piece would be a frame with shelves that would hang on the wall and would have lots of room for the jars on it. I drew a picture to show what it would look like and the frames could come in different sizes; although the shelves on it would be 5 inches deep. I imagine that the frame and the shelves would be from re-purposed or recycled frames and boards that come from unwanted furniture or anything being recycled.