Helping Others Through Design

The Design Activism: Beautiful strangeness for a sustainable World article states that design activism is focusing the design on society and its transformation into a more sustainable way of living. It has two focuses: over consumers and under consumers. Over-consumers are those who consume too much and must reduce their consumption by adopting eco-efficient lifestyles. Under-consumers are those who are constantly struggling to meet basing physiological requirements and need education to improve their quality of life.  

                My design concept will address the under-consumer. The Appalachian region of the United States is home to some of the poorest families in the country. According to the Appalachian Regional Commission, the per capita market income for Appalachia is 25% lower than the country as a whole. My design concept is to create a sustainable apparel design company based in the area that provides jobs for the unemployed persons in this region. The apparel will be made out of recycled clothing and the pieces that do not sell will be donated to struggling Appalachian families. The apparel company will be communicated throughout the region by providing information to regional shelters and employment agencies. The consumer will find out about the company through social media since it is swiftly growing in popularity.

                The most important thing I learned from this course is how impactful the apparel industry is on the environment. Before this course, I knew there were environmental issues but I did not know how much of a role my industry played in it. I will use this information in the future by implementing it in whichever field I end up entering. I hope to obtain a job with a sustainable company that I know tries hard to reduce their overall impact on the environment. Also, with the knowledge I have I might be able to provide suggestions to the company to help make their business more sustainable. After taking this course, I would like to know more about the companies that are currently sustainable and how they came to be that way. We touched briefly on them, but I would like to know more and how we can use them as an example.

 http://www.arc.gov/images/appregion/Sept2011/IncomeReportSept2011.pdf

Turning Something Old into Something New

According to the Textiles Future article, the idea of textile waste is disappearing because people are seeing the potential in old fabrics and are giving them new life. Over the past four years, I have accumulated a lot of t-shirts from various college events and organizations that I probably will not wear once I graduate. Recently, I was talking to my friends about how we could keep these shirts that hold so many wonderful memories. One of my friends mentioned that she was making a quilt out of hers and it gave me the idea to make mine into pillows.  According to the C2CAD article, 4.5 million tons of clothing and footwear are produced in the United States every year and only 1.25 million tons of postconsumer textiles are recovered for reuse. Re-purposing old t-shirts into decorative items will be a great way to increase the number of textiles that are reused instead of thrown out.

                As I mentioned last week, the Cradle2Cradle process is a way of repurposing old materials into something new of equal or more value. This week I was once again inspired by the technical metabolism of the C2C process. To refresh your minds, according to the C2C article, technical nutrients are items that are useful to the industrial process. This means that they stay in the technical cycle because they are composed of materials that might be toxic to the environment. My design concept of turning old t-shirts into pillows is technical because the t-shirts are turned into a new and exciting product that is useful to the consumer. This concept can also involve the biological metabolism by using t-shirts out of organic cotton that have been dyed using natural and safe dyes. The pillows would be stuffed with organic wool or pieces of old t-shirts. This way, when the consumer tires of the pillows, the materials are able to decompose into the environment without releasing toxic chemicals.