How big is YOUR closet?

Have you ever thought about all of those clothes you have in your closet that just sits there, that has caused harm on the earth and continues to every time you wash them?  Over consuming can be harmful to the earth because those material objects has to be grown, cut down, made, and then washed or cleaned with chemicals.

In the Design Activism, Fuad-Luke writes that the designers will have to be the first group of people that will have to change their behaviors.  Transforming thoughts and perceptions of the culture of design on sustainability will be tough for the designer who has attention in design research, studies, and practices.  The designer will have to learn to design for our needs so we stop over consuming and can learn to recycle or reuse our materials.  A particular strand of over consumption is where we purchase things, not to fulfill our basic needs, but to fill some voids about our lives and make social statements about ourselves.

I feel that when a designer begins with their ideas, they should look into how it will be made, as in if it will be harmful to the earth, along with what else can this product become after its first life-cycle.  When a designer makes something, they should offer ways of returns in order to get their objects back to transform them into something new and different or design to where the merchandise will be able to biodegrade safely and become food for something else.  We need to find ways that our closets do not need to be the size of a bedroom because of our over consumption.  We seem to want and desire more and more because advertising and corporations that tell us it is what we need to be fulfilled in our lives.

From what I have learned this semester, we need to consider where all of the products have come from, how they were put together, the how it can harm or help the earth.   If we keep allowing our landfills to pile up with harmful materials that do not become food for our earth and cannot keep objects in the right cycle, we will keep causing more harm.  I plan to start off recycling better by sorting my plastics, paper, cardboard etc., and taking it to our local recycling bins.  This will help keep materials in a closed cycle, not piling up in our landfills making it to where we do not have to keep making the materials, but to keep reusing.  As we continue to adapt to the recycling and reusing, I would like to learn more on how we can use organic materials and if there would be a way to go through what is already in a landfill to recycle what’s in there.

food for thought

What is the point of polluting our drinking water and earth for material objects? In the video of Dirty Laundry, China has thousand of factories near rivers that pollute their drinking water, seriously affecting the local people.  China, and others, needs to have better standards in order to keep a closed cycle involved in production of harmful materials.  Brands need to work together in order to clean up their supply chain and to not pollute the earth.

  “If humans are truly going to prosper, we will have to learn to imitate nature’s highly effective cradle-to-cradle system of nutrient flow and metabolism, in which the very concept of waste does not exist,” quoted from the Waste Equals Food chapter.  Once an organic material has been combined with synthetic fibers or harmful dyes, it can no longer be biodegradable and needs to be upcycled.  Therefore, I propose that we research and find a way to take apart, disassemble the fibers, and remove harmful dyes from the material to either keep the harmful chemicals in a closed cycle and with the organic materials that are disassembled; we can use them to give back to the earth as food for another.  With the upcycled materials and dyes, they can then be furthered used into its next lifecycle as another material or use. 

In the Waste Equals Food article, shoes were once biodegradable because they were made out of vegetable tanning instead of harmful dyes that polluted the earth.  Vegetable tanning has been replaced with chromium tanning, which is faster and cheaper but chromium produce toxins that are harmful to the earth.  We need to go back to making shoes that are not harmful on the earth and can become food for something else because as we walk in our shoes, it leaves harmful residue that cannot be consumed by the earth or ourselves.  Today’s shoes are being developed in countries such as China where there are few, if any, precautions taken to protect the people and ecosystems from chromium exposure.  The chromium chemicals are either being dumped in the water or incinerated which is against regulations but are done during the night when most would not expect, per the video of Dirty Laundry.  When developing our shoe soles, we need to look into soles that can degrade to enrich the environment instead of pollute it, our shoes as we walk, need to become food for something else.

In Textile Futures, one of Goldsworthy’s uses of inspiration in the Cradle to Cradle theory by McDonough and Braungart which is to design with the intention that products can be recycled through multiple life-cycles.  With technology advancing, it provides alternative answers and systems in the field of recycling.  With this technology, it will allow us to separate combined combinations of organic and synthetic fibers in order to keep that material in its rightful cycle like I proposed earlier in this blog.