SUSTAINABLE DESIGN IS: “MAKE THE CHOICE NATURAL”

Friday, October 18, it’s time for conclusions.
These 14 days have undoubtedly been complicated, difficulties that however helped me to increase my awareness of the problem.

Limiting the use of daily water is a very underestimated topic. Compared to other major environmental problems, little is talked about, and even fewer are the initiatives or projects to promote and encourage savings for people.

The truth is that these 14 days have allowed me to test on my skin how we live in a society in which most of the objects of our everyday life are not designed to encourage recycling or optimization of water use.

During the last days I have been asking myself many questions:

Why are the bathroom and the kitchen sinks exactly the same, in terms of aesthetics and water flow, when they are used for completely different activities?

How could they be made more efficient and more sustainable?

How futuristic is it to think of a single system that automatically recycles the clean water used in the shower, in the kitchen or by the washing machine to flush the toilet and to clean the house?

The point is that very little would be needed to make recycling and optimizing water in the home a much more natural process. Living with basins next to each water source to recycle it cannot and must not be a satisfactory solution.

Last year the professor of “design for environmental sustainability” used to say: “Sustainable Design cannot be limited to eco-efficiency; it must be attractive, only in this way it can bring a change”.
I always thought he was right but maybe only now, I can understand and appreciate the concept behind.

The theme of protecting the environment is too delicate to make the role of the designer limit to “make people think”.
Otherwise, the main goal of design must be “make the choice natural”, only so, step by step, we will change things.