Responsibility is more important than sustainability
Earlier this semester the head of our course at GSA, Craig Whittet, gave a lecture for our class on design & technology, the course for which this blog shall be the platform for my musings.
One thing he said struck me- he said sustainability shouldn’t be our focus in design, but responsibility. His reasoning?
Sustainability is just one aspect of responsible design.
Is this just ridiculous semantic pedantry? Well it is about semantics, but I don’t think it’s ridiculous or pedantic. it’s a vital distinction.
Let’s consider what each of the words means for a start. The dictionary says sustainability is the endurance of systems and processes, where responsibility is the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something.
As designers, we are to be concerned with sustainability, that the processes and materials we employ aren’t going to run out. That the world won’t run out of resources, or that we won’t damage our environment so much that we are forced to halt production. But why? Is it not so that future generations can thrive? So humans aren’t negatively affected? So the world we live in won’t be destroyed? It is part of our responsibility to the world we inhabit.
All responsible design must surely be sustainable. So the real test of this theory is if there is design that can be sustainable without being responsible. And that is obviously possible. You could make the most sustainable, naturally sourced, organic bio-weapon, for example. But that’s a rather crude example.
Imagine for a moment that I designed a teapot out of a recyclable plastic. It may look amazing, it might be thoroughly excellent for the environment. But what if the polymer I chose melted at 80 degrees centigrade? What if when I put the boiling water in to make the perfect cup of tea it melted in front of me? The teapot designer has many more responsibilities to consider when selecting their teapot material. Sustainability is just a fantastic by-product of that thinking.
There are huge dangers in making compromises for the sake of sustainability. In order to tick the sustainability box we can make bad design choices. Now nobody designs chocolate teapots, but they do design terrible products. Sometimes those terrible products are allowed to run a little further because they are ‘sustainable’ and ‘recyclable’. They are both wonderful things to aspire to, but they are only one facet on the diamond of responsible design.
The sustainability of an object has absolutely no hold on how well designed it is. I might have a carbon-neutral toothbrush made from an organic, recyclable material, but if I can’t brush my teeth with it then it’s not a good product! If I can’t use it, or if it’s really hard to use, it’s bad design. We might not even need many products, are we considering that? People design useless things nobody needs or wants, and get away with it because it’s ‘sustainably sourced’. Just because something is sustainably produced doesn’t mean it’s good design. It doesn’t even mean it’s good for the environment.
There is a huge danger that in only viewing sustainability as our goal we can miss the forest for the trees. Good design should have people as its heart, not trees or production methods. They’re both important things to think about, but they should be considered within the context of helping the people for whom we design.
