STORY OF ELECTRONICS

In our 21st century life of heavy consumer electronics consumption, we all continuously keeping up with technology by throwing out our perfectly working appliance to home a brand new upgrade. So what happens to the working toaster you threw out last week, or your 1 year old motorola you trashed for that new iphone in your hand?

Designers for businesses/companies have been designing within a marketing strategy. A strategy where our products are made incomplete or with flaws, so that we feel a need to buy other things like accessories such as a specific charger or a fitting protective case to accompany our new toy. Through this flow of consumer business and unsustainable production lines, we can translate these short term products which are hard to upgrade easy to break and impractical to repair, as "Design for the dump".
We may be advancing and being up to-date with the latest gadgets and companies may be gaining a double in their sales, however we are also doubling product wastage, doubling the usage of toxic substances, doubling the consumption of the earth's resources and greenhouse gases. When we decide for a product to be thrown out, we are also taking waste to a cheap labouring country with workers taking apart the product and burning the useless stuff. So while we have our enjoyment from our brand new appliance we are poisoning families in poorer countries.

As Designers we need to be aware of our product's life cycle and the materials we use. Why not make our gadget last longer by making it upgradable or in a modular design, why not design so the product can be easily taken apart? Easily there are solutions to building a society made to last, but its up to a lot of depending power and us as designers to go easy on our earth and be intuitive with our designs by looking ahead of our products life

Blender Disassembly

Blender Disassembly

MODERN TIMES from BC2010 on Vimeo.

RECYCLING =D

We are truly all natural born waste makers, averaging nearly 750kg of rubbish per human in a year, this digit is still not devastating enough to make aware people aware of our global waste problems.

Do we ever think about where our trash goes after it reaches that big PE bin at the back of our house? Do we ever think about how the wastes that we throw out embeds a secondary use?

There are many ways to recycling, like having a compost bin for your food scraps and apple cores, using your car wash residue to scrub your driveway tiles, but these are just light examples of our everyday living. If we can raise our awareness to our wastes we can sort out many unwanted packaging, aluminium cans, plastic bottles and realise a lot of our trash can be broken down back to its basic property for re-use. A great example is our commonly found PET bottle that holds our everyday carbonated drinks and as inconsiderate human beings, littering the poor thing into the bush will only cause mother nature to reject it and will essentially stay as litter. Instead we can be a little thoughtful and throw it in a recycling bin, in which it can be taken to plants into a process of sorting, cleaning, grinding back into fine plastic powder, and it can be used used again in the same production line, or as other products.

In supporting recycling we must remember placing that bottle under the yellow lid is only the first part, but with the help of today's recycling technology and sophisticated processing lines, not only we are giving waste a second chance as a new product, we are able to save a lot of the earth's virgin materials and resources. As a way to save our planet, recycling is also an opportunity to improve our ecological structure and relieve the stresses we put on our environment. So remember before you establish something as waste keep an awareness of its recyclability and look for a secondary use.

Quiz results: Ecological Footprint Quiz by Center for Sustainable Economy

Quiz results: Ecological Footprint Quiz by Center for Sustainable Economy

Your Ecological Footprint

As human beings alive on this earth, we all live different lifestyles and cycle through a different habits of food consumption, energy consumption, as well as waste production. As a student I live in small family housing with a relatively good sized yard for my parents to grow their own greens. The family living is extremely simple and only use what we need, and most of the waste we produce are often returned to nature with mum's mini worm farm and compost maker. All members of the family leave the house early as soon as sunrises, so consumption of electricity is often low, but as a result of living quite far from the city area, going to work or uni is a long drive or trek on public transport, which causes consumption of petrol and fuel quite high.

Although we are considered a low energy consumption family and keeping living at a minimal ecological consumption, the rest of the world in total are unaware they are living in a range of high ecological consumption and are contributing to a depletion of the earth's resources.

My Ecological Footprint

So what is your Ecological footprint?