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The Designers Accord Sustainability in 7 video series delivers a daily dose of design inspiration by today's leading sustainability experts. Join in the conversation as they share 7 things every designer should consider when integrating sustainability into design practice.
HAPPY EARTH DAY! While the principles of sustainability apply to every discipline, the term is often reduced to shorthand for an eco-conscious, environmentally-sound lifestyle. If the current discourse typically focuses on social, economic or environmental sustainability, Werbach makes a case for the underrepresented fourth domain: culture.
About Adam Werbach
Adam Werbach is the Chief Sustainability Officer of Saatchi & Saatchi. He is the author of Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto, published by Harvard Business Press, and named one of the top business books of the year by Fast Company Magazine. He sometimes wears different-colored socks. He can be found on twitter @adamwerbach.
The Designers Accord is a global coalition of designers, educators, and business leaders working together to create positive environmental and social impact. Adopters of the Designers Accord commit to five guidelines that provide collective and individual ways to integrate sustainability into design. The Designers Accord provides a participatory platform with online and offline manifestations so that members have access to a community of peers who share methodologies, resources, and experiences around environmental and social issues in design.
Comments
Really!? Core continues to go downhill by helping Ad firms market there crappy spin on proven definitions of culture and sociology.
Designers shouldn't learn from people selling a pitch and instead go to NGOs, Universities and travel to see the cultures themselves.
Also he couldn't even memorize his own list? First thing you learn in an Intro to presentation class?
The cultural aspects of sustainability have always inherently been included in the social realm. We cannot consider social inclusiveness without understanding the cultural aspects that define each social group... Culture is what gives each of us our value hierarchy and local-global relevance.
Cultural diversity = global population - globalization
In other words, we cannot talk about the challenges of maintaining cultural diversity without mentioning the damaging effects of globalization.
If globalization is inevitable, I proposed that the real challenge is:
How do we mitigate the current north to south globalization trends (pushed by global marketing and ad firms) and begin to globalize rescuing the best cultural examples independently from where they come.
Bolivia's Law of Mother Earth is a great example: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/13/bolivias-law-of-mother-earth_n_848966.html
In the US corporations have the same rights as citizens, in Bolivia, the current government is pushing to give the environment (not corporations) the same rights as humans.
With this said, it is very hard to dictate sustainability expertise from a corporate perspective in the global north...
Stiven, you rightly say that, "The cultural aspects of sustainability have always inherently been included in the social realm." Unfortunately culture is often implicitly included and explicitly excluded. That's one reason why so many "sustainable" products are still-based on a mass-produced, one size fits all mentality. We've seen some design standards, like LEED, start to include more local cultural aspects, but still most "sustainable" design favors the ecological imperative over its social and cultural counterparts. I want to see protecting our micro and macro cultures considered at the same level as protecting the biosphere.
Globalization is a fact and a core challenge. I don't think the answer is a return to closed nationstates that jealously protect their internal culture while adopting and sharing little. The membranes between nations and ideas are more porous now, and we need to build a dialogue and a design framework that builds from where we are, rather than being based on a longing for some mythology for where we were. Advertising companies and CPG companies need to do a much better job of experiencing cultural uniquities and helping to bring them to life both in their local geographic zone and globally. This isn't only good for the people on the planet, it's more effective.
Sadly, these changes are coming much too slowly, and we need more people working in the industry to help change it. I agree with your point that this shouldn't be coming from a Northern perspective-- within our network, some of the best efforts towards cultural sustainability are coming from folks in South Africa, Brazil, India and Argentina. In those countries I'm seeing a very sophisticated view of how culture interacts with design and communications-- much more passionate than what I see in the U.S. If you're interested I'm happy to introduce you to some of the people who are grappling with this challenge.
Thomas, I agree that "Designers shouldn't learn from people selling a pitch and instead go to NGOs, Universities and travel to see the cultures themselves." The only thing I'd add is that culture is often fetishized to include a language, a distinct group, and a location. The cultures I'm interested in go beyond those things. For example, for years people who rode Indian trains drank tea from clay cups and then threw those cups on the tracks. They dissolved into the soil. More recently tea is being served in plastic cups or bags that are still thrown onto the tracks. And the plastic stays there, quietly polluting the landscape. The Indian cultural values that developed this formerly appropriate technology are what's at stake. And that's what we need to preserve. The litter is just a symptom.
Thanks for the response Adam,
I would say that those "sustainable" products you mention, are not really... they may be more eco-responsable but using the term "sustainable" to describe them is the real fallacy...
I would say that outside the work of MBDC, there is very little formal sustainable development happening at a global level.
I believe the design accord should be about education and responsibility in order to limit the "greenwashing" effect that is taking over most industries... I agree we need to push for much higher standards (that include the social and cultural realm)...
After many years in the echelon of the ID field in the US I am now living in the Patagonia currently developing several sustainability/inclusive/ethical projects with ONG"s, Universities and the Chilean government and would love to connect with the people you mentioned in Argentina and Brazil.
warm regards,
Stiven