...you are taking up too much room."

Native American saying quoted by Mary McBride (Columbia University) in her presentation on ethics and design strategies.

Her talk was on design as a risk management tool, "a way to shape or sabotage the future." Business is risk adverse and doesn't like the uncertainties of dwindling natural resources and changing environments, but they haven't learned better practices.
Designers can use this risk aversion and lead the way to more ecologically and socially sound products and processes. But designers too have to change the practice of design: think more long-term about materials and think about life cycles and process flow.

More socially conscious companies talk about the "triple bottom line": profits, people, planet. Design can encourage this. You could think of it as an obligation to help heal all the damage done by bad design.