An article from Metropolis......

The obvious question to ask is: "Why are industrial designers and the manufacturers they work for not designing computers that produce less heat?" This question has overtaken my brain; it now has such urgency for me that I am not even trying to tackle such problems as the waste produced by the computer industry--and its designers. I won't even mention the heavy metals and plastics that end up in some recycling dump in China and in our water supply. I'm now focused on the heat produced by computers. And so I ask: Is it possible that industrial designers are unaware of the unintended consequences of their work even after they've had time to assess their designs?

Furthermore, do they take time to assess their designs? Does anyone? And another thing, do industrial designers ever talk to mechanical engineers, architects, or interior designers? If they did, they would hear about heat gain from the computers and the light fixtures they design for offices. What if industrial designers began to understand what their design counterparts do? What if they consulted other design professionals before they set out to design our everyday products? Would our environments and products work better, waste less, and delight more? I'd say, "Yes," but I have yet to see this kind of collaborative action.

The fuel-cell moment, like the heat-producing-computer moment, are simply reminders of our piecemeal way of doing things and how one design profession doesn't talk to another. Have you ever met a car designer, for instance, who talked about transportation--the need to get people to and from work, school, and play? What they do talk about is cars. Do car designers even think about smart growth; the movement to plan and design communities where several modes of transportation might be available, the car being just one of them? Or am I asking an oxymoronic question? Apparently, the answer to that question today, in 2005, is "Yes." But can we afford to let that answer stand? I say we cannot, given the news about the toxins already in our soft tissues and now entering the bodies of the next generation through their mothers' milk.

The New York Times ran a comprehensive story on flame retardants called PBDEs, a relative of PCBs, which were banned from production in the 1970s, though they're still in our environment. The report, written by a young mother, says:

"The milk of American women has the highest levels [of PBDE] in the world...What these levels tell us is that the world is full of unhappy and improbable surprises, like the fact that the plastic in our computers and TVs somehow ends up inside us. Our collective levels tell us that the chemicals are increasing over time, that someone should be paying attention and that it would be helpful to know what havoc may be wreaked in our cells if present trends continue."

The key phrase for us here and now is "that someone should be paying attention." And one important someone that needs to pay attention to our materials is the design community.

CATEGORY: SUSTAINABILITY