Fernanda Rizzo

After attending the Designers Accord event in London in January, already mentioned in one of my past posts, I’ve kept in touch with one of the events organisers, Zoe Olivia John, and was delighted to receive an email informing me about another interesting event happening in London on the topic of Sustainability.

This time the event is organised by PUMA, one of the leading sports brands and textile technology innovators. I was excited to hear that such a multi-national organisation was organising an event on design sustainability. In their event invitation brochure they highlight:

An event-based network, PSDC will stimulate essential debate and encourage the learning and the exchange of knowledge between practising designers, and specialists in sustainable design thinking.

This event will be held throughout various evening between March and June, and each evening will have an introduction from Jonathan Chapman, Reader in Sustainable Design at the University of Brighton and host of this event, and a guest speak that will cover a specific topic to be discussed. I am truly hoping to be able to all events as it’s great to hear and exchange ideas on the topic as well as observe the industry tendencies.

29/03/2012

1^st PUMA Sustainable Design Collective – Guest Speaker: Fiona Bennie

It was nice to arrive at the venue and see some familiar faces from the Designers Accord event as well as meeting new designers and think-alike professionals. I had the pleasure of meeting again Zoe Olivia John and Rodrigo Bautista from the Designers Accord and had the chance to have a small chat and catch up to what they have been working on.

I have also had the chance to speak to Fiona Bennie, now Head of Sustainable Design at Dragon Rouge, and thank her for the past presentation at the Designer Accord. Throughout our conversation I have explained her my masters topic and have asked if she would be available for a future interview, she kindly agreed to do an interview and I was delighted with the news. She also mentioned that I should check out the shop called POD (based in London). She mentioned they are a coffee shop chain that have different visual posters and information about where their food come from and what is used in it. She suggested that they used graphic design in a clever way to deliver important messages to consumers that might want to know about it.

After a small informal network with complimentary drinks and appetisers, we were led to the presentation room. Some banners were displayed in the room (see figure 1) and it was interesting to see how they grabbed your eye and curiosity to read them further.

Opening by: Jonathan Chapman

The evening was opened by Jonathan Chapman, Reader in Sustainable Design at the University of Brighton and host of this event. He gave an small introduction about his relationship with PUMA and highlighted that this event aimed to create fertile intellectual space and to challenge the way of thinking. The idea of the ’50 ways of thinking and doing design’ was to present a collection of technical, psychological and framing tools to deepen engagement with the sustainability space.

Jonathan presented then the image of a brick filled mind and expanded the talk by saying that we all are who we are today because of our past experiences and past knowledges and although that can be a good thing it can also represent a bad barrier when we are trying to learn new concepts. He argues that when dealing with sustainability issues, we need to break the very base concepts we have grown to believe as ‘the way we do things‘. He highlights that ‘we need to challenge behaviours and the way we think‘.

Guest Speaker: Fiona Bennie

Head of Sustainable Design at Dragon Rouge
Former Forum for the future Sustainable design consultant

The first evening event at the PUMA Sustainable Design Collective was particularly interesting as the guest speaker was one of the inspiring speakers at the designers Accord event. Fiona Bennie is graduated in Industrial Design through the Politecnico di Milano and currently work at Dragon Rouge as the Head of Sustainable Design. She formally worked at the charity Forum for the future and helped various businesses and institutions to develop sustainable alternatives.

Fiona started the presentation by highlighting the challenges we all face with the increasing, and urgent, need to change our own ways to be able to create sustainable solutions. She highlights that as designers we have crucial roles in helping this shift. To give a real picture of our current challenges Fiona covered six main problems that need to be considered when thinking about the need to create more sustainable solutions.

Climate Change

Fiona argues that nowadays most scientists agree that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was caused by men and the industrial revolution. She highlights that we all have immense responsibility to change the way we do things to be able to reduce emission in the globe.

The impact of climate change in our lives is most certainly clear. We have more severe floods and extreme weather that has a direct impact in global trade. Because of strong floods, crops of cotton in India were destroyed, having a direct impact over global cotton trade and the higher price of cotton.

Fiona highlights that if we keep ‘business as usual‘ we won’t be able to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions caused by our industries and trading habits.

Biodiversity

Another issue that needs to be taken into account is the increasing biodiversity loss; we don’t account the damage we we do to the ecosystem by keeping our high production, consumption and pollution habits. This is even more surprising when one realise that we depend on this ecosystem to survive.

UN’s TEEB study estimates that the loss of ecosystems costs us more money than doing something to keep them. The research also highlights that between 150 and 200 species of life becomes extinct every 24 hours. With such results and data I find surprising to find people that still are not willing to change their ways and generate more sustainable ways of sharing this planet. If we keep ‘business as usual‘ and do not change our ways, humanity will most certainly be in the queue of extinction.

Demographic change

Another big problem that we encounter in the current scenario is that world population is increasing in fast speed. Fiona presented some data about world population in the past, present and an estimation of what the world population will be in 2040 if we keep reproducing at this fast speed. The following table can clearly presents the numbers and problem.

Year	Global population
1950	3 billion people
2012	7 billion people
2040	9 billion people

Within 60 years, the world population doubled. We can consider that with the advance of medicine and less mortality this numbers increases, particularly in developing countries, but we are reproducing in an almost uncontrollable way.

This issue must be dealt with great urgency as we are unable to create, and recreate, resources to feed all this population in a sustainable way. World population needs to be controlled. There are still issues on deciding which policies can be applied to reach this, but most certainly we can’t ignore this urgent need.

Water Scarcity

Another issue that will need to be dealt with is the increasing scarcity of water in the planet. Less and less clean water is available against the increasing population in the globe. This is an extremely complex problem as water resources do not belong to particular countries. This is, in theory at least, a resource that should be neutral and available to anyone.

Currently, 1 in 5 don’t have access to drinking water. Fiona highlights that if we keep ‘business as usual‘, 400% of water will be used in manufacturing. She encourages designers to help businesses solving this problem by challenging and rethinking the way we currently manufacture various products.

Consumption

I am a weapon of massive consumption… And it’s not my fault it’s how I am programmed to function…

Lily Allen

Fiona presented this quote from a Lily Allen lyrics as an example to highlight the excessive consumption habits we have learned to embrace within our society. Who could not agreed to that. We are bombarded by promotions and advertising to convince consumers that they need to buy something to feel better, look better, perform better.

There is an increasing need to change that. Designers should step in and help businesses shift their profits from consumption focus to services providers, presenting another way of businesses making money. Studies shows that consumers want to change. 46% of the consumers interviewed are willing to pay more for sustainable products and services.

Economic

This is probably the one problem that hit hardest businesses and advanced economies of the world. Constant and unlimited economic growth, with no consideration for the environmental changes and lack of resources, is no longer an option. Now we must think on developing sustainable economies. The rising cost and scarcity of key resources are making this change impossible to ignore.

Fiona argues that if we keep ‘business as usual‘, within 2050 energy costs will increase by 80% to use fossil fuel. She highlights that the good news is that the power of green energy is booming. Big corporations such as Samsung and Siemens are investing into finding sustainable solutions.

To finalise her presentation, Fiona showed 3 different videos that presents 3 different possible scenarios in the future of fashion. The project was developed by Forum for the future and Levi.

Within Forum for the future website they quote:

For the fashion industry to be sustainable economically, it must be sustainable socially and environmentally too. These provocative scenarios challenge all of us to look beyond the short term and use our collective power to work to create the kind of positive world we’d like to see in 2025.

John Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Levi Strauss & Co

Video 1 – Slow is Beautiful

Video 2 - Community Couture

Video 3 - Techno-Chic

Video 4 - Patchwork Planet

Conclusion

The crucial question here is:

Will we manage to change the way we do things quickly enough?

Time is clearly running out for key resources and unless we make a change today, we won’t be able to aim for having or aiming to have comfortable living standards. Currently there are an increasing amount of social differences, not only in under developing countries, but this is now growing within developed societies.