A Case Study: Green Design
(Page 2 of 2)
July/August 2009
By John Thackara
Step two: Connect locally
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When I was asked recently by the management consulting firm McKinsey to explain where the world’s primary centers of innovation will be, my answer was simple: down your street, and down everyone’s street! Social innovation is all around us. By some accounts, there are 1 million grassroots environmental organizations out there. The better-known examples have names like Post Carbon Cities or Transition Towns. Such groups are emerging fast in many parts of the world. Wiser Earth lists more than 110,000 of them.
Most elements of a sustainable world already exist. Some are technological solutions. Some are to be found in the natural world. But the majority of solutions are social practices that have evolved in other societies and in other times. From this insight flows the proposition that designers should become hunter-gatherers of models, processes and ways of living that may already exist. Rather than design new services and systems from scratch, we need to ask: Who has cracked a similar question in the past? How might we learn from, adapt and piggyback on their success?
Step three: Use new language
We all struggle with the word “sustainability.” There is no agreement on what the word means, and besides, it sounds boring and unattractive as a destination. The word “eco-design” has a more precise meaning, but only for professionals.
Like “sustainability,” the word “design” is often a barrier to conversation and tends to trigger more negative reactions than positive ones.
So let’s use some new words! For example, Van Jones, the founder of Green For All, uses phrases like “green collar jobs” and the “green economy,” because they connect with what people are thinking about (jobs) rather than what we would like them to be thinking about—sustainability or design.
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