Waste=Food

As an industrial designer taking into consideration how things are going to be thrown away is becoming more and more important due to the high number of toxic chemicals we use today. With the green movement happening and the realization of our toxic habits we need to start designing so that when our products are done doing what we designed them to do, they can go back into nature safely. In the film Waste = Food they talked about how products need to be a nutrient into our ecosystem. I think as an industrial designer designing systems that support our ecosystem is very important especially since now we live in a consumer world where products are mass produced and thrown away to waste.

            Another important thing that the film mentioned was designing things to be disassembled. Designing things to be disassembled is important because it cuts down on disassembly cost and makes the product more easily able to be recycled. As an industrial designer designing things that can be easily manufactured while saving the company money is always a bonus. From a manufacturing point of view designing where waste = food can also save money or even be profitable. A lot of manufacturing companies are reusing and selling scraps of their product to be more efficient.

            Lastly as an industrial designer, designing for children is something to keep in mind. In the Waste=Food film Tim O’Brien, CEO of the Ford manufacturing plant said that he wouldn’t want his kids to play around the factory, but after making it more green and ecosystem supporting that he felt that it was safer and he would allow for them to play around the plant. I think that taking this concept of ecofriendly and safety for children is important because if you wouldn’t want you kids to play around it, why should you be around it. Designing for the health and safety of our children is also important because what we teach them they will hand down to their kids and the preservation of our natural habitat will last much longer if we live with it not using it. Which also brings up the fact that we shouldn’t design to make this less bad, we should design things that help the environment. We as designers should be creating systems that nature needs, not things that are less bad for it.

Design Strategies

• Making textiles 100% biodegradable
• creating new nontoxic dies
• Toxin Free T-shirts
• Using old products and recycling them to make new products
• (plastic book with ink that washes off with heat)
• Nike
• Reuse Shoe Program
• using the rubber soles for children's playgrounds or track top surfaces
• reusing the cloth to make new shoes
• "Nike Considered"
• Made with one piece of leather
• biodegradable rubber
• no adhesives
• Herman-Miller
• Designing a more green factory plant
• Designing products with little to no toxic products and to be broken down easily