Sensible design

A sensible way of designing products, when we started, we did not have many points to start off. There are number of modules and design methodologies practiced across the globe to preach sustainable design. We hardly had anything to benchmark with, at least in Indian situations. But to be sure that the outcome of any design process should enable us to remain in a natural context. Our conception and expression should be environmentally sensitive and be a responsible realization.

we need,

• Perpetual product aesthetics provoking owner’s pride and desire to retain them, indirectly living ahead it’s planned life cycle.
• Nutrient raw materials with infinite life cycle.
• Healthy chemicals nourishing humans and environment with positive impact through out their existence.
• Safe and endless feed of waste as food to nurture the natural cycle or the industrial cycle.
• Congenial industries with subtle systems, and pleasant places for people to work.
• Industries with the working principle of a tree and their effluents to cherish the environment around.
• Efficient utilization of renewable energy resources which are abundant and untapped.

We need products and services to create positive environmental impact, social equity and economical wealth.

Design paradigm

How many times we questioned ourselves while buying a product or service about it’s what/whereabouts.
Do these products have chemicals safe to me and the environment?
I can’t feel good if these products around me in office and home are off-gassing chemicals harmful enough to cause inherent damage to my children and theirs.
Whether their raw materials extracted in a nutrient manner?
It’s not a pleasant picture if our future generation have to pay a premium for things which are today’s most common stuff which will become scarce tomorrow and it is just because we have this luxury.
Whether they are processed and produced in a healthy way to the environment?
I will carry home a feeling of social inequity along with the product, if their production and process methods were spoiling the surrounding waterways and smoking out harmful gases, while I live peacefully.
Whether their place of manufacturing/production has healthy occupational standards?
It is a feeling of guilt comes free with the product when you are aware that those fellow workers making things you desire have to tangle with soup of chemicals while you bring home a beautiful stuff.
Were they shipped to locations in an eco-friendly way?
With all these fighting for fossil fuels, I don’t want my product to be shipped half way across the world, allowing my next generation to fight and drill in obsolete places for few more drums of oil.
What will happen to the product when I am finished using it?
How about throwing them away in the middle of some ocean creating a floating soup to bio-accumulate in aquatic lives or creating a landfill near by so that our grandchildren can’t plant a single tree around.

That’s so much for me to know while buying a product, but it is high time we start to ask for these? How do we change this fundamental design paradigm?

Sustainable footprint

It all started with the philosophical, perhaps a selfish question. What will I leave for my future generation? May be more money and assets than my father did, may be fame/name (good or bad), and may be what.
I don’t have many things under my control, do I? Still I will fight it out with life for the betterment of my future generation, and this is supposed to be a sustainable development? Satisfying my present needs without depriving the needs of future generation. This is what every other human being does! Everybody wants to leave a footprint in this world.

But what is that we are actually leaving for our children and grandchildren? We never really have to worry about these questions any more; we unconsciously are leaving enough footprints for them to witness our existence in this world, like what?
Warmed up earth, devastated natural resources, polluted atmosphere and huge stack of landfills. Will you call this sustainable development?

We humans have grown together massively like never before in last two centuries. We developed countries together, controlled/killed diseases together. We did everything for our own comfort, but at what cost? We’ve started facing the world of limits.

We have melted so much of glaciers that 40% of world’s drinking water source is going to be obsolete in another half century.
We have burned enough fossil fuels to witness carbon-dioxide levels never seen in last 650,000 years.
We used our mother nature’s forest, oil, mineral deposits, how many of us have planted a single sapling?
We have more than 80,000 chemicals in production and use today; only about 15,000 chemicals have been analyzed for its safety to environment and humankind.

This is just a sneak peek of the entire picture we’ve painted so far; this is what we are leaving for the generations to come. This is the footprint we are leaving in this world.