Slapping the word "sustainable" onto just about any product has been the way to sell millions, and it's not without reason. Afterall, people want to feel like they're doing their part in saving the environment, and keeping the world a habitable space. The problem with that is that companies have turned to making the same product, but branding it as sustainable, when in reality barely anything - if anything at all - has changed about it.
This isn't going to be an article about how we should just let things be the way they are and keep our traditional design and manufacturing methods. Rather, this is a call to stop using the word "sustainable" on every random product, and actually start designing for a better, more efficient world.
We can see the stark difference when looking at - for example - Apple's definition of sustainability in relation to the framework laptop. While Apple clearly follows the mega corporate guidelines of using "sustainably sourced" materials (whatever that means) and targeting "carbon neutrality", the fact of the matter is that nothing about their products has preceptively changed. Apple still uses the same anti-repair design decisions in all of their products, and that leads to products that end up in landfills as soon as one thing goes wrong with the internals, which isn't a rare occassion. This has forever been bashed by the likes of Louis Rossmann (great channel by the way) as not only is it anti-consumer behaviour, but it also leads to immense amounts of waste and is in no way good for the environment. So much for their "green" initiative, right?
Framework, on the other hand, has taken quite a different approach: they don't claim to be sustainable, and nowhere in their branding is there any sort of "sustainably designed" propaganda. What they have come to make, however, is a device that is fully repairable by any user with a little bit of technical know-how. Everything down from connectivity ports, to the screen, and even the entire motherboard, can be replaced and ordered as a separate part online. This kind of modularity allows for much less waste, is cheaper for the user in the long run, and needless to say, allows for longer lasting products.
Such examples are basically everywhere, and I find it to be absolutely wild that the entire industrial design team at Apple can only come up with so little. The key point comes down the entire life-cycle of the product, and the consumerist behaviour encouraged by large corporates takes us in the exact opposite direction of sustainability. Designing for the future starts with reducing. Reducing in manufacturing and transportation, reducing in usage, and reducing in waste.
When it comes to sustainable design, it's not only about using recycled materials or buying refurbished product. The process starts from the very beginning of the design brief with the end-of-life of the product in mind. Design replacable parts. Design easily repairable products. Design products without planned obsolescence. Design products that are overall a pleasure to use, and design products that both you and your user would love.
This is not a call to stop sustainable design, but rather, this is a call to design better for our future.
