Michael Braungart Asks “Is sustainability boring?”

In a recent article in Abitare, Cradle-to-Cradle co-author Michael Braungart, calls on industrial designers, graphic designers, and architects, to take the mantle of “sustainability” and turn it on its head.  To in fact, be the leaders beyond all other professionals, who bring us back from the brink.  With a number of humorous and dramatic asides, he makes a straightforward argument that the notion of sustainability itself, is inadequate (in his words, “boring”), and leads to a dangerous sense that “being less bad” or “destroying a little less” is somehow enough to save the planet from relentless environmental degradation.  To Braungart, it’s clear that people in general, but designers in particular, have not done their “job”, yet many have recognized the many challenges we face, and are beginning to play a more direct role in creating products which don’t contain toxic components, off-gas, leech into the soil when thrown in a landfill, or contribute to air pollution when incinerated.  Indeed, we should heed Braungart’s insistence that “Design is the complete opposite of sustainability”, and that “we should celebrate being human beings and our creativity, which is far more important than sustainability.”  Clearly, with the sheer creativity that many designers bring to the table, they should embrace the possible, – albeit improbable at first – in the pursuit of producing bold solutions for making a better world.

MBDC

Cradle-to-Cradle

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