OUGD601 | Packaging Research - 'Can Designers Save the World Without Creating More Stuff?' by Chappell Ellison

Ellison, Chappell. "Can Designers Save the World Creating More Stuff?" Good web. 23rd July 2011. 

• Problem with designing for a better planet - majority of solutions require a lot of time and creating more physical stuff in a compacted planet. 
• The book, 'By Design, Why There Are No locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV and Other Object Lessons,' Ralph Caplan advises us not to underestimate the power of situation design, or "the concept of moving from the design of things to the design of circumstance in which things are used." 
• That's when I realised how design could really save the world. rather than design and market another cute, reusable tote, I would create campaign to redesign the shopping transaction, a project in which the only product question asked by the cashier: "Would you like a bag?". 
• Giving buyers an option is the first step toward breaking a habit. 
• Not like companies repetitively repeating the same phrase - "Be good to the environment." or "Reuse this bag as a garbage can liner." 
• While we wait for cities, states, and countries to enact plastic bag bans that many take years, one thing is certain: behavioural change is needed. 
• Design for Change School Contest, and initiative that encourages children located in India to target and address an environmental problem in their community. 
• Majority of these entires were a plastic bag pollution. 
• These children captured on camera, hundreds of plastic bags clogging drainage systems and waterways. 
• It is fortunate that these children started collecting the recycled materials and stitched together reusable bags that were subsequently distributed to shoppers in surrounding towns. 
• A designing system that encourages kids in neighbourhood to spot littering can results in immediate, meaningful change. 
• Furthermore, if this system is successful and executed well the problems within local communities, lots of work would be accomplished. It would go beyond plastic bags. 
• In a designer perspective, it is significant to look at the problems and resources at a hand. 
• It is sort of humility that Caplan emphasises: "...I have claimed that design solves problems. It often does. But when we call designers problem solvers, the connotations are very grand... It helps to remember that, to a person hungry for scrambled eggs, a short order cook is a problem solver."