Creating waste is a design flaw
Sustainability is a problem in the creative industries. Along with a small chorus of design studios worldwide, Monomo & Co is working hard to bring about fundamental change in our industry and in the organisations we work with.
The production of each brochure, flyer, piece of clever packaging, or suite of branding collateral creates pollution. Much of this ends up in landfill – or worse, floating in the oceans. Other environmental impacts are less visible. Websites and apps gobble up fossil fuels used to power the servers needed to run them. It has been estimated that streaming an hour of video per week uses more electricity in a year than two domestic refrigerators.
According to the United Nations, design needs to meet ‘the economic needs of the present without compromising the ability of the planet to provide for the needs of future generations’. In other words we need to do much more than just sticking a green label on existing products – a process called ‘greenwashing’ – it involves fundamental functional and material changes to the way we do things.
Monomo & Co has considerable expertise in creating sustainable design. We advise clients on how to reduce the environmental impact of design projects and make more efficient use (or reuse) of natural resources. We design backwards. By starting at the end of a product’s lifecycle we can rethink how we approach a design brief by thoroughly researching materials, processes and emerging technologies in order to manage each project’s environmental footprint.
The challenges surrounding sustainability in design are multi-faceted and have implications for different industries, communities and demographics that are too complex to delve into here. But, if the values of your organisation go beyond profit and you are interested in a sustainable approach to your communication output,
please get in touch.
In the meantime, here are just a few things to consider when developing your next project:
