Sustainability

The problem of sustainability

Sustainability is suffering from a image crisis even as, at this moment, it has become ubiquitous in contemporary American culture. This is not to say contemporary culture is sustainable, only that a discourse of sustainability has arisen in order to both encourage sustainability and to sell cultural products based on their sustainability. The question for designers and others who wish to replace a marketplace keyed to cradle-to-grave public policy positions, design and engineering then becomes: How do we speak to both a fractured and disparate audience about the fundamental holism of sustainability? How do (and should?) niche audiences recognize holistic design and sustainable manufacturing practices?

Sustainability, as an imperative, references a number of concerns, ranging from environmental issues about resource management and global warming to political concerns about international trade (and our dependence on foreign oil). As a marketing device, sustainability has come to mark everything from our cars to our foods, our clothes and our household and office products.

Sustainability, in short and in our era, sells. But it didn’t always. So what was and continues to be the problem surrounding the mark­eting of sustainability? Part of the problem lies in the confusion over what exactly sustainability is. If sustainability is so wonderful for all of us, shouldn’t it be easy to sell?  How does sustainability relate to what is known colloquially as green production? Why don’t sustainable products always tout their green credentials? Why don’t all products have green credentials? What exactly does green have to do with sustainability, anyway? And, perhaps most confusingly, what is it to design, produce and market sustainability sustainably?

The question of differentiating the “eco”-aspect of sustainability from its other virtues becomes critical as we think about how to represent sustainability to an increasingly – and simultaneously – eager and jaded audience. Sustainability has, for many reasons, remained strongly linked to environmental concerns that were and are perceived to be at best impractical or at worst hysterical.  Environmentalists and their contemporary progeny, eco-warriors, use the word “sustainability” in their evangelizing, without expounding on the difference between a “sustainable” world and an “environmentally friendly” one, all the while berating the public with apocalyptic stories that would leave even the most optimistic, eco-friendly listener in a state of abject despair.

Recently, however, sustainability and its sub-genre, environmentalism, have managed to shed much of their aura of simultaneous impracticality and irrationality, and its shrill tone. In a time of global telecommunications, transportation, and commerce, wherein environmental concerns are simultaneously local and global, and wherein the economic, environmental and cultural effects of global warming are increasingly apparent, sustainability, in all its guises, has become a crucial indicator of cultural consciousness, commercial viability and ethical bearings.

This hybrid eco-sustainability has also become hip. In recent months, lifestyle magazines such as Domino, House & Garden, and ReadyMade, have all published issues centered on “green design” and sustainable products, often making no distinction between the two. Web sites like grist.org and lazyenvironmentalist.com are also getting into the act, with coverage of sustainability-preaching hipsters and cultural tastemakers while jettisoning the preaching. “‘You have to be self-deprecating,’ said Pete Favat, who created an advertising campaign for Timberland featuring a magazine insert that could be planted, sprouting wildflowers. ‘Use irony or humor or satire to capture peoples’ imagination. Nothing will be cool if you take yourself too seriously.’”   Wired calls it the “rise of the neo-greens,” a demographic who can “triangulate between the hippies and the hip.”

But eco-hipness is not the same as sustainability. So what is sustainability all about, if it’s not about the environment? Sustainability, ultimately, and perhaps surprisingly, is about expenditure (not simply reduced consumption) – the where, how and to what end energy is moved within and across systems. The result is our ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same.

Many contemporary representations tend to characterize sustainability as an issue of conservation—not expenditure. But thinking about sustainability means rethinking the definition of waste within each discrete “system” or “economy” of production (this can be cultural, industrial, natural and so forth) while simultaneously perceiving that there is a “whole” where nothing is lost. Waste is never “thrown away,” or gone. It has just been evacuated from our specific economy of use. But it is still there, in the general economy, in the whole, unavailable to us, or to anything or anybody else. And by not considering where energy is, and in what form, we diminish, rather than enrich (as far as we are concerned) the general economy in terms of its sustainability.

There are challenges, of course, in changing our focus from consumption to expenditure. Challenges, too, in thinking globally and locally. But this, we believe, is the challenge of our time, and sustainable thinking and design are the answer.

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© 2009 k. kanan design news and commentary.