Green Gifting Final Comments

1. Alyanna  Agda
2. Matt Holihan
3. Alan Jackson
4. Dora Ferenczi
5. Sunprit Singh

Project 2: Green Gifting

Video Blog - Ideas That Changed The World: Consumerism

Consumerism is at the heart of today's modern economy, in today's society we are under the belief that the more we consume the better our lives will be and it is this ideology which makes shopping our most popular past time. 

One of our major problems in today's society is that many of us are unaware of the cost our consumer products have on the environment. For example, certain products shipped in from overseas put a far greater strain on the environment when compared to products that are made and manufactured locally and greenhouse gases are higher now then at anytime in the last 650 thousand years. The idea of consumerism all started as a survival instinct, a person's need to acquire more then their basic needs and as civilisation got bigger and stronger, it became respectable to consume and to flaunt's one consumption of materialistic products. A man by the name of Adam Smith created a vehicle that would drive the world's economy into the future by encouraging economic growth by unleashing the individual into the materialistic world. He stated that the 'pursuit of luxury worked as an economic driver that would make everybody richer, capitalism was born and consumerism would be at the heart of it.'

What we need to realise now is that in today's society we as consumers are targeted everyday by people trying to sell us products which claim to improve the quality of our life, when really we need to ask ourselves what is the price others are paying for those products and how will it eventually affect our future. In today's market, it's not about how badly you need something but rather how that one product can change your life. Manufacturers have realised the importance of targeting certain aspects of the human mind in order to increase the amount you buy and in doing so they have created a massive problem in today's society. The only way to fix this problem is to make consumerism work better for us and our planet. This can be done in a variety of different ways, both as an individual and as a community and it has already started. Technology already exists, which can radically change our lifestyle and in effect decrease our impact on the environment, the only problem is convincing people to make use of these technologies. People who are uninformed are still under the conclusion that the world can continue to survive even if we continue to grow in population, however climate change is a real problem and although it may not effect you directly just yet it soon will affect everyone in the nearby future if changes are not made to the way we think and act.

Peer Review's

Peer Comments
1. Paris Cockinos
2. Katherine Alicja Ewa Kawecki 
3. Anuj Dhawan
4. Dora Ferenczi
5. Alexander Morris

Project One: Socially Responsible Packaging

Peer Comments (27/3/13)

Peer One: Reza Sazesh

Seeing as though my model was still yet to be made, Reza commented on how I was actually going to fit the tablets into my product packaging and the way in which my tablets could be distributed in a fast and efficient matter. This was a major problem in my design and I had yet to find a solution for it.

Peer Two: Anthea Friend

The size of my product needed to be small and at first I was going to make it completely cylindrical as it would copy the exact size and shape of my tablets. However after talking to a few people I came to an understanding that this doesn't really make a product stand out. Most of the previous products were cylindrical and I wanted to create something new and innovative which would attract customers who are active in the field. After this discussion I decided to change the shape of my product and this is where I came up with a new idea which would create an even more efficient and successful product. The lip of my design, which is where the tablets are dispensed, will be slightly larger then the standard drink bottle neck on the current market. This enables the user to place my product comfortability over the open top of a drink bottle and dispense a tablet into the water bottle without any wastage or hassle.

Tutor: (Simon)

We also talked about the size of my tablets and the function of my product. I had a vague idea of how it would work, but was not sure if I was heading in the right direction. Simon told me to sit down just for a few hours and think of how my product was to be used and in what way. The inner mechanics of my product doesn't need to be absolutely perfect, but it definitely needed some refinement as I had yet to state how my product would be distributed from its packaging.

What I learnt:

Although there may be a lot of problems and constraints associated with a certain project what I have realised is that there is always a solution one way or another. It may take a while to find, but if you just sit down and think of how you want your product to work and in what way, the solution is a lot easier to find.

Video Reflections

Hey all, i have chosen to provide you with a summary of the movie, 'The 11th Hour' as it sounds quite interesting.

The 11 hour is a documentary that explores the environmental problems that the world has suffered and is in the process of suffering by providing detailed interviews and reports of experts who have researched the possibility of 'climate change' and offer their opinion on what people in our world need to do in order to avert a global disaster. 

One major point they mentioned in this documentary was that even if we stopped and/or reduced our pollution of the planet by using renewable resources, such as solar energy from the sun and other such sustainable energy sources the world's climate will still increase due to our large and unsupportable population. One statement made in this documentary was that the world was a once beautiful place that could contain a population of less than a billion people, but as we grew over time, technology and industry grew with us until nearly most of the world's land mass was taken over. Large corporations are taking advantage of the environment and putting greed and the pursuit of power and money, over the welfare of others. They mistakenly see nature as something that can be exploited without limitations, however, what they need to realise is that we are living in one big eco-system, and if one part of an eco-system fails, then the whole system will collapse. 

What this documentary also addresses is that even though humans have grown to sit on the top of the food chain, we are still a relatively young species and no matter what we do or how we do our reign will inevitable come to an end. As stated 99.99% or all species become extinct, and the damage that we are doing to the world brings us closer to 'the eleventh hour' which is the last possible moment in time we have where we can do something to avert or change our fate of chaos and disaster. We are destroying the world and all life within it, over 50 000 species a year are disappearing from our planet and are becoming extinct. Industrial designers have a duty and an obligation to stand up and say something to the large manufacturers that create an abundance of products which will ultimately end up as waste and pollution. Although everyone has the ability to speak out, designers are the ones who continue to make products which they know are a waste of precious minerals and energy that we do not have. Why design something which will last for a year when for the same amount, you can design something that will last a decade? Designers need to realise that the big companies are out for profit and not for sustainability, they want their money and they don't care how they get it even if they end up destroying the world. Even the amount of money spent on advertising each year (money which some countries don't have and need to borrow) could change the world if it was just put to better use and this video, opens up people's eyes to the atrocities that have been taking place since the industrial revolution. 

People living in clean populated countries like our's believe that everything will be alright, however they do not see how each and everyone of their decisions to buy a certain product has on the environment. So you want to buy a new couch, do you know what went into to making that product? or where the materials that were used to make that product came from? Its questions like these that people don't ask which could change the way we think in society and could put an end to the irreparably damage we are doing to our world. 

This documentary shows us how important the environment is to us. We are connected to nature just as our limbs are connected to us and the unexplained importance of nature will help us unlock the key to our sustainable and clean future. Animals like the spider which can create a material 5x stronger than steel in its abdomen at room temperature is the key to our future. We spend large amounts of money on creating building materials like steel and carbon alloy which pollute our air and soil during the manufacturing process when all we need to do is take a step back and conduct more research in how things occur naturally in our environment without the aid of extreme heats and other terrible chemicals.  Part of the solution to a perfect world is for us as people to live in harmony with nature as opposed to controlling it and with the help of a few leading experts around the world, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Stephen Hawking, James Woolsey and sustainable design experts William McDonough and Bruce Mau we will open the world's eyes to the most important environmental issues facing the earth at this moment.

The world is one large, giant ecosystem which holds some of the most beautiful discoveries man has ever made. What we are doing to our world is not only wrong but completely selfish as we are not the only lives on this planet we are destroying. Our ignorance will be our downfall, and like other great disasters in history, we will not have the benefit of hindsight to fix it, we only get one chance and from what I've seen from today's world leaders total planetary damage will be the only possibility of our future.