How many people today grab a takeaway coffee cup from the local cafe to drink on the go? We don’t know, but the number must be enormous.. Most every one of the above have a plastic top that will last 100s of years. Some cafes still use plastic cups that last a similar time. Is 10 minutes of coffee worth 100s of years of trash?
These items can be seen littering our gutters and on our streets all over the place. If they were all cardboard, they would still be littered, but they would, at least, be gone in a short time.
They do not need to be made of plastic.
On the way home from the gym last week, a distance of about 1 km (1/2 mile), I counted the items of plastic litter on the curb as I walked. In that short distance I counted 63 pieces of plastic litter. Plastic drink bottles, bottle tops, candy wrappers, plastic film, polystyrene fragments etc. That seemed to be a lot to me. I guess it is a generational thing. Our parents would have been horrified to see that amount, whereas it seems to go unnoticed by our youth of today. In another 20 years how many pieces will there be on this stretch, -- 200? What will today’s youth think of that new amount then when they are older? Will their children be so readily accepting of a higher amount of litter? Design for Disposability
Posted on September 18, 2021 by DrRossH in Landfills and DisposalMuch of what is designed is done so with the sole intent of creating manipulative, misleading, or misdirected outcomes, in order to get people to consume things they don’t need or see the world in a particular way or for an increase in profit margins.
Design is both manipulative and liberating, subversive and pervasive. It has the potential to be so many good things, but what dominates the designed world right now is disposability.
We have to not fall into this trap set up by manufacturers.
- Use your economic power to influence the type of goods on the market. Refuse to buy stuff that is designed to break, and instead, invest in higher value, longer-living products. If you are a designer, figure out how to shift the status quo on design.
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