I wonder, what do you consider sustainable design? When you're dealing with designers and material selection issues, does sustainable design come into it at all? It is something the world is talking about, but how do you see this?
Just in terms of plastic, you mean? Well, discussing what that is, what it means, is actually an entire lecture. You can’t say that this or that is ‘sustainable design’, because you have to understand the benchmark that you are measuring against.
Are you measuring whether you are trying to prevent waste from ending up in the ocean? Are you measuring lower CO2 emissions? Or against water consumption, or chemicals? Only once you understand your benchmark can you start to be really clear on what it is that you're trying to achieve.
In fact, I think a lot of companies don't even ask this question of themselves, never mind answering it - they don't know what the answer is. I am not referring to the manufacturers here, but to the really big brands – car companies, electronics corporations, that kind of customer. They tell us they want to be sustainable, but they don't really understand how to do it.
They'll say things like, ‘ Well, you know, we think we should be using bio plastics.’ And I can see where that’s coming from: it’s catchy, it’s good for PR to be able to say you use plastic made from castor beans. But is it relevant? Let me first say that we like castor bean plastics, it’s one of our favorites. But the point is, before going this route, if this product is going to be recycled at the end of life, might it not be worth considering choosing a material that is already very widely recycled , so that in that way, then you can keep it in a reuse loop?
There is no one straightforward way to define sustainability in design or materials, not like recyclability, for which there are rules, and standards?
It's a huge challenge. It's an especially huge challenge because it is hard to know where to begin, really. It's an impossible question to answer.
I read an article recently about drinking straws comparing single use plastic drinking straws to paper drinking straws. Everybody's perception is that plastic drinking straws are the enemy of the planet. While in fact, there's more embodied energy in a paper drinking straw. And: paper drinking straws are not going to get recycled.
So, what you must ask yourself is whether in this context, paper is truly the better choice over plastic. Obviously, there are some contexts where, as a material, yes, it is - but in this product, perhaps not. Another example: plastic bags versus cotton shopping bags. I once read a very good article written by, I believe, a Danish journalist. In it, they analysed the CO2 emissions associated with both plastic shopping bags and cotton bags, made from regular, non organic cotton. The conclusion was that the cotton bag needed to be used every single day for 12 years to reach the same CO2 footprint or to have any meaningful impact at all over plastic. The reason being that the discussion about cotton is not about CO2 but about water consumption and chemical pollution. It’s incredibly tough to pinpoint what constitutes sustainability in these cases.
Well, how then do you go about making the selection?
We have to pick through the possibilities, and then set these against the performance criteria for the product - let's say, a computer mouse. We then marry these criteria with something that is more likely to be recycled. ABS, for example, is not as widely recycled as PE, PET or PP, perhaps we can look down that road?
And I think a lot of companies are entrenched in certain plastics for certain applications, partly because of cost, probably also because of their supply chain, and our aim is to see if they can be pulled out of that. In this case, you wouldn’t have to use ABS: polycarbonate would be fine.
So, so what you're saying is that, for example, brand owners, want sustainability, but they're not sure how to get there, and they're thinking along very ingrained patterns. And what you do is to show them how a different material could make a difference to the sustainability of their product?
Exactly. And I think that while many of them publish their sustainability goals in very long and detailed reports, when you read them and try to unpick the information that is shared about the product - this actual thing that we buy - there's not much there that has any depth. That’s not where the focus is.
You mentioned that when we talk about sustainable materials, like sustainable design, there’s no straightforward way to identify them. What is important are the questions we need to ask about what we are trying to achieve, CO2 reduction, a solution for marine pollution and so on.
Correct. You have to ask very precise questions. I don't think you can say more.
Yes, but surely, the problem is that we want the whole package - reduced CO2 emissions, a solution to pollution – the works. And we want to know how we can achieve that, find the silver bullet, as it were.
I don't think that's possible in many cases. Coming back to the straw, there are certain instances where a plastic drinking straw is probably better than a paper drinking straw, but people are going to throw plastic drinking straws in the ocean. The ideal scenario for a drinking straw should be a soil and water compostable plastic drinking straw, because then you overcome the issue of waste, whether it's in the ground or in the sea, and lower CO2 emissions than using paper.
Well, there are some straw manufacturers who are doing precisely that. They are making straws from PHA. However, in Europe, it is not permitted to use PHA for disposable products under the Single-Use Plastics legislation for drink and food packaging, although they’re doing it in other parts of the world. With your extensive knowledge of materials, is policy something you’ve ever been involved in?
Unfortunately not. Not at that level.
Let’s talk a bit more about products and sustainability. Consumers say they want more sustainable products. How do you add ‘sustainability’ to their experience of the product?
That's another good question. Everybody wants to tell their story, to shout out about it. They can do that through marketing words. But the consumer wants to see, wants to value, wants to enjoy it and wants to appreciate it. Currently, there is a big movement to make waste and circularity visible in the product. Speckles, for example - speckles are huge, because they are an easy way to show that waste has been used.
My impression is that very, very slowly, brand owners are allowing their products to have a life of their own; one, where it's not always about perfection.Over the last 70 years, designers have understood well enough how to make plastics, make them all the same and make them all beautiful.
But suddenly we are seeing a new aesthetic emerge that embraces certain issues related to moulding in plastic; one that says ‘We don't need to have conformability in all these multiples’. This means there is a big trend of imperfection being celebrated, opening the door for a new way for these brand owners to tell their story.
In that context, I can give you an example of a brand I launched a few years ago, called FixIts. It’s a plastic stick made from compostable material that comes in different colours and can be used to repair things. The plastic softens in hot water, you pull off what you want, mould it and use it. You can repeat the process by heating up again. To mould the different colours, the machines need to be purged in between.
But as they're purging the machines, they are creating colours - the blends of the new colour in the previous one. So you have this beautiful marbling effect in something that would normally have been thrown away.
So yes, I think that celebrating the imperfection is quite important. It's becoming bigger and bigger, allowing products to be what they want to be.
