Sustainable design in the Anthropocene
We’re in trouble. This may not be the first time you’re hearing this, but our global system is unsustainable. Over the last few years, this has led to radical environmental and social events — making us question whether we can sustain our current way of life into the future.
Organisations increasingly acknowledge the importance of sustainability, but there is still a systemic disconnect between the production and discarding of products and materials.
As an anthropologist, I consider the challenge of designing a sustainable future a social issue. It is no longer only economic, political, or environmental. Viewed through the lens of the Anthropocene, climate change is a social problem because it is caused and perpetuated by existing socio-political systems. Transforming these systems is, in turn, at the core of addressing climate change and sustainability. Changing social values, conceptions, and actions will lead to new relationships with environment, which can have a regenerative or non-destructive impact on our land, water, ecology and atmosphere.
The predominant social systems and political-economic structures that we live in value economic growth, job creation, and shareholder returns higher than social wellbeing and environmental sustainability.
We discharge an estimated eight million metric tons of plastic into the world’s oceans annually — a rate so high that The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
Land conversion into urban landscapes, resource extraction through mining, large-scale mono-crop agriculture, and deforestation is driven by logging and livestock production have led to land degradation (particularly of top soil), water scarcity, and desertification.
In this article, I explore a substantially different way of thinking and talking about our relationships with environment. My intention is to provoke social and behavioural change in the economic systems that we produce and consume from on a daily basis.
What is the Anthropocene and what does it mean for design, sustainability, and the new normal?
Unprecedented human impact on ecosystems
The Anthropocene is an era marked by unprecedented human impact on the planet’s ecosystems. In particular, it is marked by:
1. The nuclear era and the resulting radioactive contamination of the planet
2. Fossil fuel extraction and emission of greenhouse gases
3. Plastic pollution
The concept of an “Anthropocene” was first introduced by geographers and later taken up by social scientists. While the term has sparked vivid discussion among geologists, social scientists have used it as a tool to develop and articulate ways of understanding the unprecedented impact of humans. In this way, they provoke discussions about conceptions and narratives of non-human surroundings as well as our engagements with them.
Most importantly, the idea of an Anthropocene provides us with a way of thinking that allows us to shift the narrative to the human actions and social systems that we live in and which have led to the linear (as opposed to circular) use of resources.
Paul Stoller, Professor of Anthropology at West Chester University, identifies the significance of this in finding appropriate causes and solutions in the struggle against climate change and environmental degradation:
“In the Anthropocene, it has been human activity that has directed us onto a destructive environmental path. By the same token, human activity can also direct us toward more positive social ends.”
Referencing Naomi Klein’s book ‘This changes everything’, he suggests that “the structures of our political and economic systems, which are inextricably linked, are leading us toward irrevocable climate change and inconceivable social transformation.”
Thinking through the Anthropocene is a way of conceptualising human relationships with environment that does not consider human actions as separate from detrimental ecological events. It instead acknowledges that humans have an unprecedented, and often harmful, impact on the planet. If we accept this, it forces us to acknowledge that the social systems and structures societies have created are unsustainable and destructive.
Experiences of the Anthropocene vary globally and are not uniform. Rather than a single Anthropocene, Tsing et al. (2019) suggest that the Anthropocene is “patchy”. “Patches” are “sites for knowing intersectional inequalities among humans.” These varied experiences are marked by histories of colonisation, genocide, ecocide, displacement and oppression. While there is a shared global need to act, the experiences of the Anthropocene’s consequences vary across the planet.
Paths towards sustainable designing
We need to go beyond awareness and call for commitment to critical thinking and actions. Thinking through the Anthropocene involves shifting our embodied knowledge to acknowledge that our daily actions of consumptions and production shape the planet and environment we live in and that a small change in these can have big consequences.
Thinking through this conceptual lens involves shifting our social values, beliefs, language and relationships, to value reducing, reusing and recycling, not only as consumers, but also as designers. To facilitate systemic transformations, we need to adopt circular design methodologies and think beyond the linear use of products, to include the post-consumer life into product design.
There are a few frameworks that help designers direct their work towards more sustainable futures in the Anthropocene.
Designers of physical goods, especially Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, may benefit from visiting waste management sites, recycling plants, landfills and polluted waterways to see where their products end up. They need to design beyond the lifecycle of a product, to include the life cycle of the materials they use. This goes beyond ethical sourcing and supply chains, to designing to fit into recycling streams. This might be done through a Product Journey Map that allows designers to design for the full lifecycle of a product, as outlined in the Circular Design Guide.
Product stewardship is one approach that provides a legal framework to increase the responsibility of producers to enforce the above point. Expanding legislations and policies that increase the responsibility of producers, to account for the consequences of their product on society and environment, would strengthen a legal framework that encourages designing sustainable futures.
While there is much talk of the circular economy and innovation, and how to invest and create jobs in the industry, there should be equal talk of shifting conceptions and social values. Consumers and producers need to understand that they are only temporary custodians of the materials within products, which came from somewhere, are then consumed, and will go somewhere else. Filling this disconnect is partially about being aware of environmental consequences, but also about knowing and understanding where materials come from and where they end up. This is a social shift in values and conceptions of agency that goes from ownership to custodianship. It’s the responsibility of product designers, manufacturers and governments to regulate this process. Shifting consumer behaviours is only part of the necessary required shift, but one that adds an additional incentive to producers through changed market demands.
Transforming social systems is a long and fundamental process, but the key is to focus on the details and small steps. Shifting public perceptions and attitudes have led to awareness among consumers, but there should be more conversation around the ethics of designing these products and who holds agency of what decision. Developing and applying methodologies for facilitating sustainable behaviour is part of the necessary social change.
Whether it’s going carbon negative, changing supply chains, or redesigning materials and waste management — these are all small steps that will transform the social systems that we live in and that make up the Anthropocene.
If you are interested in this idea and would like to collaborate with me, such as to implement this way of thinking in your organisation, please get in touch with me here.
