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Assignment #1. Research


The Problem

Why It Matters

In 50 years, we’ve lost -- actually, we’ve taken, we’ve eaten -- more than 90 percent of the big fish in the sea. For every pound that goes to market, more than 10 pounds, even 100 pounds, may be thrown away as bycatch.

Nearly half of the coral reefs have disappeared.Business as usual means that in 50 years, there may be no coral reefs -- and no commercial fishing, because the fish will simply be gone.

We’re undermining food chains that shape planetary chemistry and drive the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the oxygen cycle, the water cycle -- our life support system.

The ocean drives climate and weather, stabilizes temperature, shapes Earth’s chemistry. Water from the sea forms clouds that return to the land and the seas as rain, sleet and snow, and provides home for about 97 percent of life in the world, maybe in the universe.

There are limits to what we can take out of the sea. In my lifetime, imagine, 90 percent of the big fish have been killed. Most of the turtles, sharks, tunas and whales are way down in numbers. All of these parts are part of our life support system.

No water, no life; no blue, no green.If you think the ocean isn’t important, imagine Earth without it. Mars comes to mind. No ocean, no life support system. With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you’re connected to the sea. No matter where on Earth you live.

TED Talk by ocean researcher Sylvia Earle

MY WISH: PROTECT OUR OCEANS


Where We Are Now

Future Actions

In 1872, the United States began establishing a system of parks that some say was the best idea America ever had. About 12 percent of the land around the world is now protected: safeguard-ing biodiversity, providing a carbon sink, gener-ating oxygen, protecting watersheds.

In 1972, this nation began to establish a coun-terpart in the sea, National Marine Sanctuaries. The good news is that there are now more than 4,000 places in the sea, around the world, that have some kind of protection.

A global plan of action with a world conserva-tion union, the IUCN, is underway to protect biodiversity, to mitigate and recover from the impacts of climate change, on the high seas and in coastal areas, wherever we can identify critical places.

I wish you would use all means at your disposal -- films, expeditions, the web, new submarines -- and campaign to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas -- hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.

New technologies are needed to map, photo-graph and explore the 95 percent of the ocean that we have yet to see. The goal is to protect biodiversity, to provide stability and resilience. We need deep-diving subs, new technologies to explore the ocean.

MY WISH: PROTECT OUR OCEANS

Yellowstone National Park National Marine Sanctuaries IUCN

In the last three years, for example, the U.S. protected 340,000 square miles of ocean as national monuments. But it only increased from 0.6 of one percent to 0.8 of one percent of the ocean protected, globally.

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TED Talk by ocean researcher Sylvia Earle

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The Challenge Our global economy is powered on resources which are ultimately finite. The greatest challenge is trying to find a global economy that could function in the long term.

CIRCULAR ECONOMYNavigating the circular economy: A conversation with Dame Ellen MacArthur

Linear Model Our economy today is predominantly driven through taking in material at the ground, making something out of it, and ultimately that material, that product, gets thrown away.

Circular Model The circular model is an economic system that retains and reuses resources, which makes both environmental and business sense.

Within a circular economy, from the outset, you design the economy to be regenerative. So you design a car for remanufacture, you design a car for disassembly, for de-componentization. So that the materials that sit within the global economy that currently flow off the end of the conveyer belt can go back in.

Circular Manufacturing

When commodities become more expensive, as they have been doing over the last ten years, the solution has often been, “Let’s put less material in the product.” But ultimately, you get to a point where you can’t recover that material, because it’s in such small quantities in that product that you can no longer get it back.

Actually, within a circular economy, you may use reverse logic. You may say, “We’ll put more of that material in, and we’ll design it in a way so we know we can get that material back.” Because we will ultimately have a material flow which includes that product coming back to us to be remanufactured or disassembled.

So you don’t have to pay tax when you buy it, you don’t have to pay landfill tax when you throw it away, and the manufacturer—through changing the system—guarantees they can get that machine back so they can upgrade it, they can repair it. They can put it back into their system to recover the raw materials for the machines of the future. You change the entire economic system. The manufacturer makes a third more profit, and the user pays significantly less for a better product.

An Emerging Market

To think that you have the opportunity to lock into a circular model rather than a linear model, that’s a huge economic opportunity. To think that the users of those products can have a better product for less money; that product can ultimately return, creating employment in the remanufacturing or the de-componentization of the product. And then ultimately the manufacturer makes more money because they know they get that component back. That, for an emerging market, is incredible. It allows them to leapfrog our system and gain even more advantage.

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ECOCIDE

The Proposal

A speech by Polly Higgins at What Design Can Do 2017

What Is Ecocide

Issues and Obstacles

Ecocide is “loss or damage to, or destruction of ecosystem(s) of a given territory(ies), such that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants has been or will be severely diminished.”

State/Corporate Ecocides

Climate Ecocide

Heavy extractive industries (i.e. mining, oil), anything that causes significant adverse impacts.

Climate ecocide includes rising sea levels, tsunami, floods, cyclones, etc.

The states that need the laws the most are those that are adversely impacted by climate change. The issue is that those states have very little money. They do not have the finance to call the international criminal court to put the law in place. However, crowd funding is not enough. Reshaping the way we wish to engage with our planet is a long term project. We need to create something beyond a typical cause and campaign.

“Dare to be great.”Ecocide is a crime against the living natural world – ecosystem loss, damage or destruction is occurring every day; for instance, the Athabasca Tar Sands. Ecocide is a crime against the Earth, not just humans. Further, ecocide can also be climate crime: dangerous industrial activity causes climate ecocide. Currently there is a missing responsibility to protect. Unlike crimes against humanity, ecocide has severe impact on inhabitants, not just humans. Thus, what is required is the expansion of our collective duty of care to protect the natural living world and all life. International ecocide crime is a law to protect the Earth.

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THE NEW PLASTICS ECONOMYRethinking the future of plastics

Plastics’ popularity has kept the industry growing for 50 years, with global production surging from 15 million metric tons in 1964 to 311 million metric tons in 2014. If business proceeds as usual, this number is projected to double to more than 600 million metric tons in the next 20 years.

Plastics and Plastic Packaging

Functional benefits come at a price. Plastic packaging, especially, is the quintessential single-use product: it represents a quarter of the total volume of plastics, and around 95 percent of the value of plastic-packaging material (worth some $80 billion to $210 billion annually) is lost to the economy. And while its intended useful life is typically less than a year, the material lives on for centuries.

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THE NEW PLASTICS ECONOMY

Today, 95% of plastic packaging material value or $80–120 billion annually is lost to the economy after a short first use. More than 40 years after the launch of the well-known recycling symbol, only 14% of plastic packaging is collected for recycling. When additional value losses in sorting and reprocessing are factored in, only 5% of material value is retained for a subsequent use. Plastics that do get recycled are mostly recycled into lower-value applications that are not again recyclable after use. In addition, plastic packaging is almost exclusively single-use, especially in business-to-consumer applications.

Global Flows of Plastic Packaging Materials in 2013

The new plastics economy: Rethinking the future of plastics, finds that applying circular-economy principles to global plastic-packaging flows could reshape the material’s economy. In particular, it could drastically reduce negative externalities—valued conservatively by the United Nations Environment Programme at $40 billion —such as “leakage” into oceans as plastics escape established waste-collection systems. Today, almost a third of all plastic packaging leaks, with about 8 million metric tons annually polluting oceans.

Ambitions of the New Plastics Economy

Rethinking the future of plastics

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THE NEW PLASTICS ECONOMY

1.Create an effective after-use plastics economy by improving the economics and uptake of recycling, reuse, and controlled biodegradation for targeted applications.

2. Drastically reduce leakage of plastics into natural systems (in particular, the ocean) and other negative externalities.

3.Decouple plastics from fossil feedstocks by—in addition to reducing cycle losses and dematerializing—exploring an adopting renewably sourced feedstocks.

Evolving Toward A “New Plastics Economy” With Three Main Ambitions

Redesigning materials, formats, and systems; developing new technologies; and evolving global value chains requires a new approach to achieve a systemic shift toward the New Plastics Ecoomy. A coordinating vehicle is needed to drive this, with an initial focus on establishing a global plastics protocol and coordinating large-scale pilots and demonstration projects, mobilizing large-scale “moon shot” innovations (such as developing “bio-benign” materials and polymers with superior recyclability), developing insights and building an economic and scientific evidence base to better understand material flows and economics of various solutions, engaging policy makers and providing them with a tool kit to better assess policy options, and coordinating and driving communication across the various stakeholders acting along the global plastic-packaging value chain.

Taking Actions

Rethinking the future of plastics


SCULPTURES MADE FROM RECYCLED & UNUSUAL MATERIALS

I love the unpredictability of found materials and enjoy the inventiveness necessary to transform them into a sculpture. I like to make work that is interactive and inviting, tactile and colourful.

Artist Profile

Artwork by Michelle Reader

The joy of working with found materials is the unexpected uses that can be found for them. The choice of materials can also be a key part of the story of a piece.

Michelle has been working with recycled materials since 1997, and also has a background in design for performance. She makes unique figurative recycled sculptures from household and industrial waste combined with found objects sourced from charity shops and reclamation yards. Her sculptures sometimes have mechanical elements, using the working parts of old toys, clocks or other objects. She often runs workshops for festivals, galleries and schools creating sculptures and installations from scrap materials. She also creates props, sculptures and models for theatre, product launches, events and photo shoots.



Personal + Commissioned Work

Wildlife + NatureFigures Interactive + Mechanical

Materials include wooden cable reels, an old ladder, table and chairs, bits of mannequins, scrap wood, coffee cups, tin cans, plastic bags, an umbrella, leaflets and magazines, newspa-pers, aluminium cans, skis. Commissioned by Festival Place Shopping Centre.

A small sculpture made from aluminium cans. For Rexam Beverage Can Europe.

A small mechanical sculpture made from found objects in-cluding the internal workings of an alarm clock and parts from second-hand toys.




Corporate Work + Awards

Michelle was commissioned by JJ Marshall Associates to create these three models for Adidas. She was supplied with the components which make up each shoe, and suspended them inside glass cubes in a configuration like an exploded diagram.

Michelle created 8 awards from recycled materials for the Green Guardian Awards in South London.The trophies are made from an old CD rack, coffee tins, bicycle wheel spokes, cardboard, plus newspapers and brochures from previous years’ awards.

Corporate CommissionsMichelle often undertakes commissions for corporate clients, using reclaimed materials and other unusual mate-rials such as sheaves of wheat, trainer components, coffee capsules or out-of-date food.

Awards + TrophiesMichelle makes bespoke recycled and sustainable awards for organisations wishing to promote their environmental values at events.



Image + Article Sources

[a] https://www.ted.com/talks/sylvia_earle_s_ted_prize_wish_to_protect_our_oceans[b] http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdfhttps://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability-and-resource-productivity/our-insights/navigating-the-circular-economy-a-conversation-with-dame-ellen-macarthurhttps://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability-and-resource-productivity/our-insights/rethinking-the-future-ofplastics[c] http://www.michelle-reader.co.uk/gallery/index.html[d] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0trJDH12yIhttps://eradicatingecocide.com

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