Sustainable Design

Bloomberg held the Global Sustainable Business Summit on the 13th and 14th July, I bagged tickets and attended both days to watch industry experts and leaders in sustainability tech and finance initiatives.

One of the sessions on Day 2, had Kjersti Lund, Head of the Europe office of Designit Liza Chong, CEO of The Index Project; and Phil Hall, Global Content Lead, Designit, a Wipro Company speaking about sustainability design. It was a short 15 minute session and completely captured my interest.

When asked about their opinions from observing the change in design thinking to bring humanity forward keeping sustainability at the forefront, their first point was thinking what sustainability actually is.

I first encountered the word ‘sustainable’ through my school textbooks. It was in economics classes where I was taught that sustainable development was economic development without compromising with the quality of the environment for future generations. This, of course, was the definition coined by the Bruntland Commission of the United Nations. Now, after having minored in sustainability and development at university, I have been sensitised to the social, governance and ecological aspects to the concept. Sustainability has roots in activism and I have read about the social and environmental conservation movements and tools that came about in the last century. Not only has this become something that people are sitting up and taking notice of in educational institutions, I am increasingly seeing this being reflected in business.

Climate technology needs smart design at its core. Sustainability has an environmental and social responsibility. Design needs to reflect this while also keeping in mind the fact that the user should find this accessible and easy to use.

This requires a lot of thinking. We need new ways to measure success. The Covid-19 pandemic has provided us the opportunity to rethink the way we view success and development. ‘Growth at all costs’ is a mentality we need to move away from. There are pages and pages of evidence describing how planetary boundaries have been shattered by this.

Design and innovation have a special role to play in re-imagining a variety of topics such as supply chains and architecture. Focusing on circular economy processes and using real energy numbers to compare between materials is necessary to gear up for the sustainability era.