I’m fairly well-known in my research lab for being ‘completely disinterested’, in sustainability, slightly to the consternation of some of the people that I work with. Of course, (like most short statements like this), this has an element of posturing, but beneath this is a more strongly held position.

I think empowering the individual and that the collective power of individuals trumps any imposed structures, especially when imposed through evangelism (whether religious, environmental or political). All successful structures are built and maintained rom the ground up.

This places the onus on the citizen (us!), to do the right thing, but also for us as designers and creators to respond to citizens. So far, so woolly lefty (and also right wing free market).

The practical implication for design is that a guilt trip about the environment is not enough to change consumer behaviour. To succeed new products and services have to be better in their own right, separate from environmental considerations.

The new Sainsbury’s low packaging milk solution is a great example of this. You buy flexible polythene bags of milk and slot them in to a re-useable polycarbon jug. This is clever for 3 reasons …

1. The mechanism for ‘installing’ the bag is simple and spill-free (not an easy thing to achieve).
2. The jug provides a substantially more pleasurable pouring experience. It is easier to control (there is no ‘glugging’).
3. The packs of milk are freezer friendly, making it more convenient to stock up than go back and fore to the shops.

Perhaps I’m going green after all, but perhaps ‘green’ is realising that sack cloth and ashes is no substitute for good design

True Blue (thinking) is a response to our accumulating environmental problems championed by Kevin Roberts Worldwide CEO at Saatchi and Saatchi. It represents an approach strongly contrasting with Green Thinking/Desing with its connotations of denial, guilt and negativityabout stopping doing things we like and (for me… hessian underpants). True Blue presents a positive solution orientated pragmatic (read more here) approach that has links (also links with “Bright Green” approaches) and from Harvard The Awesomeness Manifesto, more about this here but this has 4 main pillars

Here are the four pillars of his Awesomeness Manifesto:

1. Ethical production: without an ethical component, awesomeness isn’t possible. The buy low, sell high mentality is yesterday’s mantra.

2. Insanely great stuff: put creativity front and center and you’ll get an emotional reaction from anyone who sees it. Delight the customer.

3. Love: Apple creates products people love. Their employees love to show off how awesome
these products are and customers love shopping in Apple stores. Compare this with Best Buy.

4. Thick value: this is real, meaningful, and sustainable. Thick value, not thin value, actually makes people better off.

The emergence and promotion of True Blue is not unsurprising coming from Kevin, a recent grandfather realising that rampantcapitalism is causing problems. It’s attractive for me for more fundamental reasons.

For me this engages with a bigger picturte of human happieness and citizenship but side stepps the rather moralistic approach that stopped me buying (into) Adbusters and similer iviry tower evangalistices. Philosophically I have a problem with domination/subjugation relationships and so with evangelism. This is prevalent in eco-design thinking in education. I have even experienced lecturers openly relishing the chance to indoctrinate students to adopt their particular view over the course of 10 weeks to their best to impose their view on a cohort (at the expense of the development of students).

In this respect I think True Blue is more ethically responsible and sustainable in the long term than green or echo indoctrination.