In October I wrote about adding value to the world with your company instead of reducing your impact. (Click here for the article of October) I would like to add to this: set positive goals and start with setting the values. "Don't be a pessimist. The glass is half empty. But don't just be a passive optimist either. The glass is half full. Start with inventory: take scientific stock of your situation. The glass is full of water and air. Then signal your intention for design: I want the glass to be bigger."[1]
Adding value is one of the key aspects of my company, it is even in my slogan “Design infinite value”. I recently finished reading the book The Upcycle (follow up on Cradle-to-cradle: remaking the way we make things)and I would like to explain to you the current concept of sustainability which is based on reducing and how to turn this in adding value.
What does “paying extra” mean? And how can you explain to your customer that he is not paying “extra”?
Products have a combined price with different currencies: money, nature, labour and trade. When you buy a product normally you pay with money, for example € 100,-. It is a shame to notice that too often someone who made your product had to pay with unfair labour circumstances and nature paid with being destroyed. There are also other ways to pay, without money, you trade a product or service for example a painter who paints the house of a gardener who does the garden of the painter. Do you communicate your sustainability* goals to your customer? Which information do you tell them? And how?
In this article I am going to give you my view on how to communicate about sustainability to your customer. A while ago I asked you to send me e-mails with the problems you have when you want to apply eco-effective designing in your company. There are a lot of different aspects that keep you busy. To name a few: material choices, customer behaviour, communication, time-management, prices and supply chains. With this input I am going to write a series of articles.
One of the big frustrations is to find the right materials. Today I am going to describe to you why this is difficult and I will give you tips to overcome the issues.
Laser etching is one of the techniques that can be an eco-effective solution to decorate textiles. With laser etching you burn a small part of the surface and do not add a material to the fabric like you do when dyeing or silkscreen printing.
Imagine you can dissolve the seams of your textile items! Let’s say your customer spilled tomato juice on the sleeve of the white blouse you designed, with Wear2 you can reuse all the other parts of the blouse to make a new garment. As a designer you can create mix and match garments!
This month I give you a summary of techniques that can be used to make eco-effective designs.
A lot of our textile products are decorated. We choose a specific colour to dye the textile, combine different yarns in a woven material or print a design on a textile. Most of these traditional decoration techniques are not eco-effective because materials from the biological and the technological cycle are fused together. This makes it very difficult to separate the materials for recycling or biodegradation. E.g. silkscreen printing ink, which is non-biodegradable, printed on a biodegradable fabric like organic cotton. |
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