We Need to Stop Making and Buying Useless Junk!

After reading 1000 Words: A Manifesto for Sustainability in Design by Allan Chochinov and watching his AIGA talk at the 2011 Confrence. In this conference and his manifesto, he talks about how we make and buy a lot of useless and wasteful junk. Chochinov mentions a course that he taught were he challenges his students to make a design based off of the last thing that the threw out in this process they made a lot of things that were regarded as a useless redesign or something that would be wasteful. This is something that not only students struggle with. We as a population like to invent things that are “convenient” but wasteful and not necessary, we invent things purely for consumerism. Lots of things like this are either wasteful themselves or with packaging or not built to last which causes more consumerism and waste.

He talks about how product today are built in a way that doesn't benefit anyone. Designers should be building to last with things that are more environmentally friendly the way that the “earth intends” something he says alluding to recyclable tools and ephemeral uses.

Another aspect of this is the way that things are designed for clout(influence or power). companies like Supreme or Louis Vuttion or other big designer brands often make objects like bricks or pooper scoopers or paper clips just to slap their names on it and it sells for large amounts of money.

Other issues are the way that things like ikea or amazon sell low quality furniture or other products that fall apart quickly and are discarded, just to but the same item again.

We often don’t need this JUNK! we could by better longer lasting products or not buy some of the stuff that is made at all. Single use items or “convienece items are not great in the long run and we should generally just design and consume smarter and more efficiently.