Here’s an announcement from our friends at Birmingham City University’s Institute of Art & Design…

Sustainability specialists will be converging at the ICC in Birmingham at 12 noon on Monday 15th September for an interactive debate. The focus of the debate will be looking at issues facing up and coming managers and future leaders in the development of green strategies in the work place. The event, organised by Birmingham City University, follows research into attitudes and influences in developing green policies, reviewing how individuals can pro actively apply green lifestyle choices in the workplace.

Grrreen Debate

The Big Debate chaired by the BBC’s special correspondent Richard Bilton, will feature Peter Ainsworth, Shadow Environment Secretary, leading blogger for treehugger.com, Leonora Oppenheim (expert in eco design) and Birmingham Post and Mail environmental correspondent Patrice John.
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On Wednesday this week, our colleague Eray Cayli presented his research into Utility Furniture at the Green and Trifty seminar organised by London Remade. If you’re a product designer, a design student or simply somebody with an interest in sustainable design, you’re sure to find his insights persuasive and inspiring.

Eray’s central point — as I understand it — is that the Utility Furniture scheme applied austerity measures not only to material supply and manufacturing processes, but also to the creative freedom and experimental curiosity of designers in that period (1942 - 1952). Imagine being constrained for 10 years of your working life by design committees staffed by bureauctratic appointees.

Are we risking our liberty to explore and develop new designs, materials and processes as British designers of the 1930s had done, unwittingly? If design professionals won’t moderate their own environmental impact, who will do it for them? Would it be possible for restraints to be applied centrally by governments or trade authorities to limit our work for the benefit of a low-carbon economy in the future?

Importantly, Eray has also spotted opportunities that arose from the Utility scheme, particularly for small local manufacturers who benefitted from a shortened supply and distribution network. They picked up the business that was previously aggregated by the big producers in High Wycombe and London’s East End. Will we increasingly make a virtue of local supply and short journeys?

You can download Eray’s presentation directly here. We’ll be podcasting the audio and slides in the next few days, once Eray has settled back in Istanbul.

If you want to follow up on the research into Utility Furniture and its application to new resource-efficient manufacturing business models, contact Pli or comment here and we’ll pick up the conversation with you.

The ubiquitous Treehugger has invited Jerry Stifelman to write more on green marketing and how we are certainly not going to save the world one cliché at a time. His suggestions are wise and succinct, boiling down more or less to ‘it’s the product, stupid’. If ‘green’ messages are going to work in mainstream markets they must finally advertise products that are good stuff as well as good thoughts.

The winners of the Observer ethical awards seem to bear out this simple truth. Finisterre, the ethical fashion category winner, is a great little company that stands out for me for its customer service and product quality. I bought one of their jackets last year and I soon forgot that their fibres are recycled and their suppliers fair.

Natural Collection, the winning online retailer (which does not, unfortunately, sell furniture) commented at the 2006 awards that they already have the ‘green’ customer’s attention: their website is aimed at mainstream customers with a green interest.

All this good sense brings me back to Pli’s principle: we don’t like ‘green’, we like ‘transparent‘. After an enjoyable day answering tough questions from potential retailers, I’m learning to keep the conversation focused on the benefits for the customer, not so much of the big picture stuff. Nobody’s going to kid them into selling something their customers don’t need. Why should they?

Annie Leonard, the genius behind the short movie ‘The Story of Stuff’, was in Istanbul on May 31st for a screening of the movie. I was among the few lucky Istanbulites-–nothing related to being invited, simply due to people’s lack of awareness!–-who were able to watch the movie with her, after which a Q&A session took place.

I already had a question in mind as I approached the movie theatre, since I had watched the movie several times–thanks to its brilliant webpage. What preoccupied me was something which I had come to realize after looking at what socially and environmentally aware thinkers has said back in the 50s and 60s. I think that today we cannot help but refer greatly to their studies, go against what they’ve gone against, and circulate around the same terms: Corporatism, consumerism, planned & perceived obsolescence, etc.

My question to her was, “Have we failed in coping with these menaces, and if we have, what has gone wrong?”

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I have been developing a special interest in looking into the WWII and post-WWII years alongside a general investigation into green issues. I believe there’s a lot to learn from that period of history, which was more or less when our present economical order was established. (I have previously written about Utility Furniture, a British government scheme carried out during and recently after the Second World War.) Two books I have recently read—The Waste Makers by Vance Packard (1959), and The Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962)—made me rethink what we today have no problem to settle with.

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