After the dramatic events of day 3 which I fortunately missed out on, Furniture Works had managed to regroup and relocate for day 4 which was on intellectual property. This module was headed by Marice Cumber from the intellectual property advice company Own-it. She had scheduled a range of speakers from various sectors of the IP industry.

The first speaker was David Morgan from the UKIPO. He gave an overview of how IP works and some case-studies showing the value of IP to a company. I had seen him speak before at a previous London Remade seminar and it was a good refresher on the basics of IP.
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Futerra is a communications agency in London and New York — they specialise in corporate social responsibility. It’s rewarding to follow their thinking and ideas on communications and sustainability. If you are trying to learn the language of sustainable product design and how to communicate it, they’re on your wavelength.

Futerra has recently compiled it thinking on Greenwash…

They neatly summarise the concept of greenwash and why it’s corrosive to sustainable product design. Importantly, they also give you pointers to avoid looking like greenwash when your message really has merit.
(and see Pli’s tagged blog posts here)

Futerra’s blog often makes a good read, too.
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Water conservation is a hot topic at the moment, right up there with carbon footprints and organic food. How much am I using? What part of my day uses the most water? Most of us could only roughly guess the answers to these questions. If you would like to get a handle on your consumption - and know more about what water goes where - have a play on this water calculator from Zerofootprint.net (via Treehugger).

It is interesting to see what effects your water consumption the most: just shaving a minute of your showers can save around 3000L of water in a year. However, if you just can’t give up your shower time, try finding the extra savings somewhere else in your water footprint. For example you can install one of these Australian ‘Quench’ showers (also via treehugger) which lets you you recycle your shower water for long, guilt free showers (excuse the semi nudity and accents).

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For a while now, we’ve been using some research from WRAP (the UK Government’s Waste & Resources Action Programme) to compare the weight of our furniture with average weights for different UK furniture categories. It’s part of a project we are running to reduce weight in all our products as we update our designs.

The data we’re using comes from the appendix of the Household Waste Prevention Toolkit, which is a handy document aimed at local authorities. The toolkit (which is a PDF document) contains practical action points and supporting statistics. It’s very detailed and it could help to inform your thinking on domestic or community waste reduction… (click on the image)

The idea of Cradle to Cradle design has been around for a while now, see article Cradle to Cradle is 6. Since 2002, the ground breaking work by William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart has made a a huge impact on the materials industry. Material ConneXion, one of the biggest material databases in the world has recently begun collaborating with MBDC and EPEA to create the first Cradle to Cradle materials library.

A GLOBAL PLATFORM FOR CRADLE TO CRADLE DESIGN

Given today’s demands for more socially and environmentally conscious products and materials, it is important for companies to positively define their global impact and be leaders in environmental performance. Recognizing the value of each other’s expertise, Material ConneXion, MBDC and EPEA have joined forces to create the leading global platform for developing innovative, sustainable and Cradle to Cradle materials and products.
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The Sustainable Materials Programme at the Centre for Design, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) has one of the best programmes of practical research and development you can find. They developed the Ecospecifier service over several years.

I remember the hospitality of RMIT staff and students when I made a research trip to Australia back in 2003, where I met a bunch of designers just starting to develop their thinking on sustainability at the time, coached by Kjell Grant.

This excellent online resource by the Sustainable Materials Programme is worth a look if you are interested in specifying sustainable materials (click on the logo)…

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Making smart decisions about which electronic appliances to use will make a big difference to how planet-saving your home is. One of the bigger breakthroughs in power saving electronics over the past decade is the LCD TV. Along with the benefits of its larger picture and slim-line design, they use 3 times less energy than an equivalent size CRT TV, while using a third less energy than Plasma TVs.

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I love a tidy house, yet I am not the tidiest person in the world. My solution consists of having less stuff so there less to tidy. I set a rule up to help me organise a room; if it can’t be tidy within 5 minutes (10 minutes with a dust and a vacuum) some stuff has to go. This is all well and good, but what effect does my aversion to clutter have on the planet? Maybe this article on the Unclutterer Blog will help me answer my question.

Unclutterers are tree-huggers

A person who abhors clutter — and knows that it saps energy and detracts from the more important things in life — already has the first and most important of the three “R”s down pat. Reducing your personal consumption also reduces the amount of “stuff” you’re contributing to the waste stream. Without all that excess baggage, maybe you won’t need to move into a power-guzzling McMansion to house your worldly goods.

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In case you missed the Mayor of London’s Green Procurement Code event, called ‘Fixtures and fittings for a greener office’ then you can download the presentations from the London Remade website now. The seminar was held on 31 March 2008 at The Wellcome Collection. London Remade is a valued supporter of Pli and many other businesses, and well worth a look if you are not familiar with their work.

Click on the logo to visit the London Remade site and download the ‘greener office’ slides.

Choosing furniture is not just simply a matter of aesthetics and function. The time has come when we all have to think about the impact your lovely new dining table may be having on the environment. Below is an except from Treehuggers-How to Green Your Furniture which gives you the top ten tips on being more responsible when purchasing furniture. My personal favourite is number three, but hey I am biased. :) (see our Grass and Hoop series).

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