Down To Earth Designer » Lifecycle

The Story of Stuff

Cheryl — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:43:51 +0000

Here’s a poignant online video that exposes the “hidden environmental and social costs” of our consumeristic culture. According to her bio, Annie Leonard, the author and host, ”is fiercely dedicated to reclaiming and transforming our industrial and economic systems so they serve, rather than undermine, ecological sustainability and social equity.”

The Story of Stuff

Where is “away”?

Cheryl — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 11:24:13 +0000

It’s not just about carbon footprints and global warming. Or indoor air quality…one of my favorite topics I’ll address more later.

A friend recently reminded me that “there is no ‘away’”. What gets “thrown away” into our bins goes somewhere, and sticks around for a long, long time. And maybe, just maybe, it drips out, or breaks down into other chemicals, and gradually gets pulled down through cracks in the earth, into places like our water supply…yum.

Not so long ago I was quite pleased by the fact that, on average, our weekly rubbish bag was really quite small – maybe even just a quarter full. Not bad, I thought. In Minnesota we typically put out a full (albeit a bit smaller, and less condensed) bag a week – and sometimes two.

But then I was reminded of Donnachadh McCarthy in an article in the Big Issue. Barry and I visited his house last year during London Open House. The Big Issue article states that “during the course of 2008 he threw away only half a dustbin full of rubbish.” I guess I have some work to do!

p.s. For those of you who don’t know about the Big Issue, it is sold by homeless people who are trained to sell it and make money from selling it. I like to buy it for a few reasons. 1) It supports a homeless person who is working to get back on his/her feet. 2) It has decent articles. 3) I like to think that by buying it, it makes other people think about buying it, which helps the person I’m buying it from more. The seller should be wearing an official badge.

Photo by D’Arcy Norman.

Does vinyl flooring cause autism?

Cheryl — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:58:51 +0000

On 5 April 2009 the Independent ran the story “Vinyl flooring ‘doubles chances’ of children being autistic’, study shows“. My first reaction to this was – good, more proof of the evil nature of vinyl! Well, of course it is not so simple, and I encourage you to read the comments after the original article that do a great job of elucidating the science, critiquing the headline, and recognizing the impact such findings can have on parents. The gist of the article is that researchers following 5,000 Swedish children did find an association between vinyl flooring and autism, but that isn’t the same as a cause-and-effect relationship. As I learned to say in graduate school at the end of all my research papers, basically, more research is needed.

Now, I’m in the early days of this blog and I really want it to be about fantastic design solutions, rather than environmental problems. So without focusing too heavily on the negative, I will say I’m not a fan of vinyl (I know, I know – it’s so cheap!).

There’s loads of information out there on the internet about vinyl. One source I really like is the movie website Blue Vinyl. Basically, as the Blue Vinyl factsheet says, vinyl has a very toxic lifecyle, releasing harmful chemicals during manufacturing, use, and disposal.

By the way, vinyl is no. 3 on bottles.

Photo by Cheryl Kempton.