This Earth Day... Do you speak *GREEN*?

I recognise that there is a lot to learn when it comes to sustainable design. Despite working with innovative materials and processes for almost a decade now, I am still on a journey of complete discovery. Why? Because innovation never sleeps and, step by step, innovation aims to get us into the future where brands of tomorrow can make better things, while future shoppers can get products that won't cost us our most precious treasure - Earth.

Sustainable design, however, is not simply about recreating the same thing in a more ‘sustainable’ way. Sure, we could switch out our glossy, coated paper for brown kraft – but does that really constitute ‘design’?

Instead, sustainable design is about a mindset shift. And that is something that was extensively discussed at Drapers Sustainable Fashion Conference 2022 yesterday. Laura Balmond (Fashion Initiative Lead, Ellen MacArthur Foundation) stated openly at one of the panels “there needs to be a mind shift to change the system”. To that, Lauren Coppen (Head of Circularity, Zalando) added that brands need to not only respond to pressures of bringing more sustainable products but also fill the "high attitude and behaviour gap" caused due to lack of service opportunities for consumers to repair and/or to resell their products. Balmond further concluded that "to achieve this, we need to start at the beginning. We need to start with design."

I would even take this statement one (or few!) steps further and say... it's not the design per say but the process of design that we need to change. Design can no longer be only about designing the look and feel. We, as designers, no longer have the luxury of just imagining beautiful shapes and creations. We cannot afford design aesthetics (e.g. of a 'laminated surface' and brief procurement, marketing and ESG/CSR to 'just deal with it') that stretch sustainable ethics and brand ambitions just for the sake of the 'design vision'.

We, as designers, firstly and fore-mostly, need to be ethical, responsible and... however not sexy this may sound, and however many headaches it may cause - it is the key to the mindset shift.

Another piece of the puzzle is equipping this mindset shift with relevant tools such as CMF design methods and practices.

CMF design is material-driven in nature. This allows us to take a step back to consider the entire lifecycle of a product – where it’s come from, where it is, and where it will be – in order to arrive at a more holistic, considered creative approach. And that, in turn, means placing materials and processes at the centre of the design process.

But sustainable design, which puts material with its colour and finish, at the heart of every project is a minefield of terms, ideas, acronyms.. and to find a simple, cohesive explanation is becoming a form of art.

As a way of enabling this mindset shift, my team at Insight and I have compiled a helpful glossary of terms to allow you to start adopting the lexicon of sustainable design and kick starting you on your CMF design journey.

On this Earth Day 2022, I hope that this key terminology will allow you to talk confidently – to your colleagues and your audience – about the design choices behind your projects and their impact on our planet.

Mono-Material: A physical surface manufactured from one type of material. Examples include products made solely from paper, glass, cotton, aluminium or one type of plastic. PET bottles commonly used in the food and beverage industries fall into this category.

Mono-materials are typically easier to recycle; as a result, it is likely that there will be local infrastructure to support the recycling process.

Multi- (or Multi-Layer) Material: A complex surface manufactured from more than one type of material, normally engineered in order to pass specific and specialised performance tests.

A shoe provides an everyday example of a multi-material. Whether for sports, casual-wear for evening-wear, shoes almost always consist of two parts – a sole (including the insole, mid-sole and outsole) and an upper. These parts can be divided into more specific components, including the lining, tongue, eyelet, throat line, toe cap, welt, vamp, heel and quarter.

Each component is required to perform a different function as part of the shoe design. As a result, a range of materials are employed, each with properties specific to the component’s job.

(Until recently, that is. Innovations such as the adidas Futurecraft Loop are challenging the assumption that footwear must be a multi-material, by introducing mono-material propositions to the market.)

Linear Material: Any mono- or multi-material that is designed for disposal after use. In this context, ‘disposal’ refers to landfill, energy recovery or composting.

Compostable materials are linear by nature, since their surface cannot be reused, repurposed or recycled to create a new physical product. Instead, they are diverted to facilities where they decompose to fuel the soil compost.?

Mixed-Loop Material: A recyclable material that degrades significantly each time it passes, or ‘loops’, through the recycling process. Paper and plastic, for example, can only be in the recycling stream for a limited number of ‘loops’.

In general, paper can withstand 4-7 loops before it is deemed unfit for further use. Each time it passes through a loop, the fibres that make up the paper shorten and degrade.

Like paper, plastic cannot be recycled to create a new product of similar quality. Plastic bottles may pass through several loops, but each time their properties will further diminish. As a result, recycled plastic tends to be processed into clothing fibres or furniture – which, in turn, go on to become non-recyclable road filler or insulation.

(Brands including Evian and Coca Cola are investing in research projects to assess the feasibility of bottles made from 100% recycled PET. However, the environmental impact and overall resource consumption attached to large-scale production of 100% recycled PET bottles remains unclear.)

Circular Material: A material that can be infinitely recycled without any loss of properties. Glass and aluminium are the two best-known examples of circular materials.

Since the recycling process for glass and aluminium does not require the addition of new (or Virgin: See below) resource, incentives have emerged worldwide to support the development of recycling infrastructure.

As a result, estimates suggest that between 50-80% of all glass bottles are recycled worldwide. In Switzerland, the figure may even be as high as 90%.

And, incredibly, 70% of all the aluminium ever manufactured remains in use today.

However, the recycling process for circular materials has its own impact. For those conscious of carbon footprint, the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) has concluded that a glass bottle becomes a preferable environmental option only after it has been reused at least 20 times.

Virgin Content: Raw natural resources harvested for the purpose of material production.

Many papers contain 100% virgin wood pulp (though this is becoming increasingly unfashionable, with a move towards papers comprising a mix of virgin and recycled content). Any piece of clothing, bag or accessory made from organic cotton is also manufactured from 100% virgin content.

Recycled Content: Material surfaces manufactured using a proportion of pre- and/or post-consumer waste.

In some parts of the world, recycled content is now required by law. In California, USA, the state legislature mandates that all paper packaging must be manufactured using at least 40% recycled fibres.

Pre-Consumer Waste: Any material discarded during the manufacturing process, before it was ready for consumer use.

PCW may refer to production offcuts as diverse as trimmings from paper production, defective aluminium cans, shavings, sawdust, or even walnut shells. These scraps are often reclaimed and reintroduced into the production of new items.

?Post-Consumer Waste: Waste material generated at the end of the lifecycle of a consumer product.

After a consumer product has served its intended use, it will be discarded into a waste stream – landfill, recycling, composting or energy recovery.

Just about anything in your household waste can be referred to as PCW, including food, packaging, magazines or clothing. All have the potential to be turned into a soil compost, or given a second life as a new product, if processed through the appropriate stream.

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This article was originally published as part of my work and ongoing research at Nirvana CPH into sustainable solutions for this decade. Link to the original article here. If you liked this article you might also be interested to dive more into one of the earlier posts in relation to sustainable CMF design: "A guide to choosing sustainable papers", "The future of colour is plant waste", "From QR to NFC: How connected experiences are enabling brands' sustainable future", "What is water soluble packaging?", "Foil: Fact and Fiction".

Background hue I used for flashcards was inspired by "Aqua", a colour of paper from G . F Smith's "Extract" collection, which our team used for NCPH stationary. Extract, as paper range, is made with ground breaking "cup-cycling" technology and demonstrates that mindset shift can deliver not only sustainable CMF but also beauty.