Sustainable Systems Questions Week One

How Far Can Sustainability Take Us?

When Does Resilience Become Our Only Option?

 

1. What am I hoping to accomplish this semester in Sustainable Systems?

I’m hoping to gain a better understanding of how I can intervene utilizing design in order to help solve systemic issues with companies and production. First of all I want to figure out where to gather information on how companies function so I can then figure out how to close the loop to keep resources circulating and being reused instead of just discarding them.

2. What am I interested in making/doing/designing to help the environment?

I’m interested in creating connections between companies so that instead of each company functioning in a competitive and secretive way, new technology that is more green is sort of “open source” and accessible so it is consistently being innovated and improved. I want to design systems that integrate sustainability in production before they even reach the consumer’s hands, but which remain a responsibility of the distributer even after the consumer discards them. I also want to see how policy and regulatory changes can affect how a company defines “success”, where monetary success isn’t the only thing evaluated at the end of the year. Success can be evaluated by how it affects social issues within the company as well as the customers it is selling to (ie. is a pharmaceutical company that’s making billions in revenue each quarter but which is causing addiction, death, and extreme side effects actually benefiting the world?). Success must also incorporate environmental affects- going farther than just producing in a more sustainable way, but actually doing something that SOLVES issues which already exist.

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