This page is dedicated to anything green in design. It began as a class assignment as you will read in The Project section. I will update the posting as frequently as I can and would like to use this as a platform to exchange information and ideas on anything sustainable. Please feel free to email me with your comments.
The Project
E Co., a graphic and industrial design firm will finance a designer to complete a project of his / her choice. The subject and format of the project is open, but must adhere to the principles of sustainable design. The commission will be awarded to the designer with the most creative, interesting and economically feasible project as judged through research and experimentation. Project proposals must be submitted in the form of a bound process book (or to publish on the internet since this is afterall a sustainable design project).
I want to propose sustainable shopping bags for the Disposable Clothes retail market, also known as Fast Clothes. As a self-professed fashion shopaholic myself, I couldn't help but look at the fashion retail industry, which led me to research on the use of shopping bags, and as it is we the graphic designers who design these bags. Some companies use kraft paper with minimal print, ie. Bloomingdale's, while others use heavier paperweight and have colorful, elaborate designs, ie. Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. Fashion trends change almost every second these days, and it is part of some financially successful companies' business strategy. Just look at San Francisco, we have Forever 21, H&M, and Gap, all located on prime locations in Union Square alongside Juicy Couture, Fendi and Salvatore Ferragamo, to name a few. Their clothes are very trendy, much less expensive and affordable for most people, and they don't last. So people think that they are getting clothes at a bargain, are more willing to dispose of them after just several uses or by the end of the season, and gives them a chance to buy more new clothes. Do we really need to buy new clothes for every new season?
My last quarter in design school, it would not be complete without a project in sustainable design. It was Nina Bellisio's Senior Project Lab. Through this project, I have decided that the most fundamental thing for me and every graphic designer out there can do is to learn, exchange ideas, practice, and educate our clients and the public that beautiful and meaningful design can be achieved with profound influence and environmental impact when sustainability is thought out through the design process. And I do realize this may be easier said than done, but it's something we cannot afford to ignore. If you look at it, the graphic design profession is very toxic. We use tons of paper just to print proofs to make sure that the colors are printed right and to build mock-ups after mock-ups of our packaging design. We put toxins into the environment with our poisonous ink. We design for corporate clients who advertise to consumers to buy, buy, and buy. Take packaging for example, as much as I love great design in packaging, the reality is packaging is a major source of pollution. And in many cases products are over-packaged, resulting in unnecessary emissions. As reported in the International Herald Tribune (IHT) by Elisabeth Rosenthal, when "Hewlett-Packard changed to lighter, simpler packaging for its printer cartridges last week, it predicted an energy savings equivalent to getting 3,500 cars off the road for a year" and imagine this happening in the US: in Zurich, "people carry their new televisions home without a box: naked appliances, delivered in the most eco-friendly package." So the challenge for graphic designers is to be creative in our use of materials without sacrificing the quality of design.
Research
On January 28, 2007, Alice Rawsthorn reported in IHT "Sustainability in Design Moves Onto the Corporate Agenda", that there has been a newfound corporate enthusiasm for sustainability. "BMW began the year by offering to take its old cars back for free, and to dispose of them responsibly. Marks & Spencer unveiled a $394 million "eco-plan," followed days later by a similar announcement by its rival British retailer, Tesco. The French luxury group, PPR, has opened a sustainable laboratory near Paris to manufacture organic skin care products for the Stella McCartney brand. As sustainability climbs the corporate agenda, it is posed to become one of the most important issues in design."
On February 21, 2007, a list of recycling articles were published with such headings: Stockholm: customers get a refund for recycling, Milan: car parts made from plastic bags, Berlin: Sorting trash with conviction, Paris: why yogurt cups aren't recyclable, and Recycling: a global work in progress.
On February 22, 2007, Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote in IHT, "Cleaner Consumption and the Low-carbon Life", and reported that the "world's leading climate scientists issued a report declaring that global warming is now "unequivocal" and that carbon emissions produced by human activity were "very likely" the culprit. Science spoke."
According to a recent Cambridge University study, "a T-shirt in its lifetime will require the use of 1,400 grams, or 50 ounces, of fuel, produce 450 grams of waste that goes to landfill and send 4 kilograms, or 9 pounds, of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If the owner were to wash that T-shirt in warm (40 degrees Celsius, 104 Fahrenheit) rather than hot (60 degrees Celsius) water, and hung it out to dry, the carbon dioxide emissions created by that shirt would be reduced by 85 to 90 percent."
Most people think that by buying clothes made of cotton, or even organic cotton, they are being eco-friendly. Perhaps not so. According to the Cambridge study, "while organic cotton is exemplary in the way it avoids pesticides, cotton garments squander energy because they must be washed frequently at high temperatures, and generally require tumble drying and ironing. Sixty percent of the emissions generated by a simple cotton T-shirt comes from the 25 washes and tumble dryings it will require."
Did you know that to recycle paper, glass, plastic, and cans require energy to do? And the term "recycle" does not actually apply to paper. Paper, when "recycled" is actually down cycled as the quality is reduced, it will never be the same as virgin paper. And it cannot be "recycled" infinitely.
It has been reported on IHT that "consumers spend more than $1 trillion a year on clothing and textiles, an estimated one-third of that in Western Europe, another third in North America, and about a quarter in Asia. And while people have grown accustomed to recycling paper and bottles, used clothes are usually thrown away. A study showed that Britons on average discard about 30 kilograms, or about 65 pounds, of clothing and textiles per year."
Nowadays global warming has become the buzz words. Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" has just won an Oscar for Best Documentary (Feature). The Academy Award itself had adopted an eco-friendly production for the event. Throwing your used paper, glass and plastic bottles, and cans into the recycling bin every week is simply not enough, if not even more polluting. News articles on environmental issues have been emerging everywhere since the beginning of this year, so much so that you can't help but notice the amount of toxins we put in our environment in almost everything that we do. Need I say more?
When I read the first half of Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart (whose book was actually printed on Yupo paper, a synthetic, recyclable paper that is also waterproof and tear resistant), I couldn't help but feel hopeless. Hopeless at how far we have gone to damage this earth and hopeless at how every step we try to ammend the situation it is not enough if not more damaging. But that is the harsh reality and each of us need to seriously evaluate our lifestyle.
Materials
Pulp paper
Some people may argue that paper is recyclable and compostable, so why is it bad? Because we have to continue cutting trees and destroying forests to make paper. And as mentioned before, we use more energy to recycle.
The synthetic paper is extremely durable and so will have a more lasting use than pulp paper. What's more, it holds ink very well, colors are sharp and vibrant and it has a super smooth finish. The only downside, which I would consider to be very minor, is that the current technology limits it to a certain type of ink and currently it can only be printed by printers that use those type of ink, which will then lead to higher cost.
Fabric
Fabric is more durable than paper and can be re-used over and over again. As the main medium used in the fashion industry, fabric is readily available.
How about those left-over fabric lying on the factory floors? A little creativity can be used to make something out of them. How about those shoe boxes? Can we make a shoe pouch so every customer who buys a pair of shoes can put them in their own shoe pouches? Besides using left-over fabric, there are some interesting new fabric out there that I was delighted to learn about.
Here is a great description of bamboo fabric as described on wisegeek.com, "Bamboo fabric is a natural textile made from the pulp of the bamboo grass. Bamboo fabric has been growing in popularity because it has many unique properties and is more sustainable than most textile fibers. Bamboo fabric is light and strong, has excellent wicking properties, and is to some extent antibacterial. The use of bamboo fiber for clothing was a 20th century development, pioneered by several Chinese corporations. Bamboo fiber resembles cotton in its unspun form, a puffball of light, airy fibers. Many companies use extensive bleaching processes to turn bamboo fiber white, although companies producing organic bamboo fabric leave the bamboo fiber unbleached. To make bamboo fiber, bamboo is heavily pulped until it separates into thin component threads of fiber, which can be spun and dyed for weaving into cloth. Bamboo fabric is very soft and can be worn directly next to the skin. Many people who experience allergic reactions to other natural fibers, such as wool or hemp, do not complain of this issue with bamboo. The fiber is naturally smooth and round without chemical treatment, meaning that there are no sharp spurs to irritate the skin. Bamboo fabric is favored by companies trying to use sustainable textiles, because the bamboo plant is very quick growing and does not usually require the use of pesticides and herbicides to thrive. As a result, plantations can easily be kept organic and replanted yearly to replenish stocks. The process of making unbleached bamboo fiber is very light on chemicals that could potentially harm the environment. In textile form, bamboo retains many of the properties it has as a plant. Bamboo is highly water absorbent, able to take up three times its weight in water. In bamboo fabric, this translates to an excellent wicking ability that will pull moisture away from the skin so that it can evaporate. For this reason, clothing made of bamboo fiber is often worn next to the skin. Bamboo also has many antibacterial qualities, which bamboo fabric is apparently able to retain, even through multiple washings. This helps to reduce bacteria that thrive on clothing and cause unpleasant odors. It can also kill odor causing bacteria that live on human skin, making the wearer and his or her clothing smell more sweet. In addition, bamboo fabric has insulating properties and will keep the wearer cooler in summer and warmer in winter. The versatility of bamboo fabric makes it an excellent choice for clothing designers exploring alternative textiles, and in addition, the fabric is able to take bright dye colors well, drape smoothly, and star in a variety of roles from knit shirts to woven skirts."
Then there's also soy fabric. Underthecanopy.com website gave the following description,"Soy fabric is a new and exciting eco-friendly fabric made from a by-product of soybean oil production. It is a sustainable textile fiber made from renewable and biodegradable resources. It is part of an effort to move consumers away from petrochemical textile products and turn waste into useful products."
If so many clothes have to be made all the time, how much left-over fabric is created? And how are they used and disposed of? This was the starting point of developing my ideas to substitute paper bags with a bag that can be re-used over and over again. This concept has already been successfully adopted by supermarkets, more notably Whole Foods Market. WFM offers refunds for each paper bag that you re-use when you shop for your groceries. They also sell fabric bags that you can keep re-using, thus eliminating the use of paper bag at all.
Budget
Since Forever 21 and Gap can be considered to be in the "fast clothes" market, it seems appropriate that they should start the trend in implementing sustainable shopping bags. They had been approached to obtain the following information: 1. Do you manufacture your own clothes? 2. Where are they manufactured at? 3. How much leftover fabric is created from the manufacture of your clothes per year? (by weight) 4. What do you do with the leftover fabric? Are they thrown away or are they used for something else? 5. How much is a worker paid at your manufacturing facility? (this is to help me estimate the labor cost to make the shopping bags).
It had proven to be a very difficult task to obtain the cost of paper bags from these big companies as it seemed to be a private detailed financial information. I also approached one of the distributors of Yupo paper, and this lady was willing to help me obtain a quote from a merchant for a shopping bag using Yupo paper based on my estimated figure of the quantity Gap may use per year, and the respond she got was since I am not a customer, they would not prioritize to get me a quote. So I had to rely on the internet. Please note that the figures I calculated were based on estimates, not real data, but estimates that would give you an idea.
An order of about 3,000 paper bags will cost $0.39 each. For its fiscal year 2005, Gap reported $16 billion in revenue. Based on this figure and an estimated $50.00 per purchase transaction, there would be 320 million transactions per year, thus Gap would have used about 320 million shopping bags. With such a large quantity, its cost could be as low as $0.05 to $0.10 for each shopping bag.
The cost to use leftover fabric would be insignificant since the company has already paid for them. The cost for a designer to design the bag would already be included in the designer's annual salary. The cost will depend on labor and time used to make a bag. Using an average minimum wage of $7.00 an hour and an estimated time of 2 hours to make a bag, each bag will cost $14.00 to make. So the savings after discounting the use of paper bag would be around $13.90. The bag can be sold for a profit which will amount to more revenue rather than expense for the company.
This may not seem like a significant savings but bear in mind that a fabric bag can be reused over and over again. This will save trees and energy from using pulp paper and recycling them. Furthermore, this can provide opportunities for designers to be creative in designing a beautiful looking bag that is also functional that people would want to carry that bag around as a pretty handbag which can also accommodate additional shopping items.
The conclusion to budgeting for a sustainable shopping bag is: A fabric shopping bag cost $14.00. A sustainable shopping bag - priceless!
