Sustainability - a graphic designers perspective

Here is a great video of Eric Benson speaking at TEDx conference in 2010 and gives his perspective to sustainable graphic design.  As a graphic designer his awakening happened at seeing his own direct mail designs dumped in his own rubbish bin (trash can).  Eric now produces environmentally friendly print and packaging material and digital media. Check out the video of his talk below.

Here's a simple graphic of the direct mail life-cycle.  It's highly simplified - and really only shows the journey of the paper, not the ink or other consumables and it only ends in the bin rather than a landfill or incinerator.  Even so, notice that it's not really a "cycle" but a linear flow.  The thing that makes this linear flow possible is cheap energy to transport and process the trees into printed material.

In this video Eric raises some interesting questions and then points out the power we have as graphic designers to change the way we work and to make better decisions.



Eric asks the following questions:
What are the impacts of the objects that I create?
Why is sustainability important to graphic designers?

He gives us the following sobering facts:
Paper industry is the 4th largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
100 million trees are felled annually to produce junk mail.

and Eric points out the power we have as graphic designers:
Facilitate real change throughout the supply chain.
Make sustainable design what design IS not merely what it could be.
The more knowledge and tools, the easier it is to make better decisions that when added up can change the world.

For an introduction into the production of consumer goods check out this post about the story of stuff and sustainable graphic design.