Publicación de Gravity Wave

🌟 Embracing Sustainability in Design & Technology 🌟 As a UK Design & Technology teacher, I'm thrilled to see initiatives like PlasticFree paving the way for a more sustainable future. The insights shared by designers offer valuable perspectives on reshaping our relationship with plastic and embracing alternative materials and are good starting points for discussions with students. Here are some key takeaways from the article: 💡 Think Beyond Plastic: Designers urge us to explore alternatives and challenge traditional design norms. It is essential to consider factors like material properties, cost, and manufacturing limitations when seeking sustainable solutions. 💡 Mindset Shift: Shifting away from plastic requires a change in mindset. Celebrating craft, embracing imperfections, and prioritizing natural materials can lead to innovative design solutions. 💡 Circular Design Process: Adopting a circular design approach involves considering the entire product lifecycle. From material selection to packaging and transportation, every aspect should aim for sustainability. 💡 Collaboration is Key: Collaboration between designers, brands, suppliers, and stakeholders is crucial for driving sustainable innovation forward. Material libraries like PlasticFree provide inspiration, but real change requires interdisciplinary collaboration. 💡 Education and Awareness: Educating designers on manufacturing processes and encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration can accelerate the shift towards sustainable products. It's essential to rethink product formats, formulas and packaging while considering the entire lifecycle. Let's continue to embrace sustainability in Design & Technology, working towards a future where innovation and environmental consciousness go hand in hand. #DesignAndTechnology #Sustainability #PlasticFree #CircularDesign #Education #Innovation #Plastic #Bioplastic #Teaching #Learning #Environment #Materials #Materialinnovation #Designinnovation #designteaching #Sustainabledesign 🌱🛠️♻️

Circular design is instrumental.

In a world where change is the only constant, the textile industry is going through a big change brought on by innovation, sustainability, and digitalization. In this age of fast change, it has never been more important for educational institutions to shape the future of textiles. With this in consideration, we have brought you a blog that throws light on how important educational institutions are to this change. Dive into our blog and be part of the change today! Click to explore. ✨ https://lnkd.in/gjsw_2zb

How can we inspire students to behave more sustainably? 🌱 This was a question I had in the back of my mind when working at ReStyle all the time. We need more sustainable fashion demand, but renting was (and is) a new concept to a lot of people - so how can we make that happen? 🛍️ I chose to find some answers to this question and researched the topic within my master thesis for M. Sc. Sustainable Entrepreneurship at Campus Fryslân - University of Groningen. Here is a short summary 🥳 What's the problem? 🚮 : One truck-load of textile waste ends in landfills - EVERY second. This makes the fashion industry the second most polluting industry in the world. Attitude-Behaviour-Gap in Generation Y: Despite information being available, sustainable behaviour change is lacking. So, what can we do? 🤷🏽♀️ : One way of raising awareness for the necessary change is over education. To find out how exactly education can be used, I designed a workshop & clothing swap at ReStyle and interviewed students before-and afterwards. Raising the consumer's interest level 📈: Students with a higher interest level on sustainable fashion did not mind doing some extra work for it. Barriers of accessibility, time or cost however were reasons why students with a lower interest chose unsustainable options. And how can we raise the interest level? 💬 : Over fun & active education and a long time horizon: Through matching high & low-interest students, a positive learning atmosphere developed. Some were eager to learn about sustainable options, some had recommendation & tips. What does that mean on a bigger scale? 📚 : What I learned from my thesis is that creating a true benefit in education is key. Consumers need to actively want to learn more, and are then also more open to let no barriers stop them from trying out sustainable options. For sustainability, this means: The earlier we can create a level of interest (in primary school for example), the better are chances that sustainable thinking can become the "new normal". I was more than surprised to see how quickly some participants changed their opinion - and my research time frame was only 3 weeks. Thus, I see lots of potential for long-term, systemic education on sustainability when creating a positive learning atmosphere. (In case you made it to this sentence: congrats 🎉 I'd be happy to share more insights in a call or send over the document. Just contact me about it 😊)

🎨 Excited to announce our upcoming Lunch & Learn »Making Colours with Cellulose«! 📯 Join us on Feb 15th, 2024, from 12-1 pm at the Max Planck Campus, for an enlightening session with Prof. Dr. Silvia Vignolini, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces | Max-Planck-Institut für Kolloid- und Grenzflächenforschung. 🔍 Abstract: Explore the fascinating world of natural colors and sustainable bio-materials: »In our lab at the MPICI, we study how living organisms such as plants and insects use their internal structure on very small scale (nano) to make colours. What we see in the natural world inspires us to find new ways to make colourful, sustainable materials. Nature is overflowing with beautiful colours, but the most spectacular colours in nature such as the one of chameleons to the dazzling tail-feathers of peacocks are made using a phenomenon called light interference without any pigment using only transparent materials. If you’ve ever noticed the pinks and blues glistening on the surface of soap bubble, then you’re already familiar with this effect and the kind of beautiful colour it can produce. Colours are an important part of daily life for humans too. We use dyes in our clothes, and paints for art and decoration. Complex colour patterns are used to prevent counterfeiting, like the shiny "holograms" you might have seen on bank notes and credit cards. However, these sources of colour have their drawbacks: they're often made from chemicals and plastics that fade over time and can't be recycled. To find more sustainable sources of colour we study natural bio-materials such as cellulose (found in plants like cotton and pine trees), chitin (found in fungi and crustaceans) and keratin (found in bird feathers and human hair). Those bio-materials are highly abundant, biodegradable and non-toxic, and therefore perfect for producing more eco-friendly colorants.« 💡 Why It Matters: Discover the significance of sustainable color sources in our daily lives. Uncover the limitations of traditional dyes and paints, often derived from chemicals and plastics, and their impact on the environment. Learn how studying bio-materials like cellulose, chitin, and keratin can pave the way for eco-friendly colorants that are abundant, biodegradable, and non-toxic. 📌 Don't miss this opportunity to meet Prof. Dr. Silvia Vignolini on this special occasion and to broaden your understanding of current research at #MPICI on sustainable sources of color and natural, biodegradable and non-toxic bio-materials! Reserve your spot now: https://lnkd.in/esenFJBe Let's paint 🖌 a brighter, greener future together! 🌱 Co-funded by: European Union. Supported by: HealthCapital Berlin-Brandenburg Wirtschaftsförderung Land Brandenburg GmbH (WFBB) WEITNAUER Attorneys-at-Law and Tax Advisors #sustainablecolours #biomaterials #lunchandlearn #PotsdamSciencePark #MaxPlanck #MaxPlanckResearch #VignoliniLab

How can product design enhance circular economy? Sustainability is one my topics of main interest, so I am often looking for some articles to read about it. I was recently reading one about the role of product design in promoting circular economy, which is one of the key points of sustainability, and I decided to share some insights from it (and add mine too). One of the least sustainable category of products is electronics and electronics equipment. These products are usually designed to live a short life, either by breaking soon or getting outdated, forcing the consumers to buy a new one. They contain numerous hazardous components that do not get recycled or reused, get improperly disposed in landfills and end up polluting the environment. So, what can designers do during product development to make their products more compatible with a circular economy and therefore be more sustainable? Well, it’s a complex answer and many authors have published works contributing to the topic. Some mention using easily recyclable materials and avoiding mixed or composed materials. Single, pure materials are way easier to recycle, while composite ones are rejected at recycling institutions. Others authors recommend to “design for disassembly”, meaning, to think ahead for how can your product be disassembled to be repaired and parts be replaced. They also mention choosing newer production technologies over older methods, as the newer ones tend to be more compatible with refurbishing/remanufacturing. One really good practice for designers on this topic is to always choose standardized parts to compose your product. This makes products easier to be repaired. Reducing the number of components also has a good impact in repairability. On a side note, it’s valuable to recall that in order to build a stronger circular economy, there are higher stakeholders than us designers. Legislators, politicians, manufacturers and similar have stronger influence than us and need to be included in the discussion. Link to the article I read: https://lnkd.in/dipKqYJv  #Design #ProductDesign #Sustainability #CircularEconomy

Edinburgh Science Festival is showcasing the theme Shaping the Future.💚 Emily Raemaekers, who utilizes natural techniques and materials when crafting garments, aims to call attention to environmental issues in the fashion industry. For example, textile dyeing is currently the second largest global water pollutant.🌿💦 The showcase explores material usage in fast fashion and how biomaterials can be a more sustainable option in fashion and engineering. Symbio, Raemaekers dress, is created from: - TENCEL™ ’s wood pulp fiber. - Linocut printmaking to create a pattern mimicking mycelium. - Natural dyes like dried hibiscus flowers created a unique pink and red tone on the base of the clothing. - Water-based ink as a sustainable alternative to plastic-based ink. - Plant-based leathers, which create a lower carbon footprint, including Uppeal, created from apple processing waste from the juice and compote industry, and - MuSkin, made from a wild fungus from subtropical environments, were used for additional designs. Symbio is on display at the National Museum of Scotland for the Edinburgh Science Festival’s exhibition, Growing Home. Via: https://lnkd.in/ehu3E8k9 #Materialinnovation #Nextgenmaterials #Sustainability #Textiles #Innovation

I'm a Lego fan. A huge fan in fact. I'm the type of fan that currently has amassed a collection of sets relating to the 80's films I grew up watching, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters. This article about the LEGO Groups efforts to become more sustainable brings home the reality of the challenge all manufacturers will have to face at some point in the future, and why I believe the subject of D&T needs a radical overhaul. Lego is known for its manufacture of ABS plastic parts that are used in its iconic toys. The properties of the plastic make it stiff and allow it to retain a tight fit to other parts in an assembly. In D&T we can use Lego to learn about injection moulding, mass production, quality control, the list goes on. Lego set some lofty goals around its business. Similar to the #SDGs, by 2030 it wanted to achieve some amazing positive changes that would be easy to communicate to customers. All the plastic coming from none oil based sources would be easy to say in a marketing campaign or on a packaging box. Very quickly in their journey, they replaced those bendy green tree pieces with sugar based plastic. Amazing right? Then they brought in paper bags for all the bits. Another great plastic reducing step forward. But, as you read in this article, now it's getting tricky. It's hard to find a material with the same properties as ABS. If the material isn't stiff, it won't hold to another part, pretty important for a construction toy. This hurdle is now forcing the company to pull back from its ambitious goals. What does this have to do with kids and learning D&T in schools? What I believe our schools should teach, is a cross discipline approach to design, innovation, and creativity. The solution to this issue might not be a material science one. It could be solved through changing customer behaviours. It could be through a digital solution. There could be a solution in nature, or in another sector. The subject of D&T is currently stuck trying to solve problems in one way. By working with materials and creating new products. It fails to consider solutions that take products out of the system, or approach the challenge through the eyes of a different stakeholder, not just the user or manufacturer. It's great to read that Lego are considering take back schemes and other creative solutions, but recycling is actually not a great solution sometimes, and we need kids who can think differently who can enter a workforce and innovate within it. Enjoy the read, and to find out more about "the future of design education', search for that phrase and Pearson to learn more. #sustainability #education #design #futureofdesign #designeducation #schools https://lnkd.in/efQiyU5y