A Question Of Design

“A Question Of Design” by William McDonough and Michael Braungart was another reading which focused on the connection between sustainability and the design world. This article went back in history to explain how and why our society today views sustainable design the way it does. One of the most thought-provoking moments in the article comes when the authors discuss the idea of what they call a “cradle to grave” system. The “cradle to grave” idea is that companies take resources from the earth and the land, create a product with them, sell the product, and then eventually that product is disposed of into a “grave”, which usually means a landfill. In these landfills, products sit, unable to break down or decompose. The authors discuss how consumers don’t think about where the items that they throw away end up- once they’re gone, they’re out of our minds. Ontop of that fact, the items themselves which we throw away in the garbage contain an average of only five percent of the raw materials involved in manufacturing it. When you really think about how many quickly-disposable products we use in our everyday lives that end up in landfills, its horrifying, and this article really sheds light on that atrocity.