Chapter 1: Lightness

Trevor Berreth, Megan Bonner, & Kayla Watson

The main ideas are the expectations of the material usage in the modern era and what is actually occurring. A lot of sustainability can be found in the design process of products. Most of the steps that would save materials and labor occur in the first stages of designing something, which is an important solution to keep in mind as we head further into the chapter. In the next section, he focuses on the environmental repercussions of faulty systems. One of the three main problems that cause us to have a more “weighty” society is that the industry changes, but it changes too slowly compared to economic growth. This means when designers find a solution to the problem, the problem grows. Another issue with the designs, is that 80% of a service, product, or systems’s environmental impact is determined at the design stage. If this is overlooked, it is hard to make changes to make the above systems better for the environment. Companies now are not only looking at the shelf-life of a project but are looking at the overall cycle of the product as they say “from cradle to grave”. By looking at designs this way, people are able to see where there products could potentially end up at and design for that or design a more recyclable product. A service based economy is a good fix for it because it allows people to focus on services and not solely on products so people are connected to use these products and service on a when-needed basis.

Collectively wasteful behaviors are hidden from view. It’s the accumulation of such tiny acts that weighs heavily on the planet. New task for designers is to make these behaviors visible. Imagine what it would be like if carbon dioxide were red, and our wasteful emissions turned the sky to the color of blood. Many effective representations of complex phenomena have been developed in recent times. Physicists have illustrated quarks. Biologists have mapped the genome. Doctors have described immune systems in the body and among communities. Network designers have mapped communication flows in buildings. Managers have charted the locations of expertise in their organizations. We need to foster ecological and systems literacy. One reason we don’t see the bigger picture is that we don’t want to: It’s so grim. Factor 20 refers to the idea that in order to achieve a balance of energy and matter consumption, with rising living standards and growing population calculated in, we need to improve the efficiency with which we use matter and energy by a factor of twenty times within one or two generations. 90 to 95 percent reductions in material and energy flows are possible in developed nations without diminishing the quality of the services people want.

Summary: Lightness Paragraph Summary