Video reviews: The Lightbulb Conspiracy

The short film, The Lightbulb Conspiracy explores the development and implementation of planned obsolescence throughout the 1900’s and early twenty first century. This documentary style film closely follows the journey of design obsolescence and has many significant examples right from the first light globes through to Apple’s IPod. The underlying message of the film is the impact which planned obsolescence is having on the environment, with millions of tonnes consumer good waste entering landfill and dump sites. The film portrays the throw away lifestyle of the western world and aims at educating designers and the general public about the push to move away from planned obsolescence.

The introduction of Thomas Edison’s lightbulb in 1881 was one of the greatest inventions of the 1800’s. However, his lightbulb lasted a significantly long period of time before the need for replacement. This saw a downturn in consumer need and there begun the thinking behind planned obsolescence. The creation of the world wide cult, Phoebus was the beginning of planned obsolescence, where manufactures would fix the life of the product in order to increase consumer need. This behaviour at the time was not seen as unethical but through the industrial revolution more and more consumers began shopping for fun not need which created massive amounts of consumer good waste due to consumer’s throw away lifestyle. As more and more products reached their end of life people began to witness the environmental impacts of their behaviours. Anti-growth societies were created and took on Ghandi’s vision, ‘the world is big enough to satisfy everyone’s needs but will always be too small to satisfy individual greed’. As seen in the video, thousands of tonnes of waste goods were being shipped to Ghana where their natural environment was being destroyed. As modern day designers we can reflect on the past and acknowledge the wrong doings of designers of the twentieth century. A more recent example of planned obsolescence was the release of Apple’s first IPod with an obsolete battery in order to maintain consumer demand. As a result of this immoral conduct they were sued and forced to fix the problems they created. Of recent times Apple has increased their market share by producing more products to complement their range while morally producing quality products.

In order to design sustainably and construct eco-friendly products, planned obsolescence must be eradicated and designers must find new ways to develop products while maintaining consumer demand. There are an abundance of new technologies, materials and processes which aid designers in producing such products.

Video reviews: An Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth is an eye opening educational presentation about global warming and the impact which humans have of the world. Directed by Davis Guggenheim and presented by Al Gore, himself, the film uses scientific data and estimates to convey his message in order to educate the audience of the dangers which lie ahead if we continue going about our current way of life. Released in 2006, the film became a major talking point in the media and right across the globe which has since attracted more media articles and reviews than any other film. Gore builds his argument with measured data and makes predictions which shock the audience, making them aware of this ‘moral issue’. As designers we have a major role in striving to reduce the environmental impact of consumer goods and design products to assist in the lowering of Co2 levels.

Gore describes global warming as not a political responsibility but as a moral responsibility. It is not up to the governments to implement changes but it is up to the individual person to act morally and reduce their individual carbon emissions. As designers we are the creators of such consumer products which shape the way people live their lives and by designing sustainably we can alter the consumer’s habits and offer eco-friendly alternatives. As presented by Gore, there have been moves to design more sustainable automobiles which significantly reduce emissions. Car manufactures such as Toyota Honda are prime examples of this were as Ford and General Motors have done near nothing to address these issues and remain as some of the biggest carbon contributors. Not only is sustainable design about reducing the emissions given off by the product but, using smart materials designing to use as little material as possible. Using cleaner sources of energy to manufacture the goods we design and designing products which promote and rely on the use of clean energies are just some of the ways designers can shape the future and work towards a cleaner environment.

This moving film is a great step towards reducing the amount of emissions which enter the earth’s atmosphere every year. Al Gore advocates the significantly important issues of global warming and educates the audience as to how they can help to reduce their personal carbon footprint through the use of energy saving appliances and striving t become more sustainable. The  design industry plays a big part in contributing to global emissions and has the power and moral responsibility to act upon this issue through the use of sustainable design.

Video reviews: How it's Made & Giving Packaging New Life

Current packaging manufacturing and recycling process are at an all-time high in eco friendliness. Industrial designers have moral responsibilities to minimise the impact of packaging on the environment and create innovative ways to package products in a way which uses less material to perform the same function if not outperform current functions. Through the use of such videos as How it’s made: Packaging and Giving Packaging a New Life  industrial designers are able to gain an insight into the process involved in producing and recycling packaging and thus design to maximise efficiency and minimise environmental impact.

The mini-series How it’s made: Packaging looks at the various production methods of packaging and enables the viewer to gain a full insight into the entire production process from raw material to finished product. Specifically looking at the tetrapak episode, the video explains how this innovative pack allows products to remain unrefrigerated for up to one year; while at the same time the pack is 100 percent recyclable.  The lamination process to form the outer shell of the pack incorporates three different materials; plastic, paper and foil. While these three distinctly different materials are used they are able to be separated and recycled with no waste entering landfill which is a great triumph in the packaging industry.

At the other end of the packaging lifecycle, Giving Packaging New Life explains in detail how packaging at its end of life is recycled to for new almost virgin material which is used to make more packaging. Everything from paper to plastics and metals are recycled and reproduced which minimises the energy consumption of that of creating new packaging from scratch. The episodes of this series focus on the recycling process in Germany and are a prime example of the recycling with the worlds first automatic sorting plant in Anderten which reduces the cost of convetional sorting methods by as much as 50 percent. Sorting is a critical process in recycling packaging as it allows different materials and material types to be identified and grouped in order to return them to pure granular form. This example from Germany expresses the innovation in technology and design showing that packaging has a promising ecofriendly future.

Both video series allow designers and the general public to gain knowledge into the packaging industry and allow them to improve their designs and behaviours to assist in the process of creating new and recycled packaging. Through implementing the use of the latest technologies, industry is able to work more efficiently, gathering larger quantities of used packaging, reprocessing used packaging and reproducing packaging with higher quantities of recycled materials.