The Design Industry Has Fuelled a Climate Crisis. Now it Must be the Solution.

‘A designer’s job is to imagine the world not how it is, but how it should be.’
- Sir Terence Conran

It is a long-held belief of mine that design can be a vehicle for positive change, both environmentally and socially. Sadly, my experiences have often been the opposite. If anything, the design industry is part of a system that is perpetuating environmental damage — accelerating the exploitation of resources, polluting the environment, and applying unrelenting pressure on the poor and voiceless who produce our goods.

In 2010, I set up Sibley Grove with my wife, Kate Sibley. We aimed to create a design company — in this case, interior design — that could address the environmental and social concerns that are exacerbated by our industry, such as resource depletion, waste and exploited labour markets. Over the years, we have met and worked with some incredible people who have grown companies from fledging ideas or evolved entire business models to meet the challenges of the future. But I have also travelled the world visiting sites, manufacturers and factories, and seen first-hand what mass consumption looks like behind the face of the brand. It isn’t pretty viewing.

In the early days, trying to engage clients on environmental and ethical issues was incredibly challenging. However, in the subsequent years that Sibley Grove has been in existence, public awareness of social and environmental problems — as a direct consequence of the way we live — has increased enormously. After spending many years in the design industry and meeting resistance on this issue, the new wave of optimism is most welcome. However, we must not be complacent and mistake goodwill and an appetite for change with effective long-term strategies for a better future. Society is in an early period of realisation, and we must use this momentum to increase our awareness, broaden our knowledge and develop systemic changes to how we manufacture, purchase and dispose of the things we use. As a society, we can no longer afford to take a moralistic approach and assign blame to others. Nor can we hide behind a series of measures and restrictions that tinker at the edges and fail to deal with the elephant in the room — namely, that our way of life is currently incompatible with the natural world.

It is rapidly becoming accepted by even the most ardent sceptics that human beings have not had an entirely positive impact on the world. By no means do I wish to downplay the extraordinary achievements of the people — both now and in the past — who have designed products and systems that have saved lives, improved health, enhanced transport and brought art and culture into our lives. However, in blind pursuit of our goals, we often remain blinkered to the side effects, blissfully unaware of the trail of destruction that accompanies our ‘progress’. In my opinion, the sole focus is on wealth creation rather than solutions that benefit society, and that has to change. By focusing on narrow outcomes rather than process, we are piling up long term environmental and social damage for short term capital gains. In a nutshell, we have become experts at immediate wealth creation and terrible at long term planning and future-proofing.

The past 150 years has brought about unprecedented levels of social progress — for the masses, not just the privileged — in terms of healthcare, education, politics, and wellbeing — a fact that we often neglect to acknowledge when criticising the system we have. But our society is now built on a linear economy fuelled by relentless consumerism. Taking valuable resources and materials at one end, and discarding them in landfill or incinerators at the other. It is an economy built on the accelerated production of waste. The problem is that our dependency on this system means a drop in the rate of consumption will have a profound impact on our lives. Therefore, it seems essential we maintain our system, even if it is to the detriment of the environment and the communities who produce the goods. For a long time, there have been problems deep within the foundations of the economic systems that support us. As a society, we have chosen to ignore any long term issues that will impact the immediate flow of capital, and continued to consume, stuffing our faces like a never-ending game of hungry hippos. We are failing in our role as planetary custodians, behaving like dodgy landlords banking the rent while the property is falling into disrepair.

As the developing world continues to grow at an exponential rate — based on the system that has served us well in the past — the structural fault lines are becoming more visible. However, like a giant Jenga tower, we continue to play with the blocks at the top, but at some point, we are going to need to address the base to avoid total — albeit gradual — collapse. To exhaust the Jenga analogy, we must lay the foundations for a new structure, that reaps the economic benefits of the old system whilst correcting the structural deficiencies. One that delivers for the economy, society and the natural world, aligned with nature rather than robbing and stripping its assets.

It is easy in situations like this to want to apportion blame. But, the reality is that we are all complicit in creating and maintaining the problem, admittedly to varying degrees. There is a tendency to think that the solutions lay with politicians and large businesses, and while there is some truth in this, it’s only part of the problem, and not an excuse to avoid making changes ourselves. If we elect politicians to be the custodians of our current system, of which large businesses are the chief beneficiaries, it is pointless looking for innovation in those areas. While they benefit greatly, they are also heavily invested in the current system, ideologically and in terms of infrastructure, therefore any change is complex, expensive and protracted. Real change rarely comes from the top, but rises from the bottom. Individuals and small to medium-sized businesses need to grow based on principles that value the economy and the environment equally, providing tangible benefits to broader society. Companies that are relevant to the future, with firm principles and solid foundations. The path to a cleaner and fairer world is complex and largely unknown, and it is wrong to assume that politicians, business leaders and industry know what the solutions are, or that they can’t be bothered or consider it too expensive. From my experience, this is a common misconception. Innovation has seldom come from the political sphere, so looking to it for guidance and leadership in this instance is a mistake. We need creative and innovative solutions that politicians can get behind, not the other way around.

There is a gulf in our knowledge that needs bridging and bridging fast. Over many years, society has become increasingly disconnected from nature and the people who make our goods, and the concept of a fictitious world of abundance and infinite resources has been allowed to proliferate. I don’t think many people have a concept of what the environment is; myself included, we are utterly insulated. We buy food without ever seeing a field, travel to and from work in air-conditioned bubbles, work in human-made systems and structures such as offices or online, and spend vast amounts of time in buildings with controlled environments. For many, our daily relationship with nature is non-existent; therefore, is it any wonder we consume without any real understanding of the consequences. But the effects are there, and they are real. Although we may rarely see them in our day to day lives, the impact is felt by others, be it wildlife, the poor and vulnerable in developing countries, or the generations who have yet to be born.

While my experiences lead me to believe that the future can be a positive one, the reality is that for years we have been destroying the natural environment, brutally and without remorse, while using up our natural resources without a credible plan for the future. As a designer, I am a key contributor to this mess, and for a long time, I felt guilty about it. Rather than problem-solving, the design industry has a primary objective to support and speed up consumerism. Designers work alongside manufacturers, retailers and marketers to create stuff — most of it unnecessary — with the sole purpose of making money. Make no mistake; there is nothing creative or genuinely innovative about this process. As businesses will resist price rises at all costs, most of the time we seek ‘efficiencies’ within the system to make similar stuff for less to generate larger profit margins. While efficiency is necessary up to a point, constant downward pressure inevitably leads to exploitation, be that labour markets bordering on slavery or material usage leading to resource scarcity.

History has shown that huge leaps in innovation often come during extreme and tragic moments, be they medical breakthroughs following health epidemics or technological advances following a conflict. When civilisation is under threat, we find the resources and human ingenuity usually conjures up some pretty stunning outcomes. What is unique about the environmental challenges we face now are that they have not been immediately apparent, and the global community still lacks consensus despite significant progress in recent years. In the context of a lifetime, the degradation of the natural world seems slow and gradual to such an extent that many still believe nothing is wrong or remain indifferent. Furthermore, we have successfully driven a wedge between ourselves and the people who produce the vast majority of our goods absolving ourselves of any blame through a lack of knowledge or understanding.

Before Kate and I set up Sibley Grove in 2010, I had been aware for some time that there had been a contradiction between my views of the design industry and my output as a designer working for other companies. I was passionate about sustainability, but in reality, it seldom translated into my design outcomes. It was easy to brandish me a hypocrite. I wanted to be proactive and create a strategy for delivering tangible, measurable outcomes that benefited the environment and society, and Sibley Grove was my opportunity to do that. To scrutinise our designs in terms of cost, quality and aesthetics, as well as its environmental and social impact. On the face of it, the plan seemed simple, but running a design company ‘with principles’ is very challenging. It is hard enough to keep a business afloat at the best of times, let alone one set up so soon after the financial crisis of 2008. It is harder still when your clients and customers do not share your concerns or have little or no understanding of the issues we were raising.

While our approach cost us some work in the past, we did manage to locate a few engaged businesses and clients who understood the challenges and the benefits of changing. But in truth, it was rare to find a client whose thoughts moved beyond money. For most businesses, if the customers are happy and the product lasts for long enough to avoid additional investment, then they are usually satisfied. We found that getting a client engaged in a broader debate about people or the environment is almost impossible. The fact of the matter is that no one wants to be told something that will make their life harder, especially if they see no value in it. But this is why the design industry is so crucial because it can show clients where the value lies and guide the transition towards a better way of doing business. Lead in finding solutions rather than sitting back and taking the easy route, replicating old, out of date approaches that are quite frankly, inappropriate for the future. In my opinion, designers do not have a responsibility to be environmentally neutral or sustainable, at least no more than anybody else. However, they are duty-bound to create the designs that are appropriate for the future, rather than reinventing the past. This means products and spaces that look great, are good quality and priced competitively, but crucially leave a positive environmental and social legacy. To achieve this, designers must use their influence to tackle systemic problems head-on, such as; avoiding non-recyclable materials, supporting positive businesses, avoiding suppliers who rely on exploited labour markets and continuing to learn about supply chains and the origins of materials.

I certainly don’t claim to be the voice of all that is good in the world, nor do I believe I have all the solutions to the problems we face. But in the last ten years, I have learnt that finger-pointing and criticising others is not an effective way to drive change. We must be honest about where the problems lie, openly challenge the work of others, but remain open to criticism ourselves. Without a greater degree of scrutiny, we cannot create the outcomes that future generations need. As designers, we are all part of the problem, but collectively, we are also the solution.