Consumerism=freedom (Petty,M.M, 2011)
In the 1950s this slogan was adopted to help a slumping economy, but today it has massive repercussions for the environment, meaning that today the biggest issue we face within design, is sustainability. Designers are plagued with the issue of keeping their designs temporary and desirable, while also considering the affect it will have on the environment.
The humble take away coffee cup is a great example of the sustainability debate, this coffee cup is seemingly insignificant until you see the statistics, in America alone “Over 6.5 million trees were cut down to make 16 billion paper cups used by US consumers in 2006, using 4 billion US gallons of water and resulting in 253 million pounds of waste.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cup) In response to this there are many different solutions, mainly with mugs you are able to keep and are made to the take away cup parameters as to fit in the machine. The KeepCup (2011) design, pictured here is designed for people who need their daily intake of coffee and want to reduce the number of take away cups in landfill. With the goal that everyone will own one and there will be no need for take away cups anymore.
While consumerism once meant freedom, today it is seen as trap. We need to keep up consumerism to uphold the economy, but we also need to buy less to try save the world. Making this a huge political, cultural, ideological and moral issue.
Reference List:
Petty, M, M.( 2011), Lecture 11 Politics of Design, Victoria University ,Te Aro Campus
KeepCup website http://www.keepcup.com/
Image sourced from http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/25/view/7319/keep-cup.html
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