İdil Gaziulusoy is an Associate Professor at the Department of Design at the Aalto University in Finland and also the leader of NODUS Sustainable Design Research Group. She is a sustainability scientist and design researcher, whose work is concerned with socio-technical and socio-ecological systems with a particular focus on product-consumption systems. She is a global pioneer in the emerging design for sustainability transitions, developing theories and methods/tools for design practices dealing with sustainability transitions.
How does ecodesign play an integral role in raising awareness about sustainability (socially and technically)?
Primarily, I consider that it is important that we talk a bit about sustainable design in general, which is a large and broad field that has also developed a lot in the past 20, 30 years. Essentially, sustainable design is about addressing sustainability challenges through theories, tools and methods of design. There are multiple approaches in sustainable design that have come into existence since the conception of the field. There are approaches such as green design, cradle-to-cradle design, design for sustainable behaviour, design for sustainability transitions (also known as transition design, etc, and ecodesign is one of the first and most fundamental approaches within the sustainable design field. Ecodesign is very important for this field because it is the first approach that resulted in the bringing up of the concept of the product life cycle. Ecodesign looks at environmental sustainability of a product from all the way from the extraction of raw materials to the final product, taking all the steps in between into consideration. – For that reason, it is a fundamental approach in developing products and evaluating the product’s environmental performance on the basis of the whole life cycle.
How much responsibility falls on the designer and how much on the manufacturer, in regard to making ecodesign something that is true to its purpose?
That is a good question and doesn’t have a very straightforward answer. So, first, rather than talking about the designer, I would like to put emphasis on the design phase. The design phase is very important because 80% of environmental impacts of a product is locked in during the design phase. But whether the responsibility falls onto the designer or the manufacturer, it depends – designers who work in the manufacturing companies are bound by the said company’s strategic priorities and expectations – essentially, what the company asks from the designer is binding for the designer. So, the responsibility of promoting ecodesign lies more on the company itself. Designers do not have a lot of power in how they design these products. If a company strategy does not put emphasis on improving environmental performance of products or producing environmentally superior products compared to the ones they used to produce, then there is not much a designer or engineer can do, because the resources they are given and the kind of frame of innovation is determined by the company.
Would you then say that there is a certain limitation of creative expression in ecodesign (for reasons mentioned above)?
Well, I wouldn’t use necessarily the term creative expression because in design, and particularly product design and design in manufacturing companies, there is creative expression, and aesthetics related dimensions are responsibilities of designers, but they’re only a small part of a designer’s responsibility, while the other responsibilities are designing products that are not going to harm people, that function well, that are efficient, etc. So in that sense, there are limitations on engineers and designers and companies in relation to how much they can “push” environment related agendas because it is tightly related to company strategies.
What is the role of the consumer in all of this?
The consumer or user, as I would like to prefer, because we are kind of trying to shift the conception of a user from someone who consumes to someone who actually experiences life with the help of products as a user. The general narrative in companies is for them to move into more ecodesign centric approaches, for which there exist a couple of main mechanisms. One of them is legislation and regulation – so if legislative and regulatory requirements obligate companies to meet certain ecodesign related aspects, they have to comply. Then there is market demand – in this aspect, users become crucial because, on the basis of people’s purchase decisions and whether those decisions are based on, or to what extent those decisions are based on the environmental impact of a product, determines whether a company sees value in producing products with superior environmental performance. In that sense, consumer or user choice, purchase choices, are very important to signal to companies that if you produce environmentally superior products, there are people who will buy them. Of course, companies talk about how there is not a market for sustainable products. There are consumer groups, ethical consumers, who pay more to buy better, socially and environmentally better performing products, but that’s not the majority of the population. People generally make purchases on the basis of the price comparison. However, users can give signals to companies if they purchase in comparison between two products, similarly functioning products, the one that has better environmental performance. For example, a washing machine that uses less electricity, it’s a good signal to the company to put effort into making their products better performing from an environmental point of view.
How can the general public participate in ecodesign?
As I mentioned in the previous answer, purchase decisions or “putting your money where your mouth is” is important. But not everyone can do that – the majority of the population cannot pay more even if they want to. But there are all sorts of political mechanisms in societies that put pressure on or encourage companies to do better. In that sense, citizens can play a role through means of advocacy, through means of who they vote for, because who they vote for eventually determines what kind of policies are implemented that influence how companies are expected to behave and perform. So activism is definitely an important aspect. And again, a very small percentage, but there is the concept of activist shareholding of companies, so people who specifically buy shares in companies in order to be able to have a say in what the company does, because companies are responsible to their shareholders. And of course, our political and economic systems and regulations, everything is geared to make companies to only care for profit, because that is something they (companies) are also responsible for, which is generating more profit for shareholders. So citizens that are that enthusiastic can become shareholders in companies to have a say in how companies operate. This, of course, only applies to publicly owned companies whose shares are sold on the stock market.
How is working with young people, from your perspective, shaping the future of ecodesign?
I started my master’s in industrial design in the year 2000, so 25 years ago, which is also when I got interested in sustainability in relation to design. At that time, there were no courses in design schools or in general, there was not much emphasis in universities on sustainability back then. And now, for example, in my department where I currently lecture, we have five master programs and in each programme sustainability is quite significant. The majority of students’ thesis work focuses on this area, as well as demonstrating a huge diversity of how they focus on these topics. But there is a lot of teaching, with courses ranging from materials to systemic change. Students are quite interested in sustainability topics and influencing societal change through tools and methods of design. Also, there is a significant portion of youth in the West at least, who are quite engaged with environmental, social environmental issues if sustainability issues. And a portion of them are also experiencing emotionally very difficult experiences. You know, some of our students are going through eco anxiety or climate anxiety. And these are quite major changes that have happened since I started to be interested in sustainability and design.
Any advice you would like to give to young designers and others involved in these topics?
Well, design as a profession has served the industry for a very long time. The reason why industrial design as a profession came about relates to the history of the industrial revolution and that there was a need for people who would be kind of a bridge between the factory and the idea of the product. Hence, there is the industrial designer. But in general, the design profession still serves capitalism and still serves the consumerist needs of capitalist political and economic systems. And that can be quite discouraging for designers, or designers who are studying, or young designers. Because the majority of the jobs are still associated with making products that no one really needs at the end of the day. But, my advice for those who are interested in these issues is to look for opportunities, to study and to learn, either through formal education or professional development channels, or self-study, or peer networks. To educate themselves in different ways the discipline of design resists and can resist this kind of pumping of consumerist culture. Because there are myriads of ways design contributes to sustainability related change processes in contemporary societies. Finding peer networks is really important, because these kinds of designers, not only designers in every profession, but designers in organizations that do not want to listen to them, may feel very lonely, but they are very important because they are these entrepreneurs, they push agendas in organizations, so it is important that they find peer networks and learn from each other and support each other. We need to transform organizations that we work in, and for that reason, these designers can be quite significant in figuring out processes for organizational change, because the majority of an organization is still operating on the logics of capitalism, consumerism, seeking profit and growth. And we know that for sustainable societies we need to rethink the role of business and the importance of how we satisfy ourselves as people – do we buy 100 t-shirts or do we actually do something else that gives us similar satisfaction without causing a lot of resource depletion, pollution and all sorts of other issues. So yeah, educate themselves in every way they can, building peer networks, and finding support and pushing agendas in organizations they work in.