In case you hadn’t noticed, the design community is starting to realize it has a key role to play in moving toward sustainability. There’s an interesting opinion post in the NYTimes about how a designer helped popularize a polyurethane replacement made from soy that has a lot of advantages. Why hadn’t it made it to market? Consumers don’ t know to ask for it so manufacturers had no reason to change.

We’ve argued before that it’s the designer’s responsibility to figure out the sustainable options so we’re not relying on billions of consumers with more on their minds. One way is to improve a product’s cradle-to-cradle impact like the article talks about; definitely critical. The flip side that I’ve written about before is to influence awareness and behavior through design. We’re trained to look at what users need to accomplish and what they prefer, but we also need to determine how products can be used in a more sustainable way and encourage those choices. We’ve kept working since the last blog post and we’ll share some new ideas soon.