Thackara wonderfully captures that feeling that goes something like "This is all wrong... or am I just being crazy? What in the world can I possibly do?!" when we suddenly see flagrant behavior in something that is commonly perceived as harmless or even desirable.
Here are Thackara's 5 principles for addressing the design opportunities surrounding resource efficiency.
(i) it's more about discovery than blue sky invention
(ii) it's less about control, more about the devolution of power
(iii) it does not have to think BIG or act BIG to be effective
(iv) replace physical resources with information
(v) use whole systems thinking
This is my favorite part:
Many of the answers we need already exist. We need to become global hunter-gatherers of models, processes, and ways of living that have been learned by other societies, over time. We have to find those examples. Adapt them. Recombine them.For example, a lot of people already know how to live more lightly than we do. Hundreds of millions of poor people practise advanced resource efficiency every day of their lives. That’s because they are too poor to waste resources like we rich folk do.
Design schools should relocate en masse to favelas and slums. These informal economies are sites of intense social and business innovation.
