made this for you | the future isn’t what it used to be

Co-Creators Jill Fehrenbacher and Marc Alt kicked off the conference by talking about how/why they started Greener Gadgets. This was followed by a short introduction from Parker Brugge, the VP of environmental affairs and industry sustainability at the CEA.

The keynote was delivered by Saul Griffith. Saul Griffith is a well known inventor, entrepreneur, and all around genius. He began by going through a series of well designed charts that described the world’s ridiculous energy consumption statistics. We noted that the US uses a ridiculously large amount of the worlds resources compared to the rest of the world.

Next Saul began discussing how he is obsessively documenting his life in terms of energy consumption. He characterized this in terms of everything from physical objects he owns, food usage, travel, and the current society.  His final outcome was that his energy footprint is 18,000 watts!

I was surprised to find out that I am a planet fucker…. and I have bad news for you…. You are all planet fuckers too!

What environment do we want to live in? It is a design decision.

“Pick your horror level of atmospheric degree change- what temperature do we want to live at?” Saul states next.  In other words, at the current rate of carbon release, the earth’s temperature will increase at 2 degrees Celsius per year. Most people in the room know this already; but what we don’t know is how to fix this on a massive level.

The key Saul states, is responsibly mobilizing current large manufactures and industries into renewable energy producers. He shows a chart that portray the maximum wattage that every renewable resource outputs. It indicates by a long shot, that solar and wind is the best option. We have gone from producing 5TW to 15 TW of wasted energy the past 40 years; and this is good news for a new responsible energy production. For example, coca-cola can retool to achieve global energy needs. They can package their product as a powder, and make all the machines and resources they currently use into a large scale solar sources. This is not out of realm Saul states. We did the same thing during WWII. We produced 300,000 bomber planes out of refrigerator factories in a five year period; think what we can do now.

Now it seems we are getting into stuff not stated by Saul in his speech at CompostModern in San Francisco.

We also need to have a cultural shift of focus away from a Throwaway Society.

We need to create a culture of Heirloom Products—Where 1/10 of stuff we own, last 10 times as long, and is highly cherished. When you get a pen at birth, that is your pen for life- so it better be a really well designed pen; with a laser pointer.

We need shift from an economy of throwaway consumption, to an economy of maintenance and repair. WE should look at many third world/tribal societies for study.

Saul states that the very nature of current consumer goods will be the hardest field to change; since its entire existence is based off of the upgrade. Saul states

Designers need to design for the ‘age of consequence’. There is no ‘away’ anymore. No more garbage… that ‘away’ is your backyard.

In response to the new culture of designing Heirloom products, he shows his final slide proposing a new name for the conference- ‘Greener Object d’ Arts’.

Wattzon.com was stated as a great free online resource to track and understand your energy footprint.

While we don’t have video from his Greener Gadgets presentation yet, we do have video of the presentation from the POP!Tech Conference that you can watch below:

Griffith: [laughs] It is about quality of life- they are creating another throwaway product. This is pure greenwashing. Only 10% of the product is actually recycled; the inside is not.

Person 2: How do you explain bringing any new products into existence, if all you are doing is throwing its predecessor away? Example- if you make priuses, what happens to the other cars?

Griffith: If you start doing something towards environmental change, you accidentally solve the other problems too.

Take Away:
As designers we fabricate ideas to make a difference. Everything that we do creates change, but we need to make sure that we make positive changes. We all have the power to contribute in some way and make a difference to the overall outcome of what our future will actually be. Design needs to encompass not only the visual aesthetics of the product, but also it’s impact on the world. Small design decisions can have a tremendous impact.

We also need to put things in perspective. Wattzon is a great resource to put things in perspective on a personal level. It allows users to visually realize what type of impact they actually have. By applying social media practices and having users post how much of an impact they are having on the environment, people will be held accountable for their actions through public competitiveness and social awareness.
Our Wattzon ranking is:

What’s yours? Post yours. Get the word out. Let others know where you stand, what your goals are, and how long it’s going to take you to get there— then challenge them to meet or beat you.

Our goal is to lower our overall power consumption by 200W within 6 months.

We also need to expand this toolset. Not only should people be able to measure their power consumption, but we should have open standards for measuring various types of consumption— opening up the potential for data mashups with any type of information.

Let’s keep this conversation going, use this knowledge, and pass it on; so that we can make informed decisions at all levels of the creative process.