Finding balance
The modern world needs balance. Recent decades have brought very intensive development of industrial production, extremely rapid technological progress, and dynamic demographic growth. Over the course of two hundred years, the world's population has increased several times. Inevitably, the amount of food, cars, phones, clothes and other everyday items produced has also increased. Cities are also growing, turning into multi-million metropolises.
The world is programmed for growth - more and more production and more and more intense consumption. As a result, residents of developed countries are primarily concerned with consuming. There are huge islands of garbage floating in the oceans. For a long time, the Earth was exploited as if its resources would never run out. Meanwhile, both its resources and the ability to regenerate are limited. An excellent commentary on this situation was a film published on the Internet in 2007 by Annie Leonard [1]. A short animation titled "Story of Stuff" presented how the production, use and finally disposal of things look like in developed countries, as well as how quickly this cycle occurs. Films such as "The Light Bulb Conspiracy", which exposes the principles governing the so-called programmed consumption.
The growing criticism of consumerism in the second half of the 20th century and the gradually awakening awareness of the deteriorating state of the natural environment were excellent ground on which the foundations of sustainable development strategies had been built for years. This term was defined in 1987, and its essence was expressed in the sentence: "At the current level of civilization, sustainable development is possible, i.e. development in which the needs of the present generation can be met without compromising the opportunities of future generations to meet them." [2]
The concept of sustainable development has become one of the most serious challenges designers currently face. They are supposed to take care of the condition of the planet, the well-being and needs of people, but also the profit of producers. The three pillars of the sustainable development concept: Planet, People, Profit [3] are intended to operate in a sustainable manner.
Sustainable design is implemented in many different ways. The most obvious strategy is to abandon the one-way economy, which transforms raw materials into waste, in favor of a cyclical economy, in which raw materials circulate in a nearly continuous manner. [4] The challenge is to ensure appropriate production standards, responsible treatment of materials, planning the entire product life cycle, but also to design appropriate user behavior (e.g. encouraging recycling) [5]. In addition to the desire to reuse materials, we see, for example, support for the use of alternative energy sources. Yet another strategy was promoted by Platform 21 - a Dutch group that published the REPAIR MANIFESTO in 2009. The main slogan was "STOP RECYCLING, START REPAIRING". [6] This method of action can be associated with the apostasy of designers who implement the slogans of sustainable development by creating exceptionally long-lasting products - resistant to the passage of time both
in the context of consumption and changes in trends.
Sustainable design does not only refer to aspects related to the natural environment. "According to this theory, economic progress should not cause damage to the natural environment, but should create positive social effects" [7]. The search for balance also leads towards socially responsible design, which supports selected social groups and works against exclusion. The world still has not dealt with the problem of inequality - while in rich regions people struggle with lifestyle diseases, e.g. overweight or video game addictions, in other parts of the world millions of people do not have access to clean water or medicines and struggle with hunger.
Designers are taking more and more responsibility for restoring balance, and more and more often the goal of their actions is not form and function, but primarily values related to the natural environment and social good.