New Adventures in Britian's Demise

Interesting title I know and I long time since I have written when a lot has happened on a social and political front so the title inspired by a fairly middle of the road album by REM. Relates to a less than average Britian in economic and societal breakdown. 13 years of prosperity and social investment have ended not by a fairly mediocore recession but by a change in government out are the socially minded, fair handed Labour party and in are the corporatly minded Conservatives and the sell out pathetic limb wristed Liberals and although this all happened back in May the country is only now starting to feel the after effects of the poor decisions made by a third of the voters in the last general election.

Unemployment is on the rise, house prices are sinking again, and swaving cutbacks are being actioned across a number of important social sectors. Up to old tricks the conservatives once again have gone to bed with business and the upper classes, whilst setting about destroying community and working class people's livelihoods and prospects.

Universities have been hit hard and my aspirations on a lectureship are now looking more like a distant dream again as the cuts have already brought about recruitment freezes at a number of universities and left 22,000 students without places this coming year, Ultimately threatening the future of a number of institutions and Britian's global position as a leading education provider.

Council workers, Police employees, Civil Servants and Defense Staff are all facing the propects of unemployment. On top of this a number of services and government agencies have been cut completely including the essential and life saving Air and Sea Rescue Service and the future proofing Carbon Trust set up to ensure we met the environmental emmissions targets set.

More on cuts here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10924719

This is only the start the unfair cutbacks will continue to affect citizens for the foreseeable future undoing many of the great and socially beneficial outcomes acheived by the last Labour government. Having experience as a teacher, student, youthworker, and young man during this labour's 13 years in power I personally think there was alot to thank them for. I am not too young however to remember the carnage that the Conservatives caused and the broken society that they left behind in 1997. I am very concerned for the future of this country over the next four years that have been secured by the coalition due to a dubious change in the law ensuring that they can't be removed from power for at least 4 years. Yeah I bet you missed that one the law was passed in the first 2 weeks of them being in office. No Surprises .....

Hiding Place

Sometimes I wish for a hiding place, like when I was a child. To run away and hide in safe, warm and dark place. To escape people, life, reality, humiliation or embarrassment. I used to wrap my self up in a curtain by the front door, or hide in a wardrobe or the cupboard under the stairs for a while. Oh the memories of childhood how I wish I could now hide when I feel overwhelmed, when my brain is tired and my body is weak, life is mundane and my mouth is so dry I can barely speak.

Thoughts captured on this day 13th April

Feeling lost and a little confused, listening to Ludivico Einaudi on a beautiful summers day thoroughly bored with my coding of transcriptions. But fully aware of my appreciation of the immense beauty in the world in nature, arts, music, people, emotions and experiences and being more interested in capturing this than dissecting research. Yet I am at a loss as too what I really want to do. The reality is that I know I feel discontented because I know that this isn’t it. Ignorance perhaps really is bliss...

The iPhone and other Apple crimes against humanity

Yes I'll be honest and as the title suggests I am not a fan of Apple's shiny but hopeless fashion must have. In fact I am not a fan of the Apple corporation at large. As a designer I appreciated the daring breakthrough of Jonathan Ive's colourful iMacs in 1998.


But now Steve Jobs seems as bent on world domination as Bill Gates was before he came to his senses and retired, now whenever I see the infamous apple logo it fills me with rage.

Why, well where do I begin the companies hypocritical marketing claims especially in relation to the environmental credentials of their products, the poor quality and short live of their products and the fake hip people that fall for it all.

The iPhone appears to be following in the footsteps of the iPod not only in its universal success but also in its built in obsolescence. Following in the footsteps of the iPod in failing shortly after the obligatory 12 month warranty period despite consumers having been sold 18 and 24 month contracts with the phone. Experiences of such have been reported by a friend and backed up by countless reports in Google, starting with Wifi failure which to be honest is why people bought them in the first place. They didn't buy the iPhone for its abilities as a phone because its pretty poor in that area.

However I fail to find much sympathy for the owners as reports of failures in Apple's products are now well documented and known off. What infuriates me however is that Apple have the cheek to claim green credentials whilst they are creating products with such short live's. The claim for instance the the iMac Air was highly energy efficient and recyclable, yeah but what about the high levels of Nitrogen Trifluoride (see an early post about the adverse environmental effects of LCD production) released in the production of all those LCD screens used in all apple products.

On a recent trip to the design Museum I was really angered to see jonathan Ive's iPod at the end of a wonderful exhibition on Dieter Rams yes he may have stolen design cues from the Rams but Apple's products do not follow Dieter Rams philosophy of a long service life.

Another claim that angered me at the time of the original iPod release in 2000 was the claims about their innovative scroll wheel. Apple took alot of glory for this innovation but in reality in was used two years earlier by Panasonic on a portable Hifi an example of which I own and incidentally it still functions perfectly after 10 years Mr Jobs.


Another area that the iPhone fails is functionality it fails on its core purpose that of being a phone it is hopeless at this basic task. I have found iMacs also to be extremely counter intuitive at times and in particular past apple products were also a little more than awkward. After first using a Power Mac I was shocked to understand that I needed to place the contents of the Zip disk I had been working on into the recycle bin in order to eject the disk, who thought that was a good idea, basically the same operation as deleting your work?

However my greatest annoyance has to be the smugness of iPhone users, an entertaining comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe summed it up in this statement:

“To the people who’ve got iPhones: you just bought one, you didn’t invent it!” - Marcus Brigstocke

Smugness is a very unfortunate feature of a fair proportion of apple consumers. Its like having the attitude of BMW drivers but with the abundance of Ford Focus owners. However what confuses me is, what exactly have they got to be smug about, how is their smugness justified? They have typically paid twice as much for an apple product than a competitor, which would be more reliable, easier to use and carried a lower risk of being mugged.

Boycott Tesco's

I have always been slighty dubious about Tesco's practices but in the last two weeks their practices have enraged me. Firstly the article published by the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/8411894.stm, which reported on a line of christmas cards sold by Tesco's, which can only be described as racist. I myself have red hair and was extremely offended.

Secondly, and the issue that I am most personally aggrieved over the closure of a local bar in their continued aggressive dominance of British retail. The Quay bar has long been established in Leicester and I was a regular in my student days. Recently in the last month a church put an event on in the bar and a week later were planning another event to encourage community cohesion in surrounding area until they turned up on the night (22nd Dec) to find it closed. The event had been discussed with management but no-one had mention or seemed aware of Tesco's intentions to gut the popular venue. The refit was planned over the Christmas period whilst the students and local residents were away so that no one can protest against Tesco's plans, a convenient coincidence perhaps?

However what is most ridiculous is the location, the Quay is a small venue, surely only large enough for a small Tesco Metro and is only 10 metres away from a small Sainsbury's and within three minutes walk of a large independant off-license, a Spar and the student union shop. With a large Morrisons supermarket and a countless small shops situated within a 10 minute walk.

Why, Tesco's, is no part of Britain allowed to be untouched by your greedy desire? I'm fed up with seeing your corporate and bland Tesco branding everywhere, its sickening. Please also spare a thought for the wonderful bar staff formally at the Quay that where made redundant at Chrsitmas. Nice touch Tesco's.

Grief

I was just listening to last-fm and the Fray - How to save a life was playing a song that had meaning for many years but now it seems trivial and immature.

A good friend took his life 6 weeks ago due to severe depression and it seems there was very little anyone could do, nothing I could say that would change much. I wished that I had the opportunity to tell him the things that I wrote in his tribute but deep down surely he must have known how much I appreciated him, why else would I have spent so much time with him. The truth was masked by a chemical inbalance in his brain, I still remember him as a strong man that I looked up to and I never quite realised how troubled he was.

I went with his widow to find a spot to scatter the ashes at the weekend and just felt so numb, I found it difficult to get upset. I couldn't even be happy at my brother telling me his girlfriend was pregnant last night, it didn''t help that i didn't believe him after all he is a joker like me, its how we cope.

It reminded me of one of the first blogs a wrote several years ago at a difficult time in my personal life reflecting on a life that seems so rehearsed, it couldn't feel any more true at the moment. Events that happen in your life that are meant to make things feel real just seem like a dull continuous story. I had a blood test this morning for a ongoing health issue and the needle kind of hurt more than previously (although I try to be a man about these things), but it didn't seem to wake me from feeling like I am sleep walking all the time.

The morning motorway commute worryingly feels like I am on autopilot. Sitting in the office I am trying to focus and get to grips with the research and finish the report due on monday but its not working either, going for a run used to work as well but I just feel continually knackered, the wind and extreme rain over the last few days has helped temporaily but done little overall to wake me, perhaps its my , my health or grief I'm unsure but i just want to wake up.

Extremes of Weather

After a week of extreme heat 30C+ for a week, the rain has come in avengence with seemingly no end its been raininig on and off since Friday and my vegetable patch has benefitted tremedously. However the downside to the rain is flash flooding, luckily not my house but the M1 was awful last night it was more suited to boats than cars and I am still worried about my car which was taking in alot of water and I thought I sealed the suspect door seal but the mats were damp again yesterday. So will this be another summer like last year a week of sunshine followed by 2 months of rain. Well I'm camping for a week in August on a site with approx 11 thousand others so I'm hoping not, otherwise it will be a classic British mud bath.

Smiling

Sunday evening and I'm sipping a black coffee, whilst listening to Pink floyd Division Bell. Outside a faint rainbow has just come and gone behind a grey cloud. Its been raining all day but the sight of the golden light through the cloud briefly through my office window was amazing.

Visual of Literature View so far

Well this is how wordle sees it, MS Word Autosummarise was not very helpful and I'm still stuck on how to start the paper.

The Design Process

This post is being started so I can attach an image to an online questionaire but thought it might also help with my Literature review. What is the first image you think of when you consider the term design process?

I consider the simple school taught bubbles above with a feedback loop. However the theories now vary widely from this simple diagram, including the complicated double diamond approach, recommended by the Design Council of all people.

http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/en/About-Design/managingdesign/The-Study-of-the-Design-Process/

So thats a start any comments or other odd design process diagrams and lets agrue the merits...

Time of Year

Well there is lots of news about the recession easing evern though another friend lost his job two weeks ago but apparetly housing prices went up slightly last month. So is this really all a case of journalists suffering from SAD sunshine deficiet. The doom and gloom of a few months ago almost daily forecasts of woe suddenly come to a halt because the sun has come out and they have put on their positive and optimistic hats.

Well we will have to see I'm not sure how they can put spin on what will be a very difficult budget tomorrow.

Also has anyone noticed how the student loan company have managed to continue to fleece us by changiing the interest from the RPI which they charged us 5% based upon last year to the bank rate + 1%. When the RPI is now into negative figures, what a surprise.

Time to leave the country?

Ok now I'm starting to really wonder what Gordon Brown and his cronies are up to. My building society stated on their website this morning that they are reducing my ISA interest rate to 0.5% with effect of 4 days ago, great notice period I thought. Then at noon topday the 5th March the Bank of England announce that they are againcutting the interest rates to 0.5% so what now for my saving in my Isa 0.25% or nothing/no incentive to save or maybe they may charge me soon for the priviledge of being a good steward and being careful with my money not foolish like those who caused this crisis.

So what benefit do I get for being careful, living within my means, no running up ridiculous debt I could never pay. Well none it seems Mr Brown is happy to take from the careful and give to the foolish, for a vicars son he doesn't pay much attention to advice given in the gospels. I fixed my mortgage earlier in the year at a rate I knew I would be able to pay and didn't borrow more than I needed less than 3 times of the combined salary of my wife and I the fixed rate was 5.63%. So know I am losing out on two fronts my savings are not earning any interest and I am paying at least 2-3% over the going rate. I'm wondering when the stupidity will cease it was low interest rates that got the UK into this mess in the first with people borrowing more than 5 or 6 times their salary. The only people that are benefiting from this ridiculously low interest rate are those who borrowed 95 or 100% of the value of their homes that can now not remortgage and are therefore on standard variable rates those that were foolish with theior money are now being rewarded why?

This is wrong, the government seem unwilling to recognise that not only the banking system was wrong but the whole nature of a spend spend spend society the banks, the credit card companies, the retail sector and the foolish and greedy members of the british public are to blame for this mess so the Prime Minister wants to help them out instead of letting them learn from their lesson he punishes those that were careful in order to help those that were plain stupid.

Well its going to back fire there will be another RUN ON THE BANKS, I have just removed all my savings and on the way in and way out I saw many other clutching their savings books to do the same, so the money will no longer be with the banks to lend to the foolish or even the aspiring home owner who may have been meticulously saving up a deposit for their first home only to be thwarted by the Bank of England's so called economic progress. In Britian approximately two thirds save whilst a third don't so the government has disadvantaged the majority. So what will we do with the saving well not what the government hopes we are wise people we aren't going to buy new cars, t.v's or sofas, some may spend it on the house mine will go on new windows we badly need them, others with more money may buy a cheap property abroad well done Mr Brown the money has gone out of the country. What we aren't going to do is spend Britian out of the reccession, unwise spending and borrowing caused this problem in the first place and is never going to cure it. Spending will only move the problem further downstream it will catch up eventually.

So what now well after seeing the chaos unfold, I am even more closer to annoucing plans to emigrate once I finish my PhD. Canada isn't in an economic mess and even though America has partially caused this they are willing to learn from it and take appropriate action, lending to the industries that employ people but on the condition they produce greener goods an example is the american automotive industry, there is also talk of taking some of the bankers that caused this to trial not rewarding them with 700K a year pension Mr Brown. Even Europe has got some good ideas like Germany's policy to give people £2500 off new cars if the scrap an old one, giving two benefits, keeping people in work and improving emmissions for the environment. This would be far cheaper than buying all the banks, its not a game of Monopoly Mr Brown, I don't want my tax money or my wifes taxes paying some fat cat, his ridiculous pension for being a prat and allowing unscrupulous lending to people that could never pay.

On the matter of tax as well, I no longer pay now that I am doing a PhD but my wife does and as she is self employed its a bit of a pain but she paid it on time. However due to a cock up on the inland revenue's part they sent her a bill for some under paid tax quite a small amaount, it was dated the 16th feb but didn't arrived till the 4th of March with a threat that if it wasn't paid by the 28th of feb she will be charged a 5% surcharge. They refuse to remove this despite the fact that we didn't recicev the billtill a week after the date of final payment. Yet another example of the government screwing the hard working British public.

Infuriated with the British Government

I am amazed frankly at their stupidity now, how they can't see that this will only put them in a worse light. The decision announced today is the most hypocritical so far. They are taxing the British motorist everywhere they can on the fuel 60% of what we pay is tax and they have increased the car taxation bands drastically charging more for cars that emit higher C02 emissions the larger cars have gone from £180 a yr to £440 and my wife’s tiny 1.25lt fiesta from £120 a yr to £145.

Yet today they announce that plans for a 3rd runway at one of the world’s largest airports Heathrow are approved. How can they support the environmental argument for the taxes the motorist pay suggesting when they pass this new runway to substantially increase aviation in the UK? Cars run on roads some on the CO2 they produce has the opportunity to be absorbed by trees and plants therefore and larger deposits or carbon fall on the roads. Planes fly in the stratosphere they only place that the emissions they produce therefore can go is into the atmosphere further contributing to global warming. They must be either extremely ignorant or stupid not to realise this. Planes may produce less CO2 than the nation of motorists do but the impact is so much greater because of the altitude at which they fly.

Further to this how do they expect to reach the reduction in CO2 targets that they have set now, its sheer lunacy. My other accusations at the government in this blog can be excused somewhat on the fact that it requires some in depth research to discover the paradoxes they can pose. This abomination however cannot, it is a clear cut case and even if they lay on more trains to the 3rd runway as they promise they are never going to counteract the damage they are doing, to the environment and themselves. As much as I have always voted and loyally supported labour this hypocrisy cannot be ignored this is one step too far they have infuriated the British public for too long.

The argument would be that this will create jobs but hello Mr Brown who is flying in a recession anyway, isn't this, another waste of money, to add to the Olympics which is of course also not going to help meeting our CO2 level targets?

Does Global Recession = Consumption Recession?

I hope so.
No really its an interesting question, which would deserve several PhD studies of its own. If the global recession hits peoples spending power by the amount that it has in the last few months in the UK. Could it bring about a sustained or a least temporary drop in consumption.

Could and would people stop just replacing products because there is a new one available that has newer features? Would people once again treasure their old CRT TV’s and stop replacing them with the environmentally destructive LCD types (see earlier post energy efficiency or governmental deficiency) that don't last anywhere near as long. Would municipal recycling centres see a decline in the amount of products (many still working) being thrown away each week. Could we ever become a society again that sees benefits in repairing products rather than disposing of them. Or cherishing products that last a long time and caring for them in order to further extend their life, rather than despairing at an older product because it is now the wrong colour or does match a new appliance.

Could we return even partially to the consumer attitudes pre 1960's plastics mass production boom, before the days of built in obsolescence and the disposable society. A society that invests in products expecting them to last half a life time like my old iron.

I really do think that in order to significantly reduce the environmental impact that we are creating we really need to go backwards rather than forwards. Perhaps this recession is the opportunity we all need to significantly change our attitudes. Perhaps even during this down turn a product service sector may become a stronger possibility with consumers renting rather than buying appliances to allow for them to be returned to the OEM at the end of life for remanufacturing, well we can only hope

Yes this may appear insensitive with the current rate of redundancies being announced each day in the UK. But if we could go back to a time of repairing and maintaining products or offer product service sectors this will create a lot more jobs in each home country rather than the far east.

However I doubt it is even on the governments consideration list as they hand the greedy and incompetent banks more of ours the tax payers money today whilst the interest rates have again been lowered punishing those who were careful enough to save rather than contributing to this over consumption disaster in the first place. I probably should stop ranting about the government though soon as I've decided when I finish my PhD I'm going to do something about this mess and apply for a civil service position hopefully in the strategy board to influence government policy. But we will see...

Don’t buy Plastic products

Well I’m becoming even more concerned at the state of ecological thinking. As I previously wrote in Paradoxes in Sustainable Product Design Life Cycle Analysis LCA would prefer a plastic kettle over a Stainless steel kettle despite the disadvantages of plastics that I listed.

However after a little more reading I realise that it isn’t just the difficulty in keeping the plastic uncontaminated with other types of plastic in recycling that is the issue this is rather a guise. The real issue is the chemical makeup or plastic which is not really suitable for continued reuse the chemical bonds break down so that even if the plastics is separated meticulously into the different types, the resulting recycled plastic is likely to not be as mechanically strong it will lose some of its properties in reprocessing. Coupled to this the effect that UV light has on plastics and you will start to realise that a 10 year old television’s plastic casing is no longer very desirable except in a down cycling stage where it may be used to make a kerb stone or turned into a recycling bin.

You may ask what the problem with down cycling is, well its that this plastic should be reused in another T.V. otherwise the new T.V. needs to have more oil extracted from the ground and processed into new virgin plastic. Oil that we are running very short of and extraction and processing of which adds to the environmental problems.

Plastics are in terms of materials fairly new the plastics revolution erupted in the 1960’s with cheaper disposable goods feeding the affluent baby booming generations that prospered after the struggles of their parents throughout the 1940 and 1950’s due to second world war rationing. Plastics enable new organic shapes to be produced in bright vibrant colours, products were cheaper and fashions started to change more frequently. The advent of mass produced plastics mean that more people could move with the times and follow the design movements of the day unlike post war styles such as Art Nouveau and Deco which were restricted to the upper classes.

The problem is that cheaper products mean that people consume more, cheaper products mean that more of them can be bought, more plastic consumed. Product life spans have tumbled, my grandmother owned an electric iron from the early 1960’s it was given to my mother when ours broke and used right up until the mid 1990’s in fact it still works today except the technology has improved so it is no longer used. But modern irons last between 3 and 5 years from my experience, the technology isn’t the reason for this monumental drop in life expectancy, they aren’t made to last any longer. It’s down to cost people want cheap products and don’t get them repaired it is cheaper on the pocket to buy a new one. But not on the environment…..

Energy efficiency or Governmental intellect deficiency

Why such a focus on the reduction of Carbon Dioxide and CO² as the main environmental agenda. Measurable targets are not the way the environmental agenda should be going because it results in only a small number of areas being focussed upon at the expense of others.

Such is the case in the reduction of carbon dioxide or CO², which will only be replaced by other problematic emissions perhaps worse than CO² for the environment. This is already happening through the strivings to reduce CO², as energy efficiency has become the main buzz word. However its intentions are not as transparent, clean and pure as they may first appear.

Perfectly good usable products are being scrapped because they are supposedly high energy consuming, for example CRT TV’s. Which are being rapidly replaced by LCD screens, which are being driven ahead of their technological improvements by the exaggerated claims that they are energy efficient. However one of the by products in the production of LCD modules is nitrogen trifluoride, an agent that is a formidable greenhouse gas. It’s been calculated that it is 17,000 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide and is increasing at an alarming rate in the atmosphere. See the following on this finding in the guardian and new scientist.

How then can their claims be justified, this premise of energy efficiency is not green technology it is far from it. By buying a LCD TV or monitor you are making a substantial contribution to greenhouse gas far greater than a lifetime of CO² from an inefficient traditional CRT TV set.

The automotive industry has also gone silly over reducing CO² because the government are now taxing it. But they are ignoring and actually contributing to the problems that have been associated with Diesel cars for years (of which sales are now rapidly increasing because of low CO² emissions). Such as the link to the causes of asthma and severe respiratory conditions as well as smog in many cities. See the following for details: America Lung Association

Energy efficiency as a green agenda is no more than a misleading headline, a buzz word that may have well been invented by a tabloid newspaper for all the paradox’s, lies and misleading truths behind it. Energy efficiency was the reason that CFC’s were put into refrigerators’ all those years ago, which significantly contributed to the hole in the ozone layer.

I’d rather efforts were focussed on producing energy from sources that don’t produce CO², then it wouldn’t matter really how much energy you used. The problem with this solution is that it requires industry and the government to do something themselves, other than finding more ways to extort money out of their citizens through ridiculous claims and guilt trips about the environment.

The reason energy efficiency is chosen as a focus is because it pays. People go and buy new products they don’t need in order to do their bit, replacing perfectly good products that are then sent to landfill. This attitude only helps the greedy industrialists become richer and the treasury coffers swell due too CO² taxes. Of course government could argue that it is also creating jobs when really it only employs a few shop assistants and a couple of overworked civil servants. As these new energy efficient products are most probably manufactured in China, in an extremely energy inefficient factory, with serious working practise violations and suspect waste disposal into the local environment. But let’s just keep those wheels of industry turning and not ask those difficult questions hey.

Paradoxes in Sustainable Product Design

LCA is the commonly used tool in industry to assess products that are already designed and often in production. It highlights areas where the product has a high environmental impact based on categories such as extration of raw materials, processing, transportation, energy in use and end of life.

However is LCA just confirming what the producers want confirmed, allowing manufacturers to carry on with unsustainable practise and a seemingly clean concience because they have consulted LCA software. Also what is the purpose of analysing something when its already in or about to enter production, surely the damage has been done or development time already been wasted.

Consider this plastic would be the preferable material over stainless steel for manufacturing a kettle if LCA is consulted for the following reasons:

1. Plastic is a better insulator than Stainless Steel so the water would retain heat for longer.


2. Plastic has a lower density than Stainless Steel meaning that the product would be lighter and therefore use less fuel to transport


3. Less energy would be used in production due to less operations and a more maleable/mouldable material.

However here are reasons why I consider that a stainless steel kettle would be prefered

1. Metal is far easier and is therefore more likely to be recycled than plastic. In fact the inherent value of stainless steel will make it very likely that the metal will be recycled to a high quality allowing for reuse in a quality product and with a high percentage of metal return.


2. A stainless steel kettle generally has a timeless classic style which combined with additional durability would give the product a much longer lifespan that its plastic equivalent. Perhaps even three or more times, when I was a child my family had a classic Russell Hobbs K12 kettle for over 15 years. It was servicable as so had the element and switch replaced once during this period. Therefore if you factor in the consumer attachement to a more aesthetic stainless steel kettle you can compare it to the production of a least two plastic equivalents if not more in its lifetime.

The problem here is that LCA doesn't work on the basis of the lifecycle of the product in durability or the material and so doesn't account for the fact that the steel could be recycled many times with little loss in quality or strength.

So now some reasons why plastics shouldn't be used:

1. Plastics leach chemicals and small particles into water and over time this will increase encouraged by the heat and UV degradation of the plastic. Leading tio health concerns for the user in the long term.


2. Fumes produced in the processing of plastics and the injection moulding process are not only harmful to the environment but a severe concern for the workers especially in less developed countries with questionable health and safety measures and no accountability. Workers health could suffer in the long term with severe respiratory and skin complaints
3. Also why should the water remain hotter for longer its a kettle not a boiler, surely this only encourages unsustainable behaviour, the user should be encouraged to only boil what is needed.

So much for LCA it is in my view significantly flawed, and so you might ask how does this example of the kettle benefit the manufacturer. Well plastic is very cheap, products can be mass produced cheaply, with limited life-cycles, which will ensure the greatest revenue in the long term especially if a customer buys 2 0r 3 plastic kettles for every stainless steel kettle they may have previously bought. The disposable society we live in wasn't built on stainless steel kettles but with advent of thermoplastics in the early 1960's.

One thought to finish this rant what is plastic made from oil we really could do with reducing our dependance on that as yes it is used in the extraction and processing of Iron ore into steel but if this is recycled efficiently it will cut out the extraction stage next time round making for a much more efficiently produced product.

Cradle to Cradle

An approach suggested by the authors of this book Cradle to Cradle - remaking the way we make things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. This book is very interesting if a first a bit depressing you get over the state of the world and start to thing possibilities. It basically describes the way (nature American book) the environment manages resources. They call this approach cradle to cradle to express how resources and nutrients are continually recycled endlessly without any loss in quality and to the continued benefit of the ecosystems around them. They describe the human model as cradle to grave, we extract resources and use the resource them bury it in landfill where it cannot be reused or reclaimed. If we recycle, which we rarely do we don't take the time to seperate the materials or cannot because they weren't designed to be seperated. So the materials are recycled into lower quality forms of themselves because of contaimination with other materials. Thus making the recycled material unsatisfactory for use again in the initial product and so what they call downcycling to a lower quality product i.e. a water bottle becomes a speed hump or flower pot.

They suggest that current attempts therefore are not sufficient they are less bad but still ultimately no good because the resources are lost to landfill eventually and more resources then need to be extracted. they propose that poroducts should be designed in such a way that materials can be continually reclaimed at the end of life and reused for the same purpose. Negating the need to extract new materials from the earth and continually cycling those already in use with zero waste.

Its very interesting but in order to be fully realised needs a complete change in the way society and industry things and works. However it has inspired some companies to follow their advice and produce products that enable cradle to cradle lifecycles.

The problem though is one of logistics how can we ensure that these products are reused in the way the company intends. I can't speak for America but the recycling capability in Leicester a large british city is largely out dated, even though Leicester was britians first environmental city? Yes we have different waste collections but for only two types of plastic, paper, glass and I know the metal items are removed magnetically from the other rubbish. But what about the other 7 types of packaging plastic, what about cardboard, and what about plastic consumer goods at the end of life if I take them to the tip they all just go in one big skip labelled electrical.

The recycling infrastructure really needs an overhaul otherwise all the Sustainable Design going on is going to waste.

Your thoughts as usual please.....

New Beginnings

To any that have followed 'Thoughts, Theories and Omissions' in the past both of you lol. I have finally left secondary school teaching, so the good news is I will stop moaning about it and questioning my purpose in it all.

Except I still dream about school, which is concerning considering I left teaching in July. So I haven't quite put it behind me, but do us ex teachers ever? A question perhaps for discussion by ex-teachers those that fit into the statistic of '30% that leave within the first 5 years of teaching' according to the TTA.

Anyway back to the point I am now undertaking a PhD at Loughborough University my initial proposal not necessarily what I will definitely stick with though is:

'Intergrating Sustainable Design criteria through KBE (CAD)'

So I may be asking for your advice and guidance, if you are a Industrial/Product/Furniture/Transport Designer/Design Engineer, you get the idea.

Obviously this subject will be reflected in most my posts now but I will still try to include my personal thoughts. Which is a good point to tell you all that in the 18 months since I wrote I got married 22nd March 2008, I can recommend it : ).

The New Year

Monday, January 01, 2007

As Death Cab for Cutie put it:

'So this is the new year.
And I don't feel any different.
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance (in the distance).

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions.' - The New Year

But it is exciting, when stuff ends its exciting to see what begins and last night despite looking back at a fairly difficult year. I was surrounded by great friends who genuinely care about me and have supported me though the tough times.

So basically thanks you guy's rock! and Matt who wasn't there last night but deserves a award for putting up with me as a housemate over the last 12 months.

Matthew

P.S. I know this is short but collecting big thoughts at the moment and will blog when I have a resolution of what God is doing and my head is thinking - Cryptic.