Australian Paper

“Our products are rubbish” is Haul’s self-deprecating tagline for its range of upcycled goods. Made from tyres, vinyl billboard advertising and, most recently, offset printing ‘blankets’, Haul’s iPad pouches, Filofaxes and shoulder bags received GECA  certification in 2004. Despite the company’s credentials, Haul founder Scott Kilmartin says the company remains design-driven. “We wanted people to buy our products even if they weren’t aware of what they were made from, yet its sustainability would be the ‘clincher’.”

Since Kilmartin caught the entrepreneurial bug in 1999, his company has been diversifying. Alongside Haul, it has established Rivetting, which provides corporations and conferences with customised Haul products. “It’s helping companies ‘walk the talk’ of recyclability’,” Kilmartin says. Where the big selling point for the inner-city demographic is that each bag is original (as it’s cut from a different piece of vinyl billboard advertising), for corporations such as Virgin, it’s the reuse of its own billboards that makes the products unique. “Part of the promotional program is documenting the process,” Kilmartin explains. “We show the billboards coming down, the design, cutting and sewing which is done locally in Victoria. Delivering that story is key value-add for the brand.”

While trend analysts predicted the rise of the green movement in the early 2000s, Haul founder Scott Kilmartin says it’s really only in the last couple of years that he has had to do less explaining about what sustainable design entails.

“Green was seen as too earthy and companies would pay lip service to it,” he reflects. “Now every company that calls us says they are ‘environmentally responsible’. It’s easy to say of course. But we can help them do it visibly.”

Yet surprisingly, it’s taken some two decades since UK businessman John Elkington began motivating business to explore the merits of corporate social responsibility and the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profits. In other words: looking after both stakeholders and shareholders. While it has become the mantra of US and European sustainability indices including FTSE4Good and the Dow Jones, in Australia it’s taken somewhat longer to take hold.

Some, like Kilmartin, place it on the mainstream radar in about 2004. Others attribute the popular awareness of impending climate change calamity to Al Gore’s 2006 Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. At least, as Kilmartin says, companies are aware that sustainable design is an issue now, even if they don’t quite appreciate how far they need to go to prove their claims.

Over the past year in the Australian Paper Sustainability Supplement we have examined many stages of the sustainable design ‘journey’. We have seen how third-party auditing and life-cycle assessments can verify claims of green credentials, so while sustainability has become easier to say, and more visible for everyone, independent auditing has helped avoid greenwashing. Arguably, it would be easier still if there was one government certification body, but at least the public and businesses can check on the claims.

It’s worth heeding the advice of Büro North’s Soren Luckins that designers need to do their own research, because information is always being updated and products not only change but their credentials are dependent on how they are used. Indeed, it costs nothing to ask questions. Organisations including AGDA, Designers Accord and AIGA provide basic information for anyone who likes to retain an independent eye on the claims made by others. For graphic designers, the print industry is remarkably easy to negotiate. As Luckins says in this issue’s Exchange, there is so much data available on carbon neutral FSC® certified papers and printing techniques.

Thanks to alcohol-free printing and vegetable based-inks, to name just two aspects, printing is a far greener business than it once was. Paper, too, is produced sustainably. It can be recycled easily (2.5 million tonnes of paper and paperboard are recovered and recycled in Australia every year) to make more, and it comes from a renewable resource. Indeed, the economics of the paper and printing industry rely on recycling because recycled paper is comparable in cost to the original fibre. In addition, carbon neutral papers are also available. They provide an effective way for companies to continue their reduction of carbon emissions. The emissions from the energy used to make these papers, and in some cases dispose of it, is offset with approved abatement providers.

Many analysts believe that because paper and print are renewable and recyclable, they have an immediate advantage over electronic communications that use new and additional energy every time they are opened or read from a computer screen. A computer’s plastics, glass, aluminium, monitors, components and parts are also recycled at much lower levels than paper products.

While design can be used to add value to a company’s green message, it’s also being used as an intrinsic part of that designed product. As Desktop magazine’s recent Create awards demonstrated, designers such as sustainability category winner Kent Gration (whom we featured last issue) embeds green principles in his bamboo furniture design – from the choice of the material to the sourcing of the product to its assembly and transportation.

Design-driven companies with green, ethical values as an intrinsic part of their philosophy are trying to change our relationship to stuff. Ideally we should be making stuff that lasts. That means everything we use and live with is designed for zero waste and either meant to last (“heirloom design” and “durability”) or to be shared (“product service systems”) or both.

These are not just models of good sense but good business sense.

From wayfinding systems at Falls Creek snowfields to producing its own Christmas trees, which won a Premier’s Design award for sustainability, Büro North has specialised in eco-design. The multidisciplinary studio that began in Melbourne in 2005 now has offices in Sydney and does business Australiawide. Company founder, 31-year-old designer Soren Luckins, explains what he has learnt so far about sustainability.

Why is the Falls Creek wayfinding project important to you?

In the past a lot of projects have compromised their aesthetics to achieve sustainability. It shouldn’t compromise anything; it should contribute to it. I would hate anyone to say ‘that looks like it’s eco’. Falls Creek doesn’t look very sustainable in that sense of looking literally green. It deals with sustainability in a more sophisticated way regarding materials and scale.

What was the brief?

To design 40 to 50 four-metre-tall steel and concrete signs, transport them to Falls Creek and pour massive concrete bases to support them. While it takes a lot of energy to refine aluminium it can do quite a lot in terms of structural strength. So it was a balancing act to work out the most efficient energy and processing. With sand casting there were almost no energy implications. And the beauty was it was produced locally. If we designed in steel and concrete then we would have needed eight-metre semi-trailer trucks. We could use cars. So it’s been an education in that there are no rules. Each project is different and we can’t make the same assumptions.

Which is your most successful design in terms of sustainability?

The Christmas tree was the most successful because we can qualify that [with life cycle assessments], but we say Falls Creek is, even though we can’t fully qualify it. We did indicative life cycle assessments but not an accredited LCA

What’s the difference?

To get an official life cycle assessment you have to get two independent LCA experts to do it, to validate each other’s work. It’s a highly detailed process that gives clients and the public confidence in the green credentials. But the more detailed the project and processes, obviously the more costly it is to evaluate. We just couldn’t afford it on this project. It would have been about $30–40K. But because the Christmas tree project was such a controlled process – with only one material and one or two processes in cutting them out – it was straightforward and therefore more affordable to commission.

How do you do an indicative assessment?

There are various ways, but the best is probably RMIT’s rapid assessment tool called Greenfly, which can be used to build your own life cycle analysis.

Like having five-star ratings for houses and commercial buildings?

Yes but maybe the next few years will be less about getting a score and certification and more about going through the process with your clients, which I think is more constructive. It depends whether you see it as a process for getting the best result or ticking a box. We tend to think it’s to get the best result… unless it’s for marketing purposes. When we launched the Christmas tree we said it’s the most environmental Christmas tree, and we had the data to support that.

How has it gone?

Incredibly well. Last year we sold about $40-50,000 worth of Christmas trees, but we’re a design studio and I don’t think we are good at ringing and supplying retailers. We’re looking to do it but through different avenues like licensing.

Unless you are doing your own product, how difficult is it for designers to practice sustainability?

It takes a lot of commitment and effort to constantly question and challenge all your assumptions and all the information you’re given in the industry. A lot of data doesn’t exist, so you’re constantly having to explore and get all the information yourself.

Do many jobs require you to validate the sustainability credentials as part of a client’s larger project?

On lots of print and graphic design jobs, yes. But that is much easier to validate. If we do a print job we use FSC® certified paper then all that [sustainability] data exists for the paper. If we use vegetable-based inks then the data exists for the inks. For print jobs it’s easier to audit.

How sustainable is your office?

It’s carbon neutral but we carbon offset to achieve it, because we have cars and motorbikes and every week one of our staff is interstate. You do everything you can in terms of paper, energy, waste, recycling and offsetting.

Any lessons for other designers?

Don’t right off things that appear less sustainable on paper. Read and scour the internet as much as you can because there’s always new information emerging.

Looking good sustainably isn’t one of the fashion industry’s strong suits. Dyeing processes; sweatshops; high carbon footprint caused by transportation; the water-intensive cotton farming industry… these are the darker shades of fashion that horrified Kelley Sheenan as a young New Zealand designer. The difficulties in obtaining information on sustainable fashion encouraged her to start her own magazine, Peppermint.

With its suggestively fresh green flavour, the quarterly magazine’s first issue hit the shelves in August 2009. “It was never the intention to start a ‘green Vogue’,” says Sheenan. “It’s about educating the fashion  industry about sustainability, but also changing fashion intrinsically. It’s not about skinny supermodels. It wasn’t about replicating what was going on elsewhere. It’s attacking fashion in a different way. It’s about finding clothes that will last and are good.”

Rather than conduct exposés into individual label’s sins, she prefers to pat on the back those that are producing sustainable design. “Finger painting’s not positive,” she believes. “You need to show that sustainability can take little steps. There is no such thing as completely green, anyway.”

The response to Peppermint has been surprising, says the now 37-year-old Brisbane-based designer. “It came out at a time when things began to explode with eco stuff. Everyone seemed to need it. Leonardo DiCaprio’s website [11thhouraction.com] caught wind of it and wanted to feature it.”

Not surprisingly there have been talks with two different publishers, but Sheenan backed out at the last minute, content to publish on her own terms. With a print run of 10,000 (largely in Australia and NZ) she also ensures her own publication is green. “We use FSC® certified paper, a waterless printer, and we still publish from our home office, so it’s as small as it can possibly be,” she explains. “We don’t have much of a carbon footprint.”

As the magazine’s graphic designer, Sheenan’s approach is that “green design should be invisible…people expect green to look less good, but graphic designers are communicators.”

Would Peppermint reach more people and be more sustainable as an online entity? “To reach the fashion industry we had to be on the shelf,” she adds. “People still want to touch and feel.”

www.peppermintmag.com.au

www.sociallyresponsibledesign.org

www.11thhouraction.com

“I’m passionate about packaging design,” says Benja Harney. “So often people do bog standard boxes. But with a little thought and care you can do amazing things.” The Sydney-based designer has created pop-up boxes for Smirnoff Black Vodka and Clarens among others. But over the past five years his work has been used to beautiful effect in fashion. Stylists have commissioned Harney to create window displays for Hermes, pop-up books for Harper’s Bazaar and sets for Commonwealth bank. For a designer working with paper he was also a natural to work with renowned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, whose buildings are constructed from recyclable cardboard. Harney designed the box and cover prospectus for a recent Ban presentation. While his handmade designs have emerged serendipitously with a backlash against digital design, Harney says his work relies on computers in the design stage. “Part of the magic is getting the technical, mathematical feeling, but made by hand where you can see human error. There’s a friction which people love. But it’s the simplicity of paper that people respond to.”

Alongside his packaging and paper-sculpting, Harney plans to move into furniture made from recycled cardboard. Milan’s Salone del Mobile is in his sights. “Paper in the home is a wonderful thing,” he says. “It’s a natural product and even if it’s designed beautifully it doesn’t cost the earth.”

“There are two ways can go with sustainability,” says architect and designer Toby Horrocks. “Design something so robust that it never gets thrown out, which fights the consumerist trend. Or you could go with it, and change all the time by making your product from recycled sources.” Such is the pragmatic philosophy that drives Horrocks’ Freefold designs.

Made from recycled  cardboard his fold down interiors and shelving are an antidote to what he has seen around him while living and working in the CBD – skips full of dumped interior fittings.

Embracing the natural human impulse to consume, Horrocks has built a modular interior that can be recycled when boredom or a new tenant arrives. An experimental prototype, which resembles a theatre set, was built for the 2010 State of Design festival installation Look Stop Shop, together with Sydney-based designer Kristian Aus. The work has led to a commission to design another popup, this time a juice-tasting stand at a shopping mall. 

Horrocks has been experimenting with post-consumer waste cardboard furniture and modular systems full time since leaving award-winning architect John Wardle. Horrocks was Research and Development architect with Wardle, a practice renowned for its detailing.

Working with repeatable modular patterns for walls and windows was, in its own way, part of being “drenched” in the computer modelling he would undertake for his modular shelving systems. Further evidence of the repeatable patterning we see in public architecture can be seen on the reverse side of his modular shelving, which act as room dividers and screens.

“Computer modelling is my realm. I’m not hands on folding paper,” he says. While experimenting with computer modelling he designed a “beautiful geometry” for a shelving system, but wanted it more lightweight than plywood, and less expensive than a South African Xanita Exboard he’d been testing. He found that local cardboard could be used cheaper and more effectively. The revised modular systems are made from 1.8 mm thick cardboard and allow “nice sharp folds – it’s more like origami,” says Horrocks.

As well as Freefold Furniture, he now runs his own architecture practice, Toby Horrocks Architecture. “Sustainability drives my practice,” he says. “I hope to influence the culture of waste.”

www.tobyhorrocks.com

Designed as a hothouse for architectural investigation, Grocon’s Pixel building is made from recycled aluminium – its shade battens prevent the prototype office building from becoming an actual hothouse.

Native grasses on its roof filter rainwater, encourage local ecology and provide insulation, while cantilevered reed beds on the windowsills help cooling.

Three patented wind turbines designed specifically for the turbulent urban environment and winds, generate electricity and feed the excess back into the grid. Pixel is the first building to achieve a 100% green star score from the Green Building Council.

Not only does Pixel use new technologies, it also recycles many materials – like the structural steel – reducing the embodied energy of the building.

“Research suggest 6% of the world’s greenhouse gases every year is a consequence of the manufacture of cement,” says Grocon’s David Waldren. In conjunction with Boral, Grocon has developed Pixelcrete, which Waldren says has half the embodied carbon than normal.

Pixel building’s name comes by being a small building in the big picture – an image Grocon plans to upscale.

 www.pixelbuilding.com.au

“Sustainability is about working with clients who are sustainable,” says Jason Grant from the respected Queensland design practice Inkahoots.

Talk to many designers and they have varying ideas of what sustainability is. Responses vary from those who believe sustainability is simply about making something that people won’t want to throw away, to those, like Grant, who believe it’s about actually choosing who you work for.

While Grant’s ‘take no prisoners’ response sounds the more heroic, it’s not feasible for everyone. If a business is truly sustainable it will be both profitable, and not harmful to the environment. Educating clients – and potential clients along the way – is also part of the process. And if the idea of ‘creating something that lasts’ sounds slightly naïve, it does have certain merit.

“The answer to the problem of overconsumption isn’t recycling cans or green shopping, it’s changing our relationship to stuff, so that everything we use and live with is designed for zero waste and is either meant to last (“heirloom design” and “durability”) or to be shared (“product service systems”) or both,” says Alex Steffen from Worldchanging.

It’s a belief echoed by Leyla Acaroglu, founder of Eco Innovators and this issue’s ‘shining star’. “It’s not enough to be buying green electricity and recycling paper,” she says. “It’s about foundational thinking. Ecodesign is often wrongly seen as complex and costly, but in fact it’s simply good design that offers financial, social and environmental benefits. If designers embrace sustainability, we can create consumer goods with the smallest possible ecological footprint.”

In the online video and recently released book The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard outlines the process of production. The problem, she explains, is treating it as a linear system that leaves out important aspects of the process. The true hidden costs of production aren’t covered by the cheap products we buy, but are absorbed by the lack of workers’ wages and pollution into developing countries.

Using a lifecycle approach – exploring the impacts of each stage a product goes through – helps designers make informed decisions that lead to more socially and environmentally responsible products with lower carbon emissions.

As Planet Ark’s Jon Dee writes in the Sustainable Growth guide, published by Sensis, sustainability brings many benefits for small and medium businesses: reducing energy contains costs and overheads. Improving the supply chain can mean more productive relationships with suppliers. Younger, better educated (possibly more handsome, though he makes no promises) people will be attracted to companies that are sustainable. Knowing where your supply chain sources materials is essential to ensuring your corporate reputation. Being environmentally and socially proactive makes smaller companies attractive to larger companies who rely on likeminded companies as part of their own sustainable procurement policies.

It’s also about attaining a competitive advantage. While the Chinese dragon of manufacturing represents an insurmountable behemoth to many, others like Tim Piper, from the Australian Industry Group, see the challenge in finding the soft underbelly and slaying it with products of higher quality and better techniques. “Australia is not a low cost producing country, therefore we have to make sure it’s high quality,” he says. In short, it’s about creating products that last. Here too it’s a matter of self-preservation. What other chance is there? “Australians no longer buy Australian made just because it’s Australian,” he says. If done correctly, as part of a wider strategy, sustainability will deliver profitability and a platform for long-term survival.

As we celebrate award-winning sustainable design in this issue of Desktop, it is worth remembering the words from another award recipient. “We must abandon the conceit that individual, isolated, private actions are the answer,” Al Gore said in his Nobel acceptance speech. “They can and do help. But they will not take us far enough without collective action.”

Clients, designers, production people, distributors and consumers can collectively help lower the carbon footprint and ensure the sustainability of the products they create and purchase. It’s about working together to be sustainable.

 www.worldchanging.com

 www.storyofstuff.com

 www.inkahoots.com.au

Dispelling the preconception that ecodesigners are an overtly earnest bunch, Leyla Acaroglu’s short animation Life Pscycle- logy tells the life (cycle) story of a depressed mobile phone, that undergoes therapy after being dumped for a new model.

“It’s about taking a fun approach to a serious subject,” says Acaroglu. “I want to inspire people to become part of the solution, rather than the problem. Every day, thousands of products roll off the production line, and very few have been designed with sustainability in mind.”

Life Pscycle-ology is the first animation in a series, The Secret Life of Things, that explores the hidden environmental impacts of everyday things. The next two instalments slated with animator Nick Kallincos are on planned obsolescence and exploring material comparison. Each video comes with a free downloadable resource aimed at informing and educating young designers.

As with so many projects, The Secret Life of Things was borne out of frustration. “After spending many years promoting sustainable design, I was frustrated by the lack of engaging resources out there,” says Acaroglu.

 As a product design student at Enmore in Sydney she found little in the way of a holistic approach to design. But then she read Victor Papenek’s Green Imperative “Every designer should read it. It was one of those periods in life where you have to reconsider everything you’ve done and will do,” she says. “I decided to do eco design.” She moved to Melbourne to study social science and at RMIT’s Centre for Design she learnt lifecycle assessment, and wrote ‘What is eco design?’ for Design Victoria. Meanwhile she won seed funding from the British Council’s Big Green Idea competition to produce The Secret Life of Things.

“Animation is a great medium to communicate,” the 27 year old says. “It’s like design itself. Designers design a product so that it has a life and an identity. That’s what we’ve tried to do with the animation.”

The film and learning resources are currently undergoing before-and-after tests at six Australian universities.

“Ecodesign has a massive PR problem,” says Acaroglu, who has also established her own eco design consultancy, Eco Innovators. “What I’m trying to show is this is a creative, fun and challenging job, and it’s not that complicated. We just need to think about these things. With The Secret Life of Things we’re trying to open it up and demystify it.

www.thesecretlifeofthings.com

www.ecoinnovators.com.au

“Most people have this idea of bamboo furniture as something out of Gilligan’s Island,” says Australian furniture designer Kent Gration. “I wanted to show how to use this sustainable material and make it look good.” Not wanting to look obviously sustainable, Gration’s Wambamboo label has a frathouse luau style logo.

Meanwhile the furniture draws on Modernist principles of elegant simplicity. The combination won Gration Queensland Emerging Designer of the Year in the 2010 Premier’s Design Awards. His Krypto lights look like the icy crystals from Superman’s planet Krypton and are made from the shards and offcuts from his other furniture, such as his Zhu lights. Chinese for bamboo the Zhu lights resemble bamboo clutches. They come in upright and pendant forms with a bamboo veneer that emits a warm glow. Because local bamboo isn’t strong enough, and the Chinese variety is considered a weed in Australia, Gration has to source his material overseas and assemble it here. “Bamboo’s not the holy grail for all products, but it’s versatile and a rapidly renewable material,” says Gration.

www.wambamboo.com.au