Blog 10

Tim Brown’s Reading

Design Activism, or inspiring Solutions with global potential

• Biggest challenges may be with Social problems
• Design thinking extends the perimeter around the problem
• Necessity is He mother of innovation
• Design thinking across the entire spectrum of the problem
• Design thinking may shift us to prevention over cure

Play and Play and creativity in kids is an in kids is an important skill to nurture

Design Thinking begins with nurturing the natural creativity of all children and keeping it alive as they advance through the educational system and into professional life. Also, the focus on analytical and convergent thinking in education is so dominant that most students leave school with the belief either that creativity is unimportant or that is the privilege of a few talented oddballs.

Design Activism

Design Activism address progressive social and environmental issues which the primary focus or equal focus is social change. When first hearing those two words together, I thought mkay, another term for tree hugging, picketing outside an organization’s building with signs, stopping cars, etc. But reading more into it, I got more drawn in the name. Design activists practice a different form of activism. They most often try to bring about change by generating positive alternatives to the specific issue and being generative rather than resistant. You know, ultimately, most design activism is all about better understand the problem, rather than acting with certainty towards a single right answer. I feel like a designer who is a design activist would explore the question about a road, and see is as “Where are people going? How else can we move the people who would otherwise use this road? Could we put the road underground? Could the road biodegrade into a public greenery in some long years?” Definitely feel that diagnosing of the problem is as important as promotion the solutions in which the designer is confident about. Both of these steps contribute towards building power for making change. And that is how I feel about Design Activism nonetheless, designers who are design activists.

Natural and Human Capital

Cotton – an essential global commodity and the largest single source of fibre for the fashion industry – is used by nearly every person on the planet on a daily basis. For millions of people in some of the world’s poorest countries, cotton is also a vital link to the global economy.

However, it is associated with significant natural capital dependency, heavily reliant on water for irrigation, land requirements, and chemicals which can result in pollution to land, water and air. The most material impact of cotton farming is water consumption, with $83 billion natural capital costs globally.

It is therefore unsurprising that the fashion industry sector has particularly felt the effects of natural capital-related issues, such as increasingly volatile prices of materials like cotton, due to droughts and floods, in the form of top and bottom line impacts.

Anything to be done differently? Work with farmers to improve cotton farming- through better management, organic practices, and possible responsible agrochemical use and other techniques. All in all, reducing environmental impact that take into account human and natural capital for a push of ‘better’ cotton.

Hunger

You know it when you feel it. It’s that grumbling in your stomach that makes you weak, jittery and unable to concentrate. While many of us can easily access nutritious food to calm those hunger pangs, there are more than 925 million people around the world who can’t. Poverty is the main cause of hunger in the world. This is true in rich and poor countries alike all over the globe. It is true no matter whether people live in urban or rural area there will always be poverty and hunger stricken people. Most people who are hungry though, do live in extreme poverty, defined as income of $1.25 per day or less. On average, a person NEEDS to consume sufficient protein, fat, carbs, vitamins, minerals and water each day to live a healthy life. If the body doesn’t get what it needs each day, it breaks itself down.

I couldn’t imagine going through this or even know what it feels. I just know that even after an hour or so, even if I have eaten something, I get uncomfortable and very cranky if I don’t eat something. I couldn’t even live with the fact that people go days consistently on end without any food or water.

I would like to stand up to hunger by making a group organization on campus come alive for hunger. The job I work at supplies A LOT of food for the OSU athletes, and when they don’t eat ALL the food the kitchen staff makes, the kitchen staff literally grabs a big trashcan and throws all the food away. All of it. Including the fruit that doesn’t get used, the salad, dessert, and delicious meals. I guess it’s against some policy to keep food stored for a day- but hey I love leftovers, I eat them all the time. It’s even worse at football games- the beginning of 4^th quarter, the people who work inside the stadium with the food, throw it all away-concession stand people, etc. I really want to save all that food and go around in the poor parts of Oklahoma and feed them the food, or at least serve it to them and rent out a place, advertise it on social media and flyers around the state to get people to come to Stillwater and join the fight.

CO2 Value

The feet are private transportation and public transportation, your bum is waste, hands are home energy, lighting, washing and drying, the belly is the food, mouth equals water and electrical is the head. Each section talks about why your feet or hands or any other body part is bigger than the other as it relates to your lifestyle and practices. Mouth (water section) relates to focusing on your personal usage. The head (electrical appliances) section focuses on your household usage.

When calculating the CO2 value, I do believe a lot of people’s might be wrong by a lot or a little just because I would not know how many light bulbs are in my house and what wattage they are, how long I use them or how many miles a week I drive- because I do NOT know, because I don’t really care necessarily to pay attention that much in detail or keep tally of it. Or in the washing area, how many degrees in Celsius is the water temperature I use- I do not again know that part, I actually wouldn’t know because I don’t check nor does the washing machine tell me. I just pick “cold temp” and keep it pushing.

My feet, belly, and bum ended up being bigger than the rest of the ideal body situation. For my feet I need to replace incandescent bulbs, tumble dry less, turn down your washing temperature, fill up your dishwasher, change dishwasher setting, buy green electricity, turn down the heat and install draft proofing. For my belly, I need to eat less meat and eat less diary. For my bum, I need to recycle more paper/cardboard and recycle more steel cans.

Walmart Bags

Since my sorority is apart of the National Pan-Hellenic council, we do not take part in whatever pomping is. So for this I will talk about what I am passionate about and how it relates to sustainability- Walmart bags.

Walmart is one of the few stores who have recycle bins within the store for the plastic shopping bags provided by the store or any other store. They encourage their customers to recycle the plastic shopping bags as much as possible. Also, having those recycle bins inside the store makes it convenient to the customers who don’t have to go to a different place just to recycle those used plastic shopping bags. On the other, they also encourage the customers to use the reusable bags sold within the store for affordable price. Recycling these plastic shopping bags is part of my commitment for sustainability. But I have been doing this even before I had enrolled in this class and more than happy to share it as of this week commitment. I try to use my reusable grocery bag as much as possible but there are times when I need the plastic shopping bags. When I do, I bring it back to the store and put it in the plastic recycle bin when I come back to do my grocery. It is very convenient to do it as it is right before when you enter the store next to the door. This is one of the reason I like to shop at Walmart as most of the other grocery store don’t practice this and also the affordable price at one place. Walmart is a big chain retail store which is located all around the world so when they start a commitment like this, it does makes a huge difference. By recycling these shopping plastic bags, they will be reducing the plastic bags waste by “almost 9 billion bags, 290000 metric tons of greenhouse gas and less use of the petroleum oil (Plastic Bag Initiative).” This will also help the government who waste billions of dollars to separate these plastic bags in the landfills. Plastics do not decompose and it is non-biodegradable as well so when thrown in the landfills, it still will be there even after years after years. This doesn’t help the environment or the eco system. As we cannot completely stop using these shopping plastic bags, but the most we can do is at least try to recycle and reuse it. By doing this, I think I am contributing my part to be sustainable and help the earth which will later benefit myself and others as well. I encourage everyone to do it because when combined it makes a huge difference.

I re-use the bags for my mini trashcans that I have around my apartment and my home back in Dallas. I actually started this act of sustainability by watching my mom when I was younger. She would go to the grocery store and then we’d gather up all the bags, put bags into bags and then stuff them in the pantry with the food. I honestly had no idea this was being “sustainable”, I thought we were just recycling. But, since taking the sustainability and recognizing new functions within nature and how they apply to our lives its interesting. If I ever- which I haven’t yet- run out of these Walmart bags when I need to use one as a trash bag for my trash cans, then I run back to Walmart and buy stuff. I honestly haven’t ever seen trash bags that are for little trash cans.