Sustainability Workshop

On the 7th of December 2011, I organised a workshop on sustainability of which the aim was to create an awareness amongst members of the public about different things that can be done with some of the waste that we tend to discard adding to the vast amounts of articles that end up in landfill. The workshop was advertised through an e-flyer on facebook, tweeter, my apartment block and also by word of mouth. Sadly, most of those who expressed an interest and wanted to take advantage of this free workshop never turned up. They were all informed that I would be giving a presentation, the workshop would be interactive and with my guidance, they would be trying out their hands on carefully selected choice of discarded materials to create something functional.

After careful consideration, I decided to opt for materials that would not take too much time to create things from bearing in mind the time constraints that we had (it was a three hour workshop that dragged on to four hours). But it was both very enjoyable and rewarding for all the participants including myself and felt very encouraged with the feedback from them.

The AdeySapphire design studio in Stratford which is the name I have given my working space was used as the venue for the workshop. Due to the creative nature of the workshop, I felt it would be a great idea to also contact the mental health charity which is based also in Stratford, called The Independent Newham Users Forum at Ithaca House, on Romford road, to see if I could get some of the members interested also.

This decision was influenced by the Museum of Everything that the MA class visited at Selfridge’s store in the West End, during the summer where there was an exhibition of works by mental health patients. I was touched by these various works that encompassed all degrees of mastery, from the crude to the really strange and disturbingly perfect drawings that most of us require a digital software to accomplish. as well as the average and slightly above average drawings and paintings. It was an experience that made me see that irrespective of their mental or emotional state, these people also need an outlet to express themselves in whatever manner or medium. So, I meant to involve the members at this charity in Stratford, but apparently it was a bit too late to have anything meaningful done, save to post my posters in the premises (They shut for Christmas in a couple of weeks I was told).

However, the arrangement now is that I shall be invited in the New Year to give a workshop on the premises. My point is that even if these people were going to attend my workshop, it may not be safe for them to travel outside of their premises. Hence, the best thing is to conduct this workshop on the Charity’s property, which is a more familiar environment for the members making it least likely for them to get anxious. This is something I have learnt and would have to consider in the future.

Going back to the workshop, it was designed for the unemployed who are seeking new creative skills, and anybody who is interested in the idea of sustainability. My scope for this in the future is to take this workshop to schools and adult learning centres and to consult with the borough about giving this workshop to unemployed youths. The reason for this is that the raw materials required for the creation of these different things are free. They can be picked up in the street everywhere and from all the trains and buses which if they go about it in the right way, they could earn a living from it by selling on the things they’ve made from them.

At the workshop, I had three volunteers, one of them was made redundant from work and is seeking other jobs, his name is Wari and hails from Nigeria. Also there is a second person from France who resides here and dabbles into art by doing paintings; Stephan, and finally, Hristo who works for a retailer. Wari has never made anything creative in his life, while Stephan, save for creating paintings, has never made any 3D crafts before and Hristo who hails from Bulgaria, apart from the activities carried out in his childhood, has not made anything 3D and won’t even know where to start. So, it was very interesting to see how these trio were going to fare in the exercise.

During the presentation, attention was drawn to the effects of the consumptive habits of ‘Man’ and how the over consumption has spiraled out of control leading to vast amounts of generated waste that end up in landfill sites, some of which has to be incinerated and thereby consumes lots of energy. All of which now impacts on the environment and purportedly the cause of global warming.

I have used the word purported here because this allegation is a claim that neither of us have the capacity to disprove and I had to present the other side of the coin to look at the controversy that has arisen as a result of this claim. One camp is saying there is no such thing as global warming calling it all a false alarm and balderdash, while the other camp are saying we are in grave danger and if we don’t try to correct our excesses we may not live to tell the story, so to speak.

In my view, whether its true or not, we don’t even need a soothsayer to tell us that all the natural resources that are being mined and made into different finished products that end up being thrown away at the end of their life cycle only to mine more of the minerals to manufacture more of the product which ends up with the same fate. Nothing is being put back! And its only a matter of time that we are bound to see the repercussions of this wanton plundering and wasting of our natural resources. We can only take so much from the earth of which the resources appear to be vast but are very finite. What then happens when we use up all the iron ore, gold and oil that are at our disposal at the moment?

There is the case of the growing human population. Man has bombed to a population of seven billion people in the world today according to data supplied by the UN.This was recently proclaimed to be on the cusp of reaching the seven billionth mark. While this figure by the UN is only a bit of guesswork, it cannot be ignored because indeed the world population is exploding at a very rapid rate in the midst of fast diminishing natural resources, economic stagnation and unemployment.

Hence this is where we now have to ask the rhetorical question: can we sustain this mammoth sized population? How and what can be done to be able to sustain it?. Is this mammoth size population sustainable at all? Have we got enough resources to maintain this size? What impact is it going to have on our environment, communities and infrastructure? How is this going to impact on the world economy in the foreseeable future? These are just a few of the many questions that we ought to be asking ourselves.

It goes without saying that we will definitely be generating more waste that will require being sent to landfill sites. How many more landfill sites are we going to create? There are only so many land resources available to us as individual sovereign nations. More energy resources will be used up to incinerate waste that cannot go into landfill sites. What further impact is this going to have on our already polluted environment? The globe will be getting warmer no doubt.

Global warming according to a report by the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration “…has little impact in Tropical storm and Hurricane numbers.”
– NOAA Reports (2008,May 19) – ScienceDaily, retrieved December 13,2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080519134306htm

This means that the volume of incidences of Tropical storms and hurricanes has little or no bearing on the fact that the globe is getting warmer which is contrary to percieved opinion that the Atlantic suffers more hurricanes and tropical storms which ofen led to flooding in certain parts of the world, due to global warming.

The ScienceDaily goes on to report that an experiment was carried out to mimic Atlantic hurricane activity over the last twenty years of this millenia which forcasts less hurricanes in entirety, but a little increase in the sheer force of hurricanes that do take place. It is their projection that hurricanes will have more intense rainfall, on average, in the foreseeable future.

Apparently, this study corroborates the findings of the intergovernmental panel on Climate change that it is possible that hurricanes will gradually become more intense as the climate continues to warm. This is the view of Tom Knutson, a research meteorologist who led and wrote the report. ” Its a bit of a mixed picture in the Atlantic, because we’re projecting fewer hurricanes overall”. – Tom Knutson in a report co-written by Joseph Sirutis, Stephen Garner, Gabriel Vecchi And Isaac Held for Nature Geoscience.

In other words. as the climate continues to get warmer the incidences of hurricanes will be much less compared to what it is at present, except that there will be a bit of an increase in the strength and force of hurricanes that do take place. A lot more intense rainfall will be evident in the years to come which correlates with the findings of the intergovernmental panel on climate change that hurricanes will gradually become more trecherous as the climate gets warmer. But then, according to Tom Knutson, nobody has a clearer picture yet as the forecasts indicate that hurricanes would be on the wane in entirety.

This means that the incidences of hurricanes cannot be ascribed to the phenomena of global warming, whereas, the gospel that has been touted about is that global warming is the main cause of the high numbers of hurricanes that have been taking place in the Atlantic, wreaking havoc in place like the Americas and the Carribean, which now puts a slant on this idea that high numbers of hurricanes and tropical storms is due to global warming.

On the other hand, there is the case of the dying Aspens which is highlighted in the ScienceDaily (Dec. 12,2011) and maintains that “over the past 10years, the death of forest trees due to drought and increased temperatures has been documented on all continents except Antarctica. This can in turn drive global warming by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by trees and by releasing carbon locked up in their wood”. – Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Dec. 12, 2011).

The world vegetation helps to maintain the balance in the ecological cycles of the planet. They produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide which is produced by the various forms of life that inhabit the earth. If all these vegetation is removed it will not only destroy the wild life that depends on it for their existence, but the entire eco-system will be in total disarray which will lead to a chain reaction that could now cause the catastrophic annihilation of the human race and all other species.

According to this report, “forests store about 45 percent of the carbon found on land. Their mortality can radically change ecosystems, affect biodiversity, harm local economies, and pose fire risks, as well as increase to global warming”. -Carnegie Institution (2011, December 12). The case of the dying aspens. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 14, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2011/12/111212153127.htm

In other words, if there is little of no vegetation to absorb the carbon found on land, this will adversely affect the balance in the ecosystem destroying world economies, increase the risks of bush fires and above all contribute to the phenomena of global warming.

Forests, I believe should be seen as our auxillary ‘friends’ or ‘partners’ helping to maintain the ecological balance on the planet and we have to do our best in the light of our ever advancing industrial and technological age to maintain our forests by curbing deforestation, so that they can do the job of absorbing the carbon in the atmosphere and maintaining that balance.

In the same vein, this is why as individuals and designers, we have to make it our responsibility to live more sustainably with our choices on the domestic and industrial front. When we create waste at home, how do we dispose of them? Can some of our waste at home and at work be reused? If so, what can they be used for? The pressure is on all of us to do the best that we can so that our children and grandchildren will not suffer the consequences when things start to cave in because the planet cannot sustain the enormous strain that has been placed upon it by us both in our multitude and nefarious activities.

According to Micheal Braungart and William Mcdonough, in their book Cradle to Cradle, we are not protecting the environment by using our cars less often or travel by air less frequently which is described as a “knee jerk” reaction to climate change and wanting to be seen as doing something “good” to protect the environment.

I am inclined to agree with the above authors as these are all cosmetic remedies, because when cars do reach the end of their life cycles, they still end up getting crushed rather than removing the different components and finding other uses for them. In the same vein, we can’t place an embargo on air travel because people need to get around in the global village that we have become today.

My own remedy to this phenomenon is that we should have a secondary use for most component parts, manufactured, processed or assembled product that has reached the end of its life. Instead of having them tossed in the garbage can or sent to landfill sites, we can start reabsorbing them and giving them new life by either using them in their primary forms, some of which have beautiful well finished shapes and surfaces. Alternatively, these primary shapes could be altered and used to create something completely different to the original form that they were before.

We are in the danger of eating ourselves of a planet if we don’t start to reabsorb these so-called waste items back into the consumption chain. Let’s bear in mind that a lot of resources, excluding the manpower that went into the manufacture of the item, has been used to produce the one item. For instance, in the case of metal, iron ore has been mined to produce it, same goes for gold, silver, or even crude oil which there are by-products in countless products from cosmetics to textiles, cars, aeroplanes, to just name a few. So if we just imagine that we continue to plunder our planet and extracting all these minerals from its bowels, alter them and then discard them when we no longer require them. We have to remember, it’s a population of 7billion people; there will never be enough resources to go around that many people. There will be starvation, diseases and even worse, no more peace in the world as a result of wars as nations try to consolidate their position in the new status quo and be in control of more natural resources and thrive on the planet.

“The UK produces about 330 million tonnes of waste a year, a quarter of which is from homes and business. The government is looking at a series of measures to reduce waste, including charging people who fail to recycle their rubbish and, in parts of the country, weekly bin collections have been reduced to fortnightly”. – courtesy the BBC

The United Kingdom still produces more waste per head of population than many of its European neighbours, with an average of 592kg (1,306lb), above the EU average of 577kg, (1,274lb). It also lags behind in the amount of waste recycled, with a UK average figure of 18% based on these figures, well below the EU average of 36.4%.

– Diagram/Data courtesy; BBC Webpage.