The Designer's Field Guide to Sustainability

The LUNAR Elements team has recently published "The Designer's Field Guide to Sustainability", a tool designed to help all designers and engineers, no matter what their level of experience, design more sustainable products.

A quick note about the guide: None of these tips is a turn-key solution. They are very complex issues that often warrant added thought and discussion. Together, they provide a good start, and can help form a checklist of considerations to take along the design path to ensure that no sustainable opportunity has fallen through the cracks. Reviewed often, they can help us to make sustainability a fundamental part of our design and engineering processes.

Feel free to post thoughts, examples, criticisms or advice. All input will be collected and considered when LUNAR publishes version 2.0.

Enjoy.

Click here to download "The Designer's Field Guide to Sustainability"

365 Ways

I recently received a book called "365 Ways to Save the Earth" by Philippe Bourseiller. It's full of tips that are easy enough to implement, but that most of us never think to do. I started sending a tip a day from the book to the entire office. After the first five or six tips, I started writing them on my own. I think that while some of these tips are obvious, they're good for everyone to know. Please do them if you can.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ONGOING LUNAR INSPIRATION SERIES "365 WAYS"

Manufactured Landscapes

Hi Everyone,

Some of you have seen this movie, but if you haven’t it’s worth checking out. I struggled for a while with our involvement in these processes, but as the movie goes along its pretty clear that EVERYONE is involved. After seeing this movie it’s pretty clear our current state is far from sustainable.

http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=manufacturedlandscapes

European LCA: Eco-Indicator

Checking one of the IDSA documents I ran into this:

“…International LCA evaluation standards are urgently needed. Because international standards do not yet exist, a European method, known as the Eco-Indicator, is an alternative. It offers the most usable method of LCA approaches.”

Here’s a link to the Eco-Indicator Software:

http://www.pre.nl/download/default.htm

'Ready for Liftoff...'

'...because a bus is only as green as the riders in it!'

Welcome to Lunar Design's online 'EcoResource Guide'---a comprehensive, expenses paid, round-tip ticket to green pastures, clear skies and blue water!

Please feel free to contribute and opine at your leisure!

Thanks,
the Lunar Elements Team

"Aligned for Sustainable Design..."

here is an IDEO tool for talking to business about green stuff…

http://www.sustainablelifemedia.com/content/resource/design/sustainable_design_an_a_b_c_d_approach

Green Design Wiki

From the UC Davis design program (Tim McNeil):

"We created this site as an attempt to aggregate information about sustainable materials and methods from many sources, as they pertain to exhibition design."

http://www.greendesignwiki.com

"Sustainability is like teenage sex..."

“…everybody says they're doing it, but nobody's doing it well."

Found this Compostmodern Conference review by Adam Reineck on Core77...

http://www.core77.com/blog/events/compostmodern_conference_review_by_adam_reineck_8744.asp