The Designers Accord

Eco-practitioner Wendy Jedlicka has worked on the frontlines of sustainable design practice for 20 years and recently edited the new book Packaging Sustainability, but don’t you dare call her an eco-packaging guru. “If someone tells you they’re an eco-packaging expert, run screaming,” she says. “There’s no human being who has that much time to do all the research required for that.”

Start with all the different substrates for packaging, then add in the complexities of sustainable design, and you’ve got a nuanced study in systems thinking. Think of it like a computer keyboard, she says. It’s not a single button (everyone wants that “easy button”), it’s a combination of keys, and how you press them.

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As a graduate student at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Robyn Waxman became fascinated with the next generation of designers’ role when it came to protest and civil disobedience, a place designers and artists have been focusing their efforts for centuries. Studying millennials, who are generally considered to be a group of participatory, positive, technologically-savvy 18- to 30-year-olds, revealed some interesting insights: This was a generation that had solid respect for the law and was reluctant to publicly criticize the status quo. “[They] are really concerned about defying authority,” says Waxman, who is 39. “They are looking out for their future.” As her thesis, Waxman proposed an intervention that helped redefine protest for the rising creative group–a form of engagement that would help educate and inspire them in how to take action.

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After a 3-year stint as director of product development for innovation retailer Brookstone, David Laituri decided that it was time to strike out on his own. He remembers a pivotal get-together at a local Denny’s with his future business partner, Tim Trzepacz, a former Brookstone colleague. “Why is it that sound systems today are all cheap plastic boom boxes?” he remembers discussing with Trzepacz. “It’s like everyone is simply adding more plastic to an iPod.” The dialogue quickly moved from idea to cost to schedule to resources–and Vers was born.

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For more than 13 years, Preserve has been a leader in recycling plastics to use in their products like toothbrushes and razors. After years spent making personal care products, Preserve surveyed its customers to find out where else they’d like to see their products, and expanded its offerings into home accessories, like their line of kitchen products. Their Everyday Tableware line, which was recently launched in Target as part of its back-to-college promotion, was designed in partnership with Evo Design and addresses a unique challenge for the affordable tableware market: It’s made from recycled plastic yet sturdy enough to withstand years of everyday use.

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This December, a group of global leaders from 192 countries will converge in Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15), one of the most critical environmental summits in recent history. A large group of media, marketing, tech and creative partners realized that the COP15 event itself needed to be reintroduced to the world. “These things are very wonkish, very in-crowd and they often happen in far away places,” says Freya Williams, a member of the team who works at OgilvyEarth, the firm that led the strategy and creative executions. But if the group could use that far away-seeming city as part of the event’s brand, they felt they’d be able to give it some real-life heft and also create an aspirational place–a state of mind. A simple play on words using hope and Copenhagen resulted in the creative idea to brand the event as Hopenhagen.

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