MAY / JUNE 2008 | Progress Report
Almost every journalist I talk to about the Designers Accord asks when it began.
For me personally, it was when I wrote the "Kyoto Treaty" of design in February 2007, fueled with a mix of frustration and optimism about what the creative community could do to make positive environmental impact.
Publically, the Designers Accord was launched as a provocation in an article I wrote for the July 2007 frog Design Mind newsletter entitled, The Designer's Dilemma. The call to arms in that article spawned adoption by a handful of design firms. By the end of the summer of 2007, we had about 450 designers pledging to live up to the principles of the Designers Accord.
Over the last year, this movement has grown exponentially. Our initial goal was to build a coalition -- at 100,000 participants from all over the world, we have achieved a major milestone. This number sends a significant message to the industry: the creative community is working together on effecting a real change.
In addition to continuous growing our community and network, several noteworthy things happened over the past two months. There has been a fairly constant stream of press about the Designers Accord since the fall, from BusinessWeek, Dwell, and GOOD magazine, to inumerable blog postings about this movement. One in particular stood out to me. Silicon Valley product engineering firm, MindTribe, wrote about their adopter experience in a post called Early Evidence the Designers Accord Is Working.
It's a wonderful, honest piece with an incisive obversation: "by just asking a question we are creating the demand for an answer." I encourage everyone to read this, and record and publish your own testimonials.
We held our first ever panel discussion of Designers Accord adopters at the Sustainable Brands 08 conference.
Ziba, AddisCreson, Autodesk, BMW Designworks, and GravityTank discussed their experiences and intepretations of the Accord. The session was extremely well received. Read more here.
Lastly, we held something of a Designers Accord townhall meeting at the Econnovation series in San Francisco.
Following a short presentation about the Designers Accord, about 35 of us discussed what it means to think and act in socially and environmentally responsible ways as members of the creative community. This was a powerful format where educators, manufacturers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and designers shared ideas and resources in an open, productive forum. Through that discussion, it became clear to me that these types of events will become even more important as our community grows. While we'll be able to capture questions, discussion, and case study content when the beta web platform comes online this summer, these face-to-face meeting are incredibly enriching and inspiring. Over the coming months I'll be asking different firms, schools, and companies to host these sessions in different regions. Let me know if you are interested in doing so!
When this movement began, many designers, engineers, educators, and researchers were already taking on the challenge of being social and environmentally responsible in their practices. Others were looking for a way to translate their good intentions to real action. For either group, and those in between, the Designers Accord is a movement that has come at the right time. It gives us all a rallying cry and a unifying framework to structure our goals and activities as individuals and as a collective force.
The Designers Accord provides a global, multidisciplinary network for us to not only take responsibility, but leadership in creating positive social and environmental impact. We are creating the conditions for change. Thank you for your role in enabling this to happen!
Please contribute to the knowledge base!
Please send your methods, best practices, urls, examples, and case studies to info@designersaccord.org for inclusion in the Progress Report.Designers Accord adopter shares their first footprint report
In fulfillment of their Designers Accord pledge, design and innovation firm Continuum is sharing their experience in measuring their carbon footprint. Piece wrtten by Mark Bates: Principal Sustainability Champion at Continuum.
The average American household of four generates about 80 tons of CO2 a year. I was surprised to discover that our 130 person innovation firm in Boston generates the equivalent CO2 of a little more than 3 of these households through heating, cooling and running all the things that we plug in. Of course there's more to the story, there always is. The American household includes each persons total footprint, not just the gas heat and the electricity used at home. Continuum's total operational footprint is more than just the energy to heat, cool and power our computers and lights.
We've just completed our first environmental impact summary and it's been enlightening to see where our impact is. 77% of our operational impact is generated through employee transportation! Air travel is our biggest single impact and represents 55% of our footprint. Getting to and from work on a daily basis is another 22%. The remainder is made up of the electricity we use and a small percent is for heating (3%). Our total CO2 emissions for 2007 was 1160 metric tons or 8.9 metric tons per person. Now that we have the numbers it will help us prioritize our reduction efforts.
This was a new and challenging exercise. Continuum is a mid-size consulting firm and we've been learning along the way. Basically you need a summary of your yearly utility bills, and a summary of your travel and commuting. With these numbers you can use established calculations to get to your baseline footprint. We knew it was important for us to determine our footprint so back in January we hired a firm to help us through the process. Unfortunately the company forgot to include half our energy consumption in their summary. How would you know that your scope - 1 emissions seemed low?
It took us a while to figure out the right protocol, conversions and calculations but we have and we understand it better now than if we didn't. Actually, it seems relatively simple now and I encourage everyone to give it a try. Certainly, having a reputable firm perform the audit is ideal because you avoid self reporting. Down the road, when carbon is regulated, you'll need a third party to validate your footprint. By then there should be a legitimate set of firms to choose from.
[Download the Continuum report]
In March, the Designers Accord partnered with Core77-BusinessWeek Design Directory to list the design firm adopters of the Designers Accord.
If you are a design firm and you have not set up your profile, please do so ASAP! Creating a basic listing is free, and it's very important that each member of our community is represented.
Recent coverage:
GOOD magazine: Designs on the FutureAdAge: Designers Accord Unites the Design Community Around Environmental, Social Responsibility
Coroflot: Want to Save the World? Just Ask.
Newly added resources:
DEMOS, The Think Tank for Everyday Democracy: The Politics of Public BehaviourYale Environment 360 is an online magazine offering opinion, analysis, reporting and debate on global environmental issues.
Download the one-page informational PDF about the Designers Accord.
This is a useful tool for sharing the basic goal of the Designers Accord with clients, colleagues, and other interested parties.
An Adopter's Journey
Ivy Chuang, founder of the ecodesign company Knoend, shares her experience in adopting the Designers Accord. Her testimonial describes how she dealt with the grey areas in the DA principles, and designed her own structure to create change.I first heard about the Designers Accord at Compostmodern in San Francisco this past January. That week I visited the DA website and read the guidelines and initiated inquiry into adopting the Accord but there were many questions unanswered.
My main concern was the guideline that stipulated my company had to reduce its carbon footprint each year - how would it be possible to measure such a thing? In my company, we not only design but manufacture products; how would I calculate the footprint of each product, its components coming from several suppliers? What of the supplier's carbon footprint? As my company grows and product lines expand, carbon footprint is sure to increase, how could I pledge to reduce it each year when the company is at its beginning? I wasn't sure how to calculate my own personal footprint, and what of the company's employees? Even if there were complex algorithms to accurately measure carbon, as a small business, perhaps it would not be within our financial capability to implement.
The other guidelines were easier to accept since my company is identified as an ecodesign company and thus include environmental and social consideration inherently in all our projects inside and out. However, would we turn down opportunities from clients that did not have eco-concern?
Despite unanswered questions, I was convinced that the guidelines demonstrated the right intention. But I still was confused and maybe a little frustrated about the lack of a specific implementation plan. Of course, now I realize that was by design. There is not a set formula because every company is unique and a sustainable future is something that we will create together. The importance is not just to pledge responsibility as designers, but to actually take accountability for that pledge, however complex that may be.
Knoend has created our own scaffolding to fulfill our commitment: since adoption of the accord in Feburary, Knoend has signed up with Carbon Fund and 1% of the planet, submitted an application to be a part of Coop-America, initiated steps to become a Bay Area Green Business recognized by SF Environment, and presented a 2 month long educational Bay Area Green Design exhibition entitled Econnovation. In the upcoming months, I will be speaking on the topic of ecodesign at several conferences. While these events are not directly spurred by adoption of the Designers Accord, they are surely reflective of the nature of the Accord's guidelines. And though they may not be accurate measures of action (in terms of Carbon), it is a demonstration of the commitment that Knoend has to sustainability and to the call-to-action the Designers Accord has set forth. Even if it is unclear what specific action should be taken as an adopter of the DA, it is imperative that companies take initiative.
Check out Blue Practice and Grist's manual designed to overcome any argumentative global warming nay-sayer who comes your way. This is terrific! Download Arm Yourself. How to Talk to the Climate Skeptic. Top 30 Frequently Used Arguements and Rebuttals (PDF 2.2Mb)
"Employees Want the Change"
Designers Accord adopter Natural Logic, and Fresh Marketing, have teamed up to examine employees' roles in affecting the social and environmental policies and impacts of their companies. The goal was to better understand how to get -- or how to enable -- employees and leaders to assess their current environmental, social and economic (ESE) performance and take effective action.
Download survey results: "CSR: Employees Want the Change" (PDF 245k). It's a thought-provoking report, relevant for anyone seeking to make sustainability relevant to their clients and communities.
One of the greatest opportunities for the Designers Accord to make positive impact is with educational institutions. The next generation of designers, researchers, engineers, and business people will be poised to make productive and creative decisions if they assimilate the right priorities during their school years. One of our most proactive and vocal members of the Designers Accord community is Swinburne University's Faculty of Design, led by Dean Ken Friedman. We've asked Dean Friedman to reflect on his experience with the Designers Accord to date.
It's amazing to think that we celebrated the first Earth Day nearly four decades ago. Despite the hope this event generated at the time, the promising future failed to materialize, at least not as we once thought it would. Not long afterward, the Club of Rome published the report on the Limits to Growth, a report warning us about the interaction of growing populations with finite resources. In 1970, the world population was roughly three and a half billion people. Today, we are creeping up on seven billion. By 1987, the Brundtland Report was published. In 2007, we began working on the United Nations Millennium Goals. It seems to me sometimes to be an era of difficulties, rather than promise -- yet despite the difficulties we face, we have no other planet to live on if we fail to survive here.
The Designers Accord emerged at just the right time.
For me, The Designers Accord is more than a global initiative of leading design firms and organizations. It offers vital guidelines and heuristics for advanced professional practice in design.
When I became dean of the faculty of design at Swinburne University of Technology, I found myself asking what critical factors would make a difference to the design school I hoped to build. One of these was sustainability, but sustainability is more often a buzz word than a pathway to achievement.
The Designers Accord offered a simple, concrete way forward. With the encouragement of our Vice Chancellor, I committed my school to adopting the Accord. This means agreeing to take five simple steps:
As a university faculty, we took on five practices:
1. We publicly declared our participation in the Designers Accord.
2. We initiated a dialogue about environmental impact and sustainable alternatives with every student and colleague in our educational program. We are now reworking curricula and assignments to emphasize environmentally responsible design and work processes. We are also creating and preparing to provide course content, lectures, and assignments that focus on strategic and material alternatives for sustainable design.
3. We have undertaken a program to educate our colleagues about sustainability and sustainable design, and we plan to integrate these concepts into course curricula.
4. We are finding ways to measure the carbon/greenhouse gas footprint of our faculty, and we pledge to reduce our footprint annually.
5. We seek to advance the understanding of environmental issues from a design perspective by contributing actively to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design.
These decisions have major implications. Some are easy. Some are tough. When we took on the public commitment to the Designers Accord, we discovered that no other university had yet done so. Because of this, we've become evangelists for the Accord. Now, our colleagues in the worldwide Cumulus association of design schools have joined us, and schools from the School of Design at Tecnologico de Monterrey to the University of Art and Design Helsinki are taking up the challenge.
We've got plans to spread the word further over the next year. Some actions will be easy, such as circulating large public notices to email lists and discussion groups. We'll move on in a cycle of direct action that enables us to reach out directly to other schools in different ways. Finally, I plan to contact my fellow deans and heads of school to seek their engagement.
I'm proud of the fact that Swinburne Design was the first design faculty to adopt the accord. We've already taken action on some of our pledges. When we can say that we fully live out the principles reflected in the five guidelines, we can be as proud of our achievements as of our intentions.
That's a long process of actions embedded in the daily life of the school. Today, we face a great new challenge. Since joining the Accord, we've begun plans for a major new building for staff and students on one of the best pieces of land in Melbourne.
Many people at our university have been talking about developing an iconic building for the Faculty of Design. I take the position that the most important way to be iconic is to be sustainable.
Sustainability is one of the crucial issues we face in today's world. As a faculty of design, we join those professions that create the built environment and the artifacts with which we fill the world. We also shape the processes that we use to create the built world, and we increasingly work with immaterial structures ranging from events and experiences to organizations. Nevertheless, a building is intensely physical. It symbolizes our engagement with the physical world, and it is the laboratory where we work with matter and material. It is my hope that we can develop a building that serves as a model of sustainability.
As we examine the issues and opportunities connected with the new building, I am eager to provide sources and resources to make the work of the planners easier in terms of information for sustainability. While it costs more in today's terms to build a sustainable building than an unsustainable one, two important issues are at play. The first is that current technology reduces these costs relative to comparable technologies even a few years back. The second is that the long-term operating costs of a sustainable building may be far less than those of a less sustainable building, making this a valuable investment. What I hope to do is to investigate every option that can make our building more sustainable, and to make this information available to everyone who is involved with planning and developing our building. Because this will also feed into our own curriculum and research plans, it becomes an investment for our faculty as well as an investment in the future of Swinburne University. Making this information accessible to a larger public is also part of our commitment in the Accord.
Our mission of sustainability for our iconic building is the life we live inside. We are aware that one reaction to a focus on sustainability by people was a complaint by people who feel overwhelmed by information on sustainability and inundated by requests to act. In terms of the realities we face today, we must begin to take strong, decisive action to make our organizations, our cities, and our homes more sustainable. We will be inundated if we do not act.
One thing we will do as a faculty is to set a measurable score card on critical factors that allow us to account for our actions. Whether or not we can achieve our ideal, we can state what it ought to be, and we will hold ourselves accountable against the ideal. When we fail to measure up, we can be responsible enough to speak truthfully about our failures as well as our aspirations and achievements.
Our sustainability group will set up an accounting system that allows us to measure our sustainability each year on the key dimensions they find vital. Once we have the system ready, we'll keep annual accounts and publish the results on our faculty web site. This will give us something to live up to. I will take public responsibility for the annual results, good and bad.
There is power in truth. Politics is the art of the possible. Stating what we ought to do in a clear, honest way will help us to expand the range of possibility.
For us, the building is a laboratory that will allow us to put the Designers Accord into practice. What we learn will help us to get the Accord working on every level of our activity. An icon is a symbol of community and common life. An iconic building should create community, symbolizing what we do, helping us to do better, helping us to live an admirable life through outstanding professional practice as we teach and learn design.
To plan a sustainable building that will meet our needs for a quarter century is a modest goal, but it plays a part in something larger.
Forty-seven years ago -- on May 25, 1961 -- John F. Kennedy announced the goal of sending human beings to the moon and bringing them back safely to the earth. This goal, set for a decade, took eight years. On July 21, 1969, we walked on the moon.
We face an equally great challenge in the decade to come. Time is shorter than people believe, and we will have a far more difficult task than we realize in the face of long-term ecological, environmental, and economic trends. Design schools around the world are in the best possible place to play a role in rising to this challenge. What we do today will shape the communities and cultures of the future. Our challenge today is to ensure that human beings will walk safely on the earth in five decades.
For us, the new building offers an opportunity to crystallize aspiration into achievement. Others will have other ways forward. So far, everyone in the university welcomes the Accord and our effort -- but we know that it's easier to aspire before the work begins.
I'd like to say that we will achieve our aspirations. Perhaps we will. What I can promise is that we will rise to the commitment we have made together with 100,000 designers around the world. Five principles are a good beginning.
- Ken Friedman, Dean
Faculty of Design, Swinburne University of Technology
Many thanks to Professor Friedman, his faculty, staff, and students for their vision and energy in supporting the Designers Accord.