D&T in a Climate Crisis
By Richard Brett, Senior Labs Tutor (Materials), Design Dept, Goldsmiths University of London.
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Discipline, respect and good behaviour are big in schools. We expect and encourage behaviours that don’t cause harm or damage, we expect students to leave things as they found them and not to take what isn’t theirs. We expect them not to lie or mislead. So why isn’t our subject upholding those behaviours towards the materials we use and the things we design and make?
As designers and creative problem solvers we can encourage others to care for the natural world, improve peoples’ lives by creating better things and enable patterns of behaviour that make us all happier and more fulfilled. I’ve been teaching on our PGCE D&T Secondary programme for about 20 years (www.gold.ac.uk/pgce/secondary-design-technology). I’m passionate about the quality of design education and I believe it’s really important to encourage students to be enthusiastic about making because, amongst other benefits, the ability to make things helps us to connect with our natural surroundings through a tactile appreciation of materials, tools and technology.
Climate Crisis is climate change + urgency. The Climate Crisis is here now. Not soon, not eventually, now. Average global temperature is already up by 1.5oc, and the 40oc days we experienced in July 2022 were unprecedented. We’ve been consistently warned about climate change for decades and researchers even predicted it in the 19th Century so it shouldn’t have caught us out, but here we are. How does our subject navigate the Climate Crisis?
I believe the Climate Crisis is primarily a crisis of consumption, driven by over-production. We’re burning fossil fuels to produce power, heat, light, transportation, food, drink and an unbelievable amount of things. Unfortunately, we are making the wrong quantity of the wrong things out of the wrong stuff for the wrong reasons. The things we design, make and consume all use materials and energy to produce. They also use energy and create pollution as we use them and they continue to contaminate even after we throw them away, recycle, burn or landfill them. This is why we should only make what we need and use things for as long as possible. In 2022 the UK produced 377kg household waste per person. That’s over 1kg per person per day! Why was it all designed and made? Why did we buy it all? Where does it all go?
the Big D&T Meet in July I asked the audience: what do Earth’s Poles, Mount Everest, bottled water, baby poo, placentas, lungs and penises all have in common? The answer is that they are all contaminated with micro and nano-plastic (tiny particles of plastic dust from synthetic plastics breaking down but not biodegrading). This is a problem created, in part, by those of us who were taught D&T (and the subjects that preceded it) in the past. I studied BA Furniture and Product Design in the 1990s and even then I was surprised how little emphasis there was on considering lifecycles, repairability, minimising waste, design for disassembly, recycling and designing out obsolescence. Designing and making was seen as a linear process: take, make and dispose. Unfortunately, materials knowledge in D&T has changed very little since then. We can’t change the past, but we can change what we teach now and in the future.
In the late 20th century MDF was seen as a fantastic material that could be made from the waste bits of trees. We now know MDF is made from trees grown, felled and pulped for the purpose, made into a non-biodegradable composite material containing 10% paraffin wax and urea formaldehyde, a thermoset synthetic plastic meaning it can’t be recycled into more MDF at end of life. Obviously the MDF dust we create contains 10% paraffin wax and urea formaldehyde too, making it non-biodegradable microplastic. Unsealed or unpainted MDF releases formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. Despite this we award students marks for stating MDF is a sustainable/eco-friendly material despite clear evidence to the contrary. D&T is behaving poorly AND has been caught telling lies!
I hate vacuum forming with a passion. Polystyrene is a particularly nasty synthetic plastic. Massive amounts of unusable waste are created even when successful. Microplastic dust is produced when sawing and sanding. What do we make from vacuum forming that is essential and couldn’t be done with something more benign?
If we suggest by our actions that synthetic plastic is a wonder material with limitless opportunities to make our life more convenient and fun, as suggested by the plastics industry in the 1950s, we shouldn’t be surprised if students use it excessively, generate unnecessary waste and create microplastic waste as dust and fine shavings. If we suggest by our actions that using synthetic plastic is ok OK because of recycling they’ll assume that’s true too, except the UK (a major oil and plastic producing nation) only recycles 40% of its plastic, while also burning 40% and sending the remaining 20% to landfill. Globally less than 10% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled. And then there’s those tiny bits of plastic dust, plastic microfibres and acrylic vapour we create every time we sand, wash or laser cut synthetic plastic. Almost invisible micro and nano-plastic is blown in the wind to form a fine layer across the globe from pole to pole, mountain to ocean. It gets into the food chain, into our drinking water, and into us, with traces found in human blood, placentas and lungs.
Metal has downsides too; non-renewable, very high embedded energy to produce, and leaves the landscape scared scarred and contaminated by its extraction. PVA wood glue, despite being water based contains vinyl and acetate. It’s certainly not ‘eco’ or ‘sustainable’. Synthetic textiles fibres add to the plastic problems, while cotton is incredibly high in water and pesticide use. Mixed fibres are an awful combination because the plastic content can’t be recycled and the natural fibres can’t be biodegraded.
It might be easy to feel paralysed by all this, but knowledge is power! The more we understand about the materials we currently use without consideration, the easier it is to see what we should be doing instead. We’re creative problem solvers after all, and the first step in solving a problem is to fully understand the problem. We mustn’t stop making, we just need to be sure we inform students of the whole story of materials and not just focus on the creative possibilities.
The way we categorise materials shapes how we think about them and allows us to conveniently ignore some basic environmental concerns about them. How materials are referred to in the DfE D&T GCSE Subject Content document appears to suggest we still categorise materials based around the subjects D&T was created out of in 1989; woodwork, metalwork, electronics, food technology/home economics, textiles/sewing/dressmaking. Our current categorisation focuses on what we can make from them rather than materials being part of the natural world that sustains us.
The connection between material choices in D&T and the impact on climate change and the environment should be primary knowledge. I propose some alternative materials categorisations for consideration to enable a more honest assessment about the impacts of using materials.
D&T students will be designers, makers and consumers in a world where we each need to produce only 2 tonnes CO2 per year. We currently produce about 5 tonnes each. Fiddling around the edges won’t limit global warming to 2oC. If we want to see a human existence not diminished by the effects of unstable environment then we need to move quickly towards materials that are less energy intensive and are renewable and biodegradable.
We should aim to move towards reusing mineral resources already in circulation (if we tell students a material is recyclable then we should be buying the recycled version of that material!) Use recycled metals and use synthetic plastics only as a last resort. Avoid composites. Avoid synthetic materials. Avoid materials containing ‘forever’ chemical concoctions. Use renewable, replenishable, local materials. Aim for no waste, and waste that is biodegradable or can be used to create further materials.
If this all feels unachievable then at the very minimum have conversations about what should change and how quickly, correct outdated materials information.
Draw your own conclusions about materials based on knowledge, and challenge accepted views about consumption and waste. Assess what you use by default, consider what else is available. Beware greenwash! Beware the myths of ‘convenience’ ‘fun’ or ‘cheapness’.
Be honest about the waste you create. Be aware of the offcuts that get chucked out and the laser cut material you vapourised, the MDF dust that gets swept into the bins and sucked up the extraction, the airborne plastic dust. Where does it all go when the bell rings for end of class?
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