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   Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 07:51:57 JST Alx 🐈

   • Cory Doctorow

   “You can't recycle your way out of the climate emergency. Practically speaking, you can't even recycle. All those plastics you lovingly washed and sorted ended up in a landfill or floating in the ocean. Plastics recycling is a hoax perpetrated by the petrochemical industry, who knew all along that their products would never be recycled.”

   @pluralistic couldn’t find better words to describe my agony every time I have to deal with “sustainable design”

   https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/24/mall-ninja-prophecy/#mano-a-mano

   #ClimateDiary

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     Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 23:14:46 JST Alx 🐈

     in reply to

     The biggest problem with 'sustainable design' is that the mainstream approach consists in 'how can we both keep the cake and eat it', so we have design magazines like Dezeen praising stuff like 'design student makes a sustainable avocado out of beans', so that millennials like me can keep having avocados all year round without feeling guilty about the exploitative economy of all-year-round available food.

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     Aral Balkan and Joachim repeated this.
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     Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 23:14:47 JST Alx 🐈

     in reply to

     - I'd kindly recommend the 'overpopulation' crowd to shut up unless they first acknowledge: 1) a smaller section of the whole world population is the one causing the bigger damage, 2) overpopulation is functional to capitalism bc it needs a larger workforce to exploit to function, 3) reproductive rights, women emancipation, economies of care, assisted dying, dignity for the elders are key in the discourse.
     Again, I'm open to serious convos about it, but eugenics isn't my gist.

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     Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 23:14:48 JST Alx 🐈

     in reply to

     - switching industrial materials with 'more natural ones' without addressing the inherent societal problem and a culture of overproduction incentivised by the unequal distribution of power will not cut it

     - I've been working on unconventional materials for architecture and design for 15+ years, collaborating with a variety of experts. I'm open to discussions surrounding wood and clay and even other materials like bamboo (my favourite) but I don't need to be patronised about forestry

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     Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 23:14:49 JST Alx 🐈

     in reply to

     Ok #ReplyGuys this post is going wild. A 🧵 :

     - I recycle, because in the mist of nothingness, we all cling onto something.

     - recycleability of plastic: it doesn't matter, because 1) recycling is a matter of policy and of energy (no, it isn't cost-free) 2) the injection of new plastic outnumbers and it's faster than the recycling process. Focusing on the material properties isn't enough

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     Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 23:15:33 JST Alx 🐈

     in reply to

     Designers - as the profession is intended today - are themselves a product of the industrial revolution, and actively contributed for it to expand. That's something designers refuse to reckon with, so they keep focusing on materials, product, circular economy and what not. There are some designers and architects doing great stuff out there, but they are far from being the norm of 'sustainable design'.

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     Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 23:15:49 JST Alx 🐈

     in reply to

     The core of the problem in mainstream 'sustainable design' is that it buys into the individual responsibility for a climate breakdown that is instead a collective issue. Patronising consumers to 'buy better' without ever addressing who is actually incentivised to keep these levels of consumption high misses the point, and frankly, perpetrates the status quo.

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     Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)'s status on Thursday, 28-Nov-2024 23:16:28 JST Alx 🐈

     in reply to

     To conclude, for me sustainability is first and foremost a cultural problem, and we can solve it only through a profound cultural change. Now this is the core of my PhD so, for the sake of everyone here, I will not dig into that, it would be long and tedious and not without major debates.

     My dissertation doesn't write itself and my clients' graphics don't design themselves (AI crowd don't dare answer this) so I'll end it here.

     Be nice to each other, we need to come together for this fight.