Design 127: Environmental Consciousness

I just thought that this article is interesting, since we talked about polycarbonate plastics earlier in class: Glass baby bottles making comeback.  Below the article there’s a list of what parents can do to help their child, and amongst some of them were “avoid letting your baby put plastic toys in their mouths” and “avoid foods wrapped in plastic” which I think are a little hard to avoid… but the one that says “Choose plastic food containers, bottles and cups made of #1, #2 and #4 (polyethylene) and softer, opaque #5 (polypropylene) plastics, glass or stainless steel” is very helpful because it’s teaching moms which plastics are good for their children, and in respect, good for the environment, too. Go moms!

I found this product on www.betterlivingthroughdesign.com. The product is a chair called the FlexibleLove 16 Chair, and is made entirely of recycled paper and wood. The designers used a honeycomb accordian technique to create this chair so that in its collapsed form it can fit one, but if you stretched it to its full length, it can fit 16 people (4000+ lb). I like this chair because you can easily share this experience with your friends and family. When this chair is produced, it is useful for more than one way and its function is quite flexible. You can pull it out and arrange it into interesting curves so that it’s not just in a bench shape. Even though you can visibly see the wood and paper, its function really shows that it is a high-end product.