Design Is the Problem:
The Future of Design Must Be Sustainable
By Nathan Shedroff
Rosenfeld Media, LLC
705 Carroll Street, #2L
Brooklyn, New York
11215 USA
On the Web: www.rosenfeldmedia.com
Please send errors to: [email protected]
Publisher: Louis Rosenfeld
Editor/Production Editor: Marta Justak
Interior Layout: Susan Honeywell
Cover Design: The Heads of State
Indexer: Nancy Guenther
Proofreader: Kezia Endsley
© 2009 Rosenfeld Media, LLC
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 1-933820-01-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-933820-01-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008943283
Printed and bound in the United States of America
How to Use this Book
Who Should Read This Book?
I believe that design is how we change the world. Designers are incredibly optimistic people—believing that they can, absolutely, change the world for the better. However, even without a design background or education, it doesn’t mean you don’t or can’t make change in the world—and change for the better.
This book was written for the designer in all of us. While it is primarily targeted at those who call themselves “designers,” it doesn’t use any design jargon and is just as helpful to engineers, managers, students, and anyone who wants to build a better, more sustainable world. Whether you are involved with the creation of products, services, online experiences, events, environments, or mechanisms that drive systems (like the economy), understanding sustainability issues, frameworks, and strategies can help you create better solutions.
This book won’t make you an expert—only experience and time can do that. However, it’s designed to help you get acquainted quickly with state-of-the-art methods in the sustainability domains and to put you far out in front of most of your peers.
What’s in This Book?
This book is a summary of what I feel are the most important approaches and aspects of sustainable design. It doesn’t cover everything and it only goes into so much depth. However, it should serve not only as a good introduction, but also help people put sustainable design practices into their work, no matter what they do. It is also filled with a number of references and resources that will serve as great next steps as readers decide to explore more.
This book is organized into five main sections: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore, and Process.
These sections contain 15 chapters filled with advice and examples for making better strategies regarding sustainable solutions.
Section 1: Reduce
This section, “Reduce,” focuses on the strategies for reducing material and energy impacts. It is the first place to start in designing or redesigning anything because reducing these impacts is imperative.
Section 2: Reuse
The two chapters in this section focus on strategies for making solutions (products, services, environments, or mechanisms) last longer and finding other uses when finished.
Section 3: Recycle
Just because something is recyclable, that doesn’t mean it’s actually recycled. There are several strategies for developing products to be more easily recycled that both reclaim as much residual value as possible and prevent virgin materials from needlessly being used.
Section 4: Restore
Developing a more sustainable product or service is important, but it’s often not enough. Aside from reducing the impact our activities have on the future, we have a lot of work left in order to correct for the impacts we’ve had in the past. This section describes how we need to rethink systems in order to have positive results, rather than merely reducing our negative results.
Section 5: Process
Once we have an understanding of the strategies we can use, we need to understand how to put them into the processes we utilize every day. These three chapters describe how easily sustainability can be inserted into processes we already use, how to measure our results, and how to talk to other people about them.
What Comes with This Book?
This book’s companion Web site (
We’ve also made the book’s diagrams, screenshots, and other illustrations available under a Creative Commons license for you to download and use in your own presentations. Unfortunately, these don’t include certain images we’ve only received permission to print for copyright reasons (such as the photos of cars or other examples). You’ll find the book’s original illustrations and diagrams in Flickr (
Why a Book and Not Just a PDF?
Any book about sustainability runs the risk of not practicing what it preaches. It’s a fair question to ask why this information is in a book at all—why it requires paper, printing, binding, and transporting to be effective. Why can’t it be distributed and consumed electronically? The answer is that it could. In fact, it is. This book is available as a downloadable PDF file from
Why then a book as well? The answer is simple. In order to be effective, information must fit the needs of its audience. Paper is still so satisfying to most people—and especially designers—who prefer to purchase and read a book. Often, it’s more tangible, and the material seems more real.
In addition, many readers still value physical products more than virtual ones. We still expect virtual products to be free (or mostly so) and physical products to cost something. Although the value of the information contained in both is the same, we value each medium differently in both economic and emotional terms. With the actual printed book, you can dog-ear it, write notes,