One Week About DesignChewing Festival
What interventions are needed to make a bio-based household attractive to the general public? BlueCity explores this question with various green experts and the spontaneously assembled public.
One of the matters that comes to mind is that the individual may be well-intentioned, but that the infrastructure should also be ready to receive good intentions. Jeroen Deckers of DesignChewing indicates that to be full of good intentions and take your sorted waste to the street to find out that you cannot dispose of it isn’t motivating at all. Have we passed the stage that individual attempts are helpful and that we are only moving forward if the local and international structures change thoroughly? Finally, the attendees conclude that it’s precisely because each one of us is taking steps separately that it eventually seeps to the broader layer.
However, there is still a large group among us that does not feel the urgency. That can actually be the only reason that there still is a bizarre number of plastic bottles and bags going over the counter. It never continues to amaze Nienke Binnendijk of Blue City: “Water just comes out of the faucet, doesn’t it. Why are we still prepared to pay extra money for it?” Apparently it still seems to be too much trouble to carry an alternative with us. It is a cool design assignment to develop a bag or thermos flask that you will not forget to bring with you. Maybe you could even integrate it into the outfit that you put on in the morning. The attendees conclude that re-education is still an urgent means to move from ‘a step less badly’ to thorough redesign. A nylon bag for your vegetables sounds nice but it still contains unsustainable materials. We really need to aim higher.
Telling the story in a sexy way is essential. Offer a cool workshop under the heading ‘kitchen counter greenie’ and show people that you can do exciting things with the coffee grounds that you normally throw away. Grow oyster mushrooms on it, for example. There are people that find it a dirty idea but if we can believe Dutch Design Week, it’s raining promising design ideas. Even so, persist and continue to do so in your own household.
DesignChewing:
A design festival focused on self-reflection, reflection and criticism
TENT, Witte de Withstraat 50 Rotterdam
15, 16, 17 November
www.designchewing.nl
Photos: Paul van der Blom