Consume Your Ethics: Creative ReUse and Battling Apathy

"...They grabbed everything that could be taken from where it was and put it in another place to serve a different use: brocade curtains ended up as sheets; in marble funerary urns they placed basil; wrought-iron gratings torn from the harem windows were used for roasting cat-meat on fires of inlaid wood...it was all there, merely arranged in a different order, no less appropriate to the inhabitants' need than it had been before..."

- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

The extract above is from the book Invisible Cities. I have quoted a similar paragraph before in an essay but I feel it holds a particular resonance when considering the concepts of consumption and re-use. The narrator is describing a city which constantly re-invents itself, creatively re-using every element of the city, regardless of whether the items previously had any kind of emotional or spiritual significance. The ties with the real world are clear, as re-use is now becoming fashionable. Currently there are great strides being made towards re-using and re-cycling products in ways that draw attention to this re-use. Designers are at the fore front of this movement with companies such as Lot-ek making buildings from shipping storage containers and lamp shades from bottles.

This is all encouraging but we need to go further, designers and manufacturers need to look at how products are developed and marketed, what they are produced from, their after life. This is something that needs to be dealt with across the board, with these items becoming common place rather than ‘art object[s]’ as Jonathon Bell addresses [2].

The fault in no way lies simply with the designer or manufacturer, it is the responsibility of everyone from politicians to advertisers to consumers but often people needed a nudge in the right direction. Whether from ignorance or apathy or a combination of both, the ‘ethical’ option is not often adhered to if there is a cheaper/faster/easier/flashier option. Reducing this choice, or swinging favour in the direction of the more environmentally friendly/ethical way such as paying for plastic bags or a complete ban on them. It is part of current movements which seem to make an effort to speak in a language people will understand: money.

Recently Ken Livingstone has introduced taxes on ‘gas guzzling’ cars such as 4x4, so that people who have made the admittedly ridiculous purchase of a Range Rover for use in Central London will have to pay at least £25 a day in the congestion charge zone. ‘Greener’ cars will be exempt from the taxation, pushing people towards the more environmentally friendly option by talking in a language they understand. Of course, there is already objections to this scheme with claims that it is simply a way of targeting and getting more money out of the middle class. Oh yeah. That’s what all this environmental stuff is about.

References:
[1] Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Vintage Classics [1997]
[2] Bell, J. Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life. London: Walker Art Centre [2003]
[3] BBC News

Image
Treehugger.com