Graphic designers role in forming sustainable design futures

There are two very different actions of a graphic designer that both affect the ethical and sustainable issues of the health of our environment and our society in polar opposite ways.

The are the graphic and print designs' polluters and its informers or communicators of the environmental and social issues that are produced by the graphic designers as well as politicians. According to the Printers National Environmental Center the former are known to cause "81 million tons" of paper waste annually in USA and the "pulp and paper industry is the third largest buyer of elemental chlorine". The process of the chlorine to make the paper whiter is used all the time and is tied with the "proven cancer - causing chemical" - dioxin. 

And the latter graphic designers are linked with the distribution of environmental as well as ethical messages: weather they convey print designs' sustainability issues or the social messages addressed to the political organs who also play a role in sustaining our environment(pictures 1, 2).

I believe that both sides of this graphic communication are strongly connected. The paper waste that comes out of the printers and graphic designers hands is being constantly burned producing immense smoke clouds which then are recorded as a strong piece of graphic communication to inform our society of environmental changes. However, i believe that these same changes can be formed by graphic designers themselves to create better design futures.

Not only could the printing process be cleaned up but graphic designers could also communicate the problems of sustaining paper waste and the toxic products of print.

Such solutions as the use of soy inks, recycled paper, cutting of chlorine content and the introduction of washable stock and safe press-clean-up procedures could help us sustain the environment. In addition, graphic communication could aid the construction of public opinion by informing us about the ethical and sustainable issues that designers, politicians and regular citizens are responsible for creating as well as sustaining as a part of a better design future.

www.greenprinteronline.com/blog/?p=28

http://powerofdesign.aiga.org/conetnt.cfm/szenasy

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=3918