Reflections on Cradle to Cradle

This reading was a bit overwhelming for me because the sustainability concept is still a bit foreign. Sure I recycle and compost as much as the next gal but I never conducted deep research on all of the aspects of sustainable design. This reading was a bit frightening and made the assignment of designing something sustainable seem completely daunting. It just seems like a very important topic and designing for a sustainable world requires an incredible amount of thought and consideration. All of these readings and the professors' passion for the topic made it seem very unreachable. I feel like no matter what I conceive, I will have forgotten one important perspective I hadn't taken into consideration. The whole area is very frightening and I think I just need to research the hell out of it.

Right, back to Cradle the Cradle. Anywho, the one major message I got from this reading has to do with the "one size fits all" concept. I feel like this is a good place to start in designing for sustainability...or rather designing in general. The book mentions the interplay between considering the global effects of your product while designing locally. It's important to consider global consequences, may they refer to the effects on the rest of the world or the product's passage through time. It is also important to include customerization in your designs because making a design to apply to a large group really makes it so your design doesn't truly fit any individual or small community. Communities and individuals use products differently and the designer has to keep this in mind. The book included the example of detergent and how it is designed with one method of use in mind but these women in a small community were cleaning there clothes against rocks and therefor using the detergent in a way that wasn't considered while it was being designed. I just found the interplay between global and local to be a difficult thing to master but also something that I need to keep in mind and strive for. I am no expert on sustainable design but I feel that this will help me in getting started.