Sustainability in the Interior Design world

Sustainability, such a broad term, how can we navigate it? If you’re anything like me, you’ve suffered from a fair share of “eco guilt” in your everyday life. You see news of pollution, rising temperatures, the horrible effects of deforestation and the suffering ecosystem in the ocean, all the while you’re just trying to live your life. You might need a car to get around, guilty. It might be too expensive to get that slow production product so you settle for the quick and plastic, guilty as charged. Don’t worry, all this is extremely difficult to navigate as we live in a time where the quick, easy and profitable is still the norm. It is pushed on us, it's the most accessible way of living, sometimes it doesn’t feel like we have much of a choice. What's more we want to stay with the times and trends, everyone except maybe someone's grandma has a smartphone and a laptop, and all the micro-trends of consumerism online start seeming essential.

I took one good long hard look at my “guilt”, and then at the world of interior design and realised, really? We don’t have to do this. I want to alleviate that guilt, not limit the potential of beauty and ease.

I realised it is all about what we see as normal, what’s industry standard right now is simply accepted, but that standard changes often and quickly, and can change again. Maybe this studio alone can’t change that all on our own, but one grain of sand on the beach might influence another, and soon the tide shifts on its own. As we know trends are often the opposition of the one that came before it, but the hope is that sustainability in design will not just be a fleeting trend, but the new normal, the building block for all future design. The backlash that came with industrialism; arts and craft, romanticism and impressionism, a dream of nature and ease, is still alive and well and I don’t think that dream ever really went away.

In the end it’s not what we make but how we make it, it doesn’t have to have an all natural look, floral colours and leafy patterns, it needs to be made so that the florals and leaves may stay in nature, keeping us healthy.

People like to have the argument that it’s “too difficult” or “too expensive” to make things sustainably, but that is just that, an excuse. Yes we have automated processes and can make certain materials very easily. One way to prove these points wrong is that we don’t have to make anything new at all. There are near endless materials and products made and thrown away, that some people have already shown are easily and cheaply repurposed into whatever we might want them for. An honorable mention in this regard is the brand Mater Design, who have come up with their own long lasting material, using recycled plastics.

So I like to make the argument that when we say things are not doable, I think it just means we haven’t been creative enough, and creativity costs nothing of the resources of this earth.

For me, sustainability is creativity in the stead of greed. I believe all we could ever want is available to us if we just look a little closer, and consider the benefits of sustainability. It is the ultimate abundance, because if the earth is healthy it will keep producing all that we need from it, and truly well made things - both aesthetically and physically - last so much longer.