Sustainability

1) What is sustainability and how does it relate to your field and interests?
 Name some instances.
 
Sustainability is a systemic concept aimed at allowing humanity to meet
their needs and grow to their greatest potential while at the same time preserving
biodiversity, planning and acting on the very long term.

As an interior designer it is my job to allow people to meet their needs
grow to their greatest potential. Sustainability allows me to do this while still
preserving the ecosystem which I care about a great deal.

Designing a house made of recycled materials, designing a landscape that
is intended to allow nature to take over, designing a house that has no ecological
impact meaning that the creatures that live in that area would barely notice that
it was there.

2) What are the problems that need to be solved with my team topic and
 sustainability?

 The largest problem with sustainability is not that we don't have the
resources, but that we as a race are having a hard time thinking outside of
the box. Resources are there, we just can't stop doing things the way they have
always been done. This is true for both coverings and sustainability as a whole.

A customer may say "I don't want that recycled fabric, I don't know how
long it will last. I don't know how it will hold against stains. I don't know how
much it will cost.

The customer doesn't know that these things have already been tested and
proven, all they will see is that there is something new that is scary and
frightening.

That is another problem with sustainability. The scare tactics of ecologists
in the past does not encourage people to look enthusiastically on anything new
that ecologists might support.

It would be my job to show them that sustainable materials are worth the
so called risks.

3) What solutions are currently out there?

There are many solutions to the sustainability issue. The first one that
comes to mind is the "Green" movement: increasing the efficiency with which buildings
and their sites use and harvest energy, water, and materials, and reducing building
impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design,
construction, operation, maintenance, and removal — the complete building life cycle.

This would include, for my group topic of coverings, the use of materials that are
non-toxic and or recycle-able.

4) What areas need more exploration around your team topic?

Mainly, the hardest thing is getting the end-user to accept that "green is golden"
or in other words, that they will get more for their money using eco-friendly
materials. Designtex and 3-form are both cover material companies who are working
hard to make this a reality.

5) What conclusions have you found, specifically that you would like to take on
  personally?

There are people already working on making sustainability a fact, I want to work on
some way of getting people to find it fashionable.