Emily Pilloton on getting past "Going Green"

This is one of the most important statements I've heard on sustainability in years, its emphasis on "green products" notwithstanding. It's so good in fact, I transcribed it from the interview between design expert Emily Pilloton and TreeHugger Radio host Jacob Gordon.

JG - "You wrote a manifesto/rant/founding paper that was published in Core77. You defeinitely pushed some buttons in there. You touched on a bit of a sensitive nerve in the green design fanatic community, like we are over at TreeHugger. And one thing you say is that people need to get over the notion of "Going Green" (big air quotes around that). What are you predicting will happen here, and what are you saying the design community ought to be doing about this whole "Going Green" thing?"

EP - "Well I'm... okay I'm, [hesitating] I knew I was going to push some buttons with that. Y'know this is not to say that I am anti-sustainability or anti-Green Design in any way. Um...ya I was the managing editor of Inhabitat... and a lot of my own personal furnature designs [were] very much rooted in environmental responsibility. But the point that I'm trying to make is that sustainability is much bigger than that, it's much bigger than... y'know, using bamboo to design your coffee table and then calling it a day.

Y'know so much of what we talk about within sustainability and physically going green, which is all the eco-initiatives. They're all about "how" we're designing: What we're design with; What the manufacturing process is, what's the embodied energy. And these are all "how" questions. "How" are we designing.

What I sort of hope for the next wave of sustainability is that we're talking about what we're designing in the first place. I refer to this as the Bamboo Coffee Table Paradox~, where we're using these great green materials, and, y'know, maybe this is more environmentally sensitive, and you can call it Green Design, but... do we really need more coffe tables? And that market is always going to be there. It's never going to go away. But as designers I think we have a responsibility, not just to look at how we're making things that we'll always gonna keep making, and to reorient, or to change the question, but what are we designign in the first place, What are we putting out there in the world? And are those things socially relevant. Are they improving life; are they empowering people? Are they enabling anything beyond that immediate function. And that's sort of my pet peeve, is that, we're not talking about the substance, we're talking about just the process.

I would go so far as to say we don't need new coffee tables. We need things like the HippoRoller, and we need systems and new economies, and new enterprises that can support, y'know, ventures in the developing world, but that are not necessarily rooted only in environmental initiatives."

The full interview can be found in the TreeHugger Radio archives, podcast 58 from 2/5/09.