Friday, April 6, 2012

Punishments Vs. Rewards


Psychologists have studied whether punishments or rewards are more effective in teaching children, but do the same results they have found apply with businesses as well? As environmental issues become even more of apparent within our society, actions to better our situations must take place quickly. In the reading C2CAD: a sustainable apparel design and production, a group of researchers discuss their idea of a model that assists apparel designers in producing sustainable products that will never have waste. I believe this model could be used as inspiration for new regulations for the design of products.

I propose that in the future we will have new regulation agencies that require businesses to test their products and fill out paper work that guarantees their product to have a cradle-to-cradle life-cycle rather than a cradle-to-grave life-cycle. I also propose that in the future businesses will take this into consideration and form business agreements that will assist in upcycling. An example of this would be a beverage company forming an agreement to have their products recycled back to their company and donated to a textile manufacturer, which will in-turn recycle the bottles into new garments.

My concept is inspired by two different ideas. The first being technical metabolism, which was developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. This idea discusses that products of synthetic materials or toxic chemicals be upcycled, recycled into more valuable products, giving a product more than just one life. This can be done by breaking a product down to its technical nutrients, or molecular level, and creating a new product.

The second idea that inspired my concept comes from the book Textile Futures: Fashion, Design, and Technology, by Bradley Quinn. In this reading, Quinn exposes multiple designers who use the concept of upcycling to produce their garments. He discusses one designer in particular who uses technical metabolism with their garment productions as they take plastic bottles and upcycles them into garments.

As new concepts and ideas are developed, they must be implemented into the business world. As environmental issues are gaining speed, it can be easier to have them implemented in a timely fashion by forming new agencies to regulate this and punish or reward the companies who disobey or obey.


1 comment:

  1. I like your concept of having agencies to manage the products that are being designed and to make sure they are being produced using sustainability ideas and that ultimately will have more than one life cycle. I agree that there must be some sort of standards set in order for these types of designs to be produced. Good job!

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