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How Can Designers Specify for the Environment in a Disposable Era?
Generally speaking, our culture has become a bit hypocritical when it comes to the environment. On one hand, research suggests that 79 percent of millennial employees are loyal to companies that care about their effect on society. Yet at the same time, in 2019 millennials made 60 percent of their purchases online, contributing to the more than 80.1 million tons of containers and packaging piling up in landfills, as estimated by the EPA.
In the interiors industry, this gap becomes a bit of a balancing act: How do you specify responsibly while acknowledging the demand for flexible design?
DLR Group Houston studio. Photo by Lawrence Stewart.
Sometimes the best way to improve our approach is to take current concepts that work well and expand them. DLR Group Principal Jeremy Reding, AIA, LEED AP, explains, “Circular economy thinking, known as designing for disassembly, has long been an element of workplace design. Today, we’re expanding the DfD lens beyond key players like demountable systems.”