As the very building blocks of our designs, the materials we choose bring more than just structure to our work; they inform the user experience. Picture the last time you struggled to open a thick, plastic clamshell so heavily sealed that you risked slicing a finger open just to get to the product inside. The thick plastic protects the product inside from theft and breaking, however it's toll on the user and the environment were not accounted for.
Of course, we're also faced with the cold, hard facts of budgets, deadlines and plain old access to materials and substrates. These limitations, though, are starting to fall away as manufacturers recognize the demand for more environmentally responsible materials. Even more importantly, designers are discovering how greener materials can actually enhance their clients' brand, thus feeding that demand.
It's important to remember that sustainability is a flexible framework, not a rigid set of rules. When faced with difficult decisions or trade-offs regarding materials, designers can use the following guidelines to remain focused on the essentials:
As with most sustainability decisions, the answer to "what makes a material greener?" isn't black and white. To make good decisions, we need to understand the multiple impacts a material may have, and weigh them against each other. When choosing a material for your next project, look for the following attributes:
It's hard to choose greener materials when you don't know who to trust, or whether their "green" claims are true. To move designers past this roadblock, Re-nourish has developed a rigorous set of research-based criteria for the vendors and products included on this site. In addition to these, we've identified the following sources as providing reliable information to continue your search for greener materials:
General material information:
Related terms: Vegetable-based inks, GMO, UV Inks
