Sustainable design is a hot topic in South Australia with the state achieving high recycling performances and the exhibition “Hung out to dry.”
 
According to the Recycling Activity in SA report, South Australia diverted 70.4 per cent of waste from landfill in the 08/09 financial year and recovered over 13.7 tonne of plastics for recycling. SA comes second to the Northern Territory for best recycling practices in the country.
 
Celebrating World Industrial Design Day, the exhibition “Hung out to dry” at the University of South Australia asked SA designers to design a coat hanger from recycled materials.
 
Exhibition co-curator, DIA (SA Branch) co-president and designer Andrew Whittaker said the exhibition asked designers to consider the footprint they imbed into a design.
 
“The underlying message was that designers create a lot of objects and our decisions about the product’s lifecycle are imbedded in the product forever,” he said.
 
Whittaker said designers have a responsibility to present sustainable design solutions to clients.  
 
“Although the customer may drive the brief, the budget and/or the manufacturing process, it’s the designer’s duty to ’do the right thing’ and advise the customer about alternative materials and processes available.”
 
“This includes providing features that enable a product to be readily disassembled or packaged to stack efficiently, reducing transport space.”
 
He also said consumers can assist in supporting sustainable design solutions by being conscious of the material selections in their products.
 
“Materials like corn starch are appearing and help minimise the use of oil-based plastics,” he said.
 
“The next time you are in the shampoo isle at the supermarket, look at the material identification code under the bottle and look for sensibly-packaged products.”
 
“Hung out to dry” at the University of South Australia, City West Campus, Student Lounge, North Terrace, Adelaide closed on Friday 9 July.

Hung out to dry
hungouttodry2010.blogspot.com
 
 
Hero image ’Whittaker hose’ – Andrew Whittaker made a statement about the plight of the River Murray in South Australia  with his coat hanger made of garden hose fittings. Tight water restrictions in South Australia since 2002 have made garden hoses almost redundant.

’Rogers 2’ – Andrew Rogers used chopsticks and soup spoons to explore what he called “twice recycled”.

The utensils could be washed and converted in to the coat hanger that hung the garment the user would wash and wear again.

’Mclean 2’ – Dan Mclean made a statement about electronic equipment in hard rubbish and the “precious minerals” wasted, converting a computer PCB in to a coat hanger.