Greengaged

On the 26th July after 130 days (8000 nautical miles) at sea the Plastiki – a boat created with 12,000 plastic water bottles – sailed triumphant into Sydney harbour. The expedition mission; to bring the horrific state of plastic waste in our oceans to the attention of the world. Through out the voyage David De Rothschild, the founder of the expedition has been reporting his experience through multi media platforms and last September Greengaged was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to wake him up in San Francisco at 4am and chat to him via Skype about the design of his revolutionary boat and his aims and ambitions.

Read and download the whole interview here

As part of Materials Day at this year’s greengaged event we ran a survey to find out a little bit more about designers favourite materials. Over fifty people responded nominating a wide range of materials including wood, concrete, plastics and textiles.

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In China, Greengaged are working with partners including the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), British Council China and the Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Network China (DESIS-China) to run sustainable design events. The Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), the lead organiser of the Icograda World Design Congress in Beijing, is committed to sustainable design and will be hosting Greengaged-China as a session of the congress. Running also as part of the British Council's "China-UK Creative Entrepreneurs" events lineup, the Greengaged-China workshops will take place in Beijing from 20th-28th October.

In response to the theme of the conference,  the objectives of Greengaged-China will be:

• To initiate a dialogue on sustainable design between international sustainable design experts and Chinese design community.
• To engage the wider design industry in getting involved, becoming informed and sharing expertise and opinions.
• To explore how creative entrepreneurs can contribute to a sustainable future.

For more information on the programme see the events page

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Greengaged-中国北京

Greengaged致力于传播产品、平面、传媒、时尚，服务等各领域的可持续设计策略，促进设计对环境产生积极的影响，激发设计师在可持续领域的设计和创新。Greengaged在2008伦敦设计节成功推出一系列的可持续专题活动。今年，Greengaged走向国际，将策动一次全球设计界的绿色行动！

在中国，Greengaged协手中央美术学院，英国大使馆文化教育处，社会创新与可持续设计联盟等合作伙伴，将在北京举办系列可持续设计活动。中央美术学院作为中国顶尖的设计院校和今年icograda世界设计大会主办方 ，积极推广可持续设计， 特别将Greengaged作为世界设计大会的可持续设计专题活动推出。同时，Greengaged也将作为创意企业家网络的交流活动，与年轻的中国创意企业家们分享结合设计创意和绿色商机的成功经验

「 Greengaged-中国北京 」 的目标是：

• 引发国际设计界和中国设计界在可持续设计方面的对话讨论。
• 引起各界对可持续设计更广泛的兴趣，分享专家经验和观点。
• 探讨如何发挥创意人才的企业家精神，开辟绿色设计市场，设计可持续的未来。

更多信息 events page

As many of you will be aware, famed designer Philippe Starck launched 'Design for Life' last month, his very own reality show not too dissimilar in format to The Apprentice. Aired on BBC2 as the Greengaged week was underway at the Design Council, the third episode of the series attempted to explore how design could solve ecological issues. In response to finding herself infront of the show, Greengaged co-founder and sustainable design guru Sophie Thomas raises her criticism. You can read the full feature here and also listen to an audio recording of the feature too.

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Exciting news! Greengaged has been nominated for the Cooper-Hewitt People's Design Award 2009! A huge thank you to everyone - curators, speakers, tech team, twitterers, volunteers and all our audience members for raising the Greengaged profile Stateside.

Please login to the website, add a comment about any events you've been too, and vote before October 20, 2009. The winner will be announced live online from the National Design Awards gala in New York, on October 22 at 10:00 p.m. EST. "What is good design? You tell us!" Vote Greengaged for the 2009 People's Design Award!

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On October 12th 2009, London's Ecological Literacy Initiative EcoLabs are running their inaugural "Teach-In" - a student conference aiming to help the design industry embrace ecological literacy & systemic change. Several hundred of students are scheduled to attend the event at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, whilst the entire event will also be streamed online to dozens of participating design institutions around the world! Speakers include John Thackara (Doors of Perception), Andrew Simms (New Economics Foundation), Richard Hawkins (PIRC), Ben Gill (BioRegional), Jonathan Crinion (Crinion Associates), Emma Dewberry (Open University) and Stephanie Hankey (Tactical Technology Collective. Questions from remote audiences will be taken, via Twitter @2012Imperative.

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During day four Crafting Mass Production at greengaged last week (full coverage coming soon), Anna Gerber told the story of our day spent with newly founded design agency Workshop, at their letterpress studio in East London. I'm pleased to be able to share a short video of the day, kindly edited by Varvara Zaytseva.

Featuring in the film (in order) are Anna Fidalgo (Crispin Finn), Lawrence Zeegen (Kingston University), Sanky Sankarayya (All of Us /  D&AD), Adam Cheltsov (Sara De Bondt Studio), Greengaged competition winners Matt Mear and Holly Webber, and Workshop Founders Alexander Cooper and Rose Gridneff.

Photographs of the letterpress workshop can be viewed on our greengaged flickr channel and full coverage here .

photo by: Walter Parenteau

What any print designer is interested in is the product that they can hold in their hand at the end of the day; and yet design must now consider the bigger system which that finished product fits within and is born out of. In print terms, about 4.7 million tons of fresh, unused paper is thrown away by UK print companies each year as sometimes large unused off-cuts. 4.7 million tons is an unimaginably large amount; production of each ton of paper requires in the region of 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water and more energy per ton than glass or steel. Do the maths on the large numbers by all means, but it’s clearly very significant.

On average, paper represents 80% of the carbon footprint of a piece of print, which makes paper one of the largest contributing factors to the environmental performance of a company. Before all the print buyers and designers evacuate the room, there are intelligent approaches that don’t mean doing away with print, by instead making its production much more effective!

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