What is the mission of a green product designer?
Green product design is really adding more complexity, but it's actually easier to do, because with the power of the internet all you have to do is put in green and the product you're looking for, and green and material, and you'll find a sustainable alternative. Here's the challenge. If you can't find it, you make it. That's the key and that's what I call the drive of the product designer, is that the product designers, our jobs are to find solutions and we just can't go down to the store and pick something off the shelf. If it's not there, make it, design it, bring it in, and create an industry. Start something that you, as a product designer, can be proud of. If the raw material isn't available and sustainable, find an alternative. Find an alternative process and you'll be rewarded for it, because the consumer will look at your product and say "wow, I love that hemp shirt, it's so soft and fantastic", or "wow, I didn't know bamboo was made into clothing, that looks great". "I didn't know that's an organic dye, I didn't know that paint was organic paint and doesn't have any VOCs." You talk to any of these green product designers, including myself. It's absolutely phenomenal in terms of learning your raw materials, applying that sustainable raw material to your craft, the design of the product, linking the greenness to your product idea, to the consumer ,and then knowing that when it's disposed of, it's recyclable.
