After Christmas this year, I found myself getting upset over the sheer amount of plastic involved in some of my  gifts (socks, hole puncher, pens). Today I came across a good article about unnecessary plastics, and our role, as designers, to help reduce this absurd practice:

Plastics: An Apoplexy

by Marian Bantjes | Source: observatory.designobserver.com

Excerpt:

Why are spatulas, flashlights, knives, toys, rubber bands, pens, lightbulbs, phones, fridge magnets, screws and an insane plethora of doodads so often encased in plastic? Even easy-to open plastic? Why are there glass bottles wrapped in plastic? Why are there plastic bottles wrapped in plastic? Why do we need to see spaghetti through a plastic window on the box? There are plastic supports under shirt collars, and extra plastic supports around individual buttons. There are plastic tags and plastic wraps and plastic bags and plastic caps. Every time I open a box of electronic equipment, there are plastic trays and plastic supports and plastic peels on surfaces and plastic tabs to remove and plastic ties to undo … why does every single [expletive deleted*] cord come in its own little [*ed] plastic bag? Even Apple, who designs some of the most elegant and largely (but not, alas, completely) paper-based packaging, puts every single part in a special plastic bag. Every single shiny surface has another plastic peel on it. If it’s that [*ed] delicate, how is it going to persevere in my life?

Designers, this is your job! This is what you do. This really and truly is your responsibility. This is what having a seat at the table‚ and influencing the decision-makers‚ is all about. This is absolutely where you are supposed to apply your higher skills of thinking and design. And students, consider specializing in advanced box-folding. Whenever I do get something that ingeniously fits into a recyclable structure that magically folds flat, I think what fun it would be to figure such things out.

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