Making helps people understand the tradeoffs between using down or hemp or cotton or anything else you might make a shirt or shoes out of.
Last year, Nike made its dataset of sustainable materials--developed over an eight-year period--available online for the public to use. The big reveal was part of the company’s Open Challenge for Sustainable Materials, which asked visitors to "select materials beautifully, simply, and accurately, based on sustainability."
This month, Nike made that challenge just a little bit easier with the Nike Making app, now available through iTunes. The app is essentially a portable version of the database that has been available for a little over a year. Designers can look at 22 product materials--including silk, down, cotton, and polypropylene fabric--and find out their environmental impacts in four categories: waste, water use, energy, and chemistry. Performance and aesthetics are also taken into account.
As we noted when the Open Challenge for Sustainable Materials launched, choices aren’t always straightforward as they seem at first. Take a look at the Nike Material Choice and Impact website. While a women’s cotton hoodie is high on waste impact and low impact on everything else, an organic version of that same hoodie also has a high waste impact--in addition to a higher energy and chemistry impact. Organic isn’t always better.
Even within the app, it’s easy to see how choices could become difficult. Down ranks near the top in most categories, but other materials aren’t as straightforward. Hemp, for example, ranks third out of all materials for chemistry but 18th for energy and 16th for water.
The next challenge, which the Making app doesn’t take into account, is factoring in suppliers. If organic cotton is available from a much higher-quality supplier than non-organic cotton, for example, that’s something to consider.
Nike’s materials index is just one way that the company is approaching sustainability. Hannah Jones, Nike’s VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation, told Co.Design: “There’s always one set of arguments that say we should all consume less. The next says let’s make better, longer, more durable products. The third is the one I think is most interesting. How do we actually close the loop? How do we create products that could be infinitely recycled?”
by: Centre for Sustainable Fashion, 2013-07-03 11:00:23 UTC
When we met the team at Nike and they told us about their commitment to success through a contribution to the resilience of the world’s natural resources, rather than using them up as most of our industry is doing, we got really excited. 18 months down the line and we’ve had the most incredible opportunity to work with a team of supreme listeners and totally Gladwellesque experts in the implications of 75,000 materials!
The most critical element of our collaboration, working with Nike’s creativity led sustainable business innovation team, our designers, students, researchers and tutors, has been the ability to apply this knowledge to exemplify the design ethos of those designers through a sharing of ideas and knowledge. This is not usual fashion practice. We’ve created a healthy ecosystem of collaboration and competition – but always with co-operation. We’ve also got over the idea of an inanimate object being sustainable or not. Its how it is created and used that defines it’s ecological and commercial viability, but with the power of knowledge about what designers are looking at, they can make better decisions about which materials to use, for what means.
A product is the manifestation of a series of relationships and when individual distinctions dynamically connect, we create the otherwise unimaginable. The MAKING app has been developed through ways of ‘making’ New design methods and an incredible set of relationships borne out of mutual respect, trust, curiosity and tenacity. This is just the start – the Nike design teams, a group of students from across LCF and designers with whom we’ve worked on London Style and through MA Fashion and the Environment now have the insights from the app as part of their daily work – but its open to everyone. It’s on the apple store, look for MAKING. It allows you to focus on better design inspired through new knowledge. The app shows the way to start and the data behind it, accessed through nikeinc.com opens up a labyrinth of incredible information. It’s not static and will be as good as those who contribute to it. Nike have set up the conditions, now its up to every one to make their contribution to keep it moving towards a new definition of progress, where we co-operate to make the right moves in the right direction. The party at 1948 on Tuesday night was to celebrate this exploration and open it to the world as a new perspective on data and design and how they talk to each other. Its not a how to, or a checklist – it’s a way to explore a greater diversity in design, a greater relevance and a greater grounding from which to fly…. in synchronicity.
You can find out more about the Nike Making app and the launch here.
by: Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine, 2013-07-09 04:22:47 UTC
When the i3 concept was unveiled alongside the i8 coupe concept back in 2011, it was the i8 that hogged the spotlight in commercials and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. But BMW engineers were hard at work in Germany developing real world production plans for the i3 and BMW is now set to put its first fully electric vehicle into mass production by the end of 2013. But the wee urban EV plays only a small part in BMW’s overall sustainability program.
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Continue Reading Cradle-to-grave sustainability is at the core of BMW's new i3
BMW has yet to officially unveil the production version of its upcoming i3 electric vehicle – however BMW’s execs recently dropped a few hints about its impending launch date. According to Autoblog we can expect the fully electric BMW i3 to hit the US market early next year at a base price of around $34,500.
At risk of feeding the trolls, I'd draw a casual comparision between the canning jar and the bicycle frame as two widely-used products that might be regarded as so perfect that they've scarcely changed since they were invented just prior to the turn of the last century. Sure, the bicycle frame has been subject to innovations in manufacturing processes and a broader range of use cases, perhaps, but let's face it: at the end of the day, there's not much you can do to improve on a simple glass jar with a sealable threaded lid.
Whereas the diamond frame has inspired all variety of accessories and add-ons—hand-brakes, derailleurs, shifters, etc.—the tried-and-true canning jar has inspired markedly less ingenuity until very recently, when the current generation of DIYers has taken to the humble houseware as a versatile vessel for foodstuffs, perishable and otherwise. Now, the same folks who brought us the Cuppow canning jar drinking lid are pleased to present their latest product, the BNTO ("ben-toh"), a new accessory that further extends the utility of the standard glass jar.
Canning jars are designed to store food safely and make an awesome lunchbox: they are easy to clean, cheap, and you can microwave them! The only problem is that sometimes the foods that taste the best together don't travel well together. So we took inspiration from Japanese bento boxes and created a conveniently shaped insert that separates a canning jar into two compartments so you can mix or dip like a champ. BNTO should provide the perfect companion for all of your food adventures!
We commonly overlook the fact that the water we use to clean dishes, flush the toilet, or water plants is the same quality of what we drink! It’s not only unnecessary, but wasteful when we use new fresh water rather than reuse it for multiple purposes. The DuO sink system aims to solve this problem in the kitchen with a simple dual-reservoir design that separates reusable water from sewage. The saved water can then be used to water plants or assist in the dish-washing cycle.
Designer: Joris Bonnesoeur
- Yanko Design Timeless Designs - Explore wonderful concepts from around the world! Shop CKIE - We are more than just concepts. See what's hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design! (Save Water Simply was originally posted on Yanko Design)
Italian ceramicist Paola Paronetto’s Cartocci collection of paper clay objects has grown over time and most recently with new, oversized bottles and bowls. The line gets its unique texture from adding paper pulp and fiber to the ceramic mixture, giving each piece a delicate and tactile quality that screams fragile.
The Cartocci series includes pieces that are pure white or in color, adorned with gold or bright colorful rectangles, built with plain or with textured segments, all with their distinctive look that makes any observer want to reach out and touch them.
The new Cartocci Oversize collection features giant bottles and bowls with the original textured surface.
by: TEDTalks (video), 2013-07-09 15:01:10 UTC
Building a skyscraper? Forget about steel and concrete, says architect Michael Green, and build it out of … wood. As he details in this intriguing talk, it's not only possible to build safe wooden structures up to 30 stories tall (and, he hopes, higher), it's necessary.
Formula E is a new FIA championship featuring Formula cars powered exclusively by electric energy. It represents a vision for the future of the motor industry over the coming decades.
FEH, the new promoter, has as anchor investor London-based entrepreneur Enrique Bañuelos, and as CEO and shareholder former MEP and racing team owner Alejandro Agag, who has a long experience in the motor sport business. Also associated with the project are Lord Drayson, Managing Partner of Drayson Racing Technologies, and Eric Barbaroux, Chairman of the French electric automotive company "Electric Formula."
Demonstration runs of the Formula E cars will start in 2013, followed by the championship in 2014 with an objective of 10 teams and 20 drivers participating in the competition. The races will be ideally staged in the heart of the world's leading cities, around their main landmarks.
Sanjy009 points out that the most interesting detail in the brief is that "pit stop[s] will involve a change of car: when the battery runs out, the driver will make a pit stop, then will run 100 metres to climb into a recharged car," to which Eddison responds:
I'd rather the formula be that they use one car and the batteries are changed during a pit stop, like tires and adding fuel. By changing cars, I think they're trying to promote electric car share in cities, as it appears all the races will be run in temporary city circuits.
In a racing environment, giving the engineers the challenge of figuring out new and clever e-innovations is probably the fastest way to solve some of the real world challenges of electric cars. But the formula needs to allow them to explore... and spend money.
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-07-03 06:01:40 UTC
Flextrus PaperLite® is a paper based product with unique built in stretching opportunities. Flextrus buys the FibreForm® paper from Billerud and combines ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-07-02 22:03:20 UTC
BEAVERTON, Ore. (November 30, 2010) - In an effort to further industry sustainability efforts, NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) today released its Environmental ...
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