Working with companies like Tricycle, Rock/Creek and Sequatchie Cove Farm — companies with histories of concern for the environment, renewable resources and reduced waste — has made me very aware of how unaware I have been about the effects of our design proposals and products.

Certainly, it has always been my goal with Widgets & Stone to create a solution or a product that is functional, beautiful and unusual — something that people would want to keep and not throw away. But even then, one can only keep a design artifact for so long. Not all of us create things that end up in the archives of the Cooper-Hewitt. And even if we do, the Cooper-Hewitt does not want all 1000 or 5000 copies that were in the original print run. It all eventually ends up in a landfill somewhere.

So what's a graphic designer to do? Is it enough to specify soy or vegetable based inks on paper that is biodegradable or 100% recycleable? What about using plastics made only of corn or other biodegradable materials? Or, what if I only design web sites now and therefore produce no trash — except for the horrifically unrecycleable computer I use to make it?

I think, perhaps, the answer lies more in my role as a consumer than my role as a designer. As I prepare a meal each night for my family, I quietly curse the manufacturers who have seen fit to hermetically seal all kinds of food products in virtually impenetrable plastics and wonder what the world was like before... Could my choice to purchase locally produced items help reduce this kind of waste? My community supported agriculture (CSA) box is all the packaging I need to cart home my tomatoes, okra, basil, eggplants, and much more. And I can reuse it every week too. Wouldn't it also help reduce fossil fuel use (and therefore carbon emissions) to purchase locally as well? I wonder what else it might do...

Maybe part of my job as a designer is to encourage my partners to consider creative and/or resource alternatives to achieve their goals of reaching new customers. Maybe a good deal of my job is to figure out more sustainable methods for them. And me.

All of this is not to say that we should be eliminating waste. On the contrary, I believe waste is essential. However, our goal with waste should be the way it works in the natural world: one thing’s death and decay equals fertile soil for another thing’s growth and life. As McDonough and Braungart put it, “waste = food”. We should strive for the point where waste is useful in culivating life.

And perhaps one day the title of “trash designer” will really be a good thing.