Editor's Note: With this post we welcome Kati Thompson to the writing team! Kati writes out of Melbourne, Australia, and has had considerable vocational experience in environmental fields. We look forward to her future submissions!

I’m getting so sick (excuse the pun) of the fact that we produce and consume products that slowly kill us. Doesn’t it seem the height of human short-sightedness to design things with only their sale in mind? Why are many baby bottles, for instance, made from poly carbonate plastics that contain Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical than mimics the action of the human hormone oestrogen and has been linked to breast and prostate cancer, decreased sperm production, miscarriage and altered immune function? (see PDF).

The outcomes of designing everyday products that contain toxins are being witnessed in human bodies in the widespread incidence of cancer, hormonal imbalances and infertility, and the combination of the two: hormone-related cancers in both women and men, particularly breast and prostate cancers.

Of course the effects of environmental toxins aren’t confined to humans. I was reminded of this recently when re-reading the cover story Toxic Inheritance in the May issue of The Listener. Sarah Barnett’s article includes research on the responses of frogs to chemicals, using them as an indicator for the impacts of toxins. Because of their thin skins and the fact that waters they live in are often nothing less than a chemical soup, frogs are exhibiting clear signs of hormonal endocrine disruption: becoming sterile, voiceless or even hermaphrodites. Scarily, the number of frogs worldwide has dropped by about a third since the 1950s.

Instead of designing products that contain chemicals harmful to animals, humans and the environment, what if designers were to think as much about what happens during and at the end of a product’s life cycle as they do about its beginning?

This profound alternative for design is addressed in the landmark book Cradle to Cradle: one of the most interesting and challenging books I read last year. In this synthetic, ‘treeless’ book, made from polymers which can be endlessly recycled, authors William McDonough and Michael Braungart present the guiding question “What would our products look like if designers took into account all children, all species, for all time?”

As well as such long-now questions, Cradle to Cradle also offers challenges to the ‘consume less’ branch of environmental thinking. Instead, McDonough and Braungart argue that industrial production systems can produce goods that generate ecological, social and economic value. The issue then becomes not so much growth or no growth, but growth in what, and with what impact?

I found it refreshing, as well as slightly uncomfortable, to read such a well argued challenge to my unconscious ‘industrial growth is bad’ position. Not that I don’t of course consume a good quantity of industrially produced products like most other people, and get pleasure from having beautiful things around me that have un-renewable and unhealthy inputs. But as an environmentalist, the results of our current production system, devised in the Industrial Revolution, all too clearly reflect the narrow economic output focus of that time.

After reading Cradle to Cradle I was left with the hope that better design can not only help prevent environmental disaster, but that better design can also offer benefits in driving positive economic growth.

“Today, with our growing knowledge of the living earth, design can reflect a new spirit. In fact, … when designers employ the intelligence of natural systems—the effectiveness of nutrient cycling, the abundance of the sun's energy—they can create products, industrial systems, buildings, even regional plans that allow nature and commerce to fruitfully co-exist.” - Cradle to Cradle

McDonough suggests that design is the first signal of human intention. If our intention is to live sustainably within the Earth’s limits, or even to produce beneficial net outcomes, what does good design look like?

The on-line presentation series Design Like You Give a Damn has some exciting ideas about good design in practice. William McDonough’s 20 minute presentation is particularly worth watching, and covers some of the inspiring projects he’s been part of, including designing whole ‘sustainable cities’ in China.

Keep your eyes out for the design revolution out there on the streets!