Being sustainable is important in design as it means that production can be continued and the environment is not being harmed in the process, therefore the future is not deprived of anything we have today, whether that be levels of biodiversity, amount of land available, clean water and the ability to produce.

There are a number of ways designers can be more sustainable; the material choices they make: natural vs. man-made, recyclable vs. non-recyclable, their production methods: high amounts of energy needed, potentially harmful chemicals used, how many miles the product has traveled overall, whether the product is biodegradable, how long it will last and also things such as packaging.

I have been looking at a number of materials that are currently being developed that i think could be interesting to use in design that are sustainable and biodegradable.

Mycobond - an organic adhesive made from mycelium an organism found in the roots of fungus such as mushrooms that can be used to bond agricultural waste materials such as seed husks or oat hulls. The waste materials are cleaned and inoculated with the mycelium and the combined materials are then placed into a mould of any shape and a lid is place on. Over a period of around 5 days when stored in the damp dark the mycelium grows through and around the waste material, using the energy contained in it to feed from and holds it all together with the tiny fibres it produces. The material is therefore self-assembling after it enters the mould and is completely 100% organic so therefore is 100% compostable and gives nutrients back to the soil. It has minimal production, uses up natural waste materials from agriculture and takes advantage of the rapidly renewable (so almost infinite if managed and maintained correctly) source of mycellium. The end result looks as though it could have some really interesting textures and I imagine different effects will be able to be achieved using different waste materials. I think this is a really exciting new sustainable material development that could be harnessed within design besides its main use at the moment which is for packaging. I think it has a lot of potential.

http://zeroenergyconstruction.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/mycobond.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/eben_bayer_are_mushrooms_the_new_plastic.html

Video 4: Eben Bayer, Are mushroms the new plastic?

Eben, co inventor of Mycobond talks in this video about the process of making the materials and it's a pretty interesting watch.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/eben_bayer.html

A designer/ artist currently working sustainably by using natural and recycled materials is Lea Balducci. She works with recycled materials such as plastic packaging and aluminium cans, generally the ones that have been mass produced by large brands and gives them a second life. She does this using a range of techniques, hand and machine, such as dying, screen printing, Expantex, changing their shapes by heating and melting and also things such as growing crystals on them. I really like her transforming techniques and the fact that she is giving these products that would have been discarded as waste before a new purpose. Her work is both aesthetically pleasing through her use of colours and shapes, especially using these transparent kind of dyes on the plastic and screen printing these abstract, expressive patterns on the metal here:

but also makes them quite tactile and 3D in some cases, using cutting and adding things to them such as below, therefore making people want to touch them and reconnect with the physical, and be stimulated by textures which is something that is lost in this digital period. I like this idea of giving waste a new life and I think it’s important within sustainability, people should not be so quick to throw things away as they seem to be, other uses could be found for it or it could be easily mended or altered or even recycled in the usual method, anything but being wasted and thrown away, to sit in landfill and cause harm to the environment. I like that Lea is making this potentially harmful waste into something enjoyable and quite beautiful.

http://leabalducci.tumblr.com/