Design Ethics¶
Perspectives of regenerative practices in a community compost.¶
Compost Commune¶
Compost Commune is a project that born form different concepts and perspectives. We tried to developed a practice around the compost making, in order to empower a regenerative activity that allowed people to have a healthy soil for growing their own food from their organic waste.
A constant concept around the development of the design process was to create new habits and change behaviors in people around the organic waste. The first approaches to this was to create a recipient for the organic waste aiming to create a symbiosis relationship in which we try to explore and make explicit the moral agenda about the personal organic waste a how important is to process it correctly in a circular approach.
Companion Compost¶
This first approach was conducted in first instance for people as individuals in their own personal space or household. At this point we sought an open discussion and critique about the personal habits around the organic waste; by a brief analysis of it we intent to create consciousness about different environmental problems and use that as a drive or motivation for the change in the behavior. In the other hand for the container we encourage the users to create an identity and personalization of the container in order to create a bound in which two species have to cooperate for the sustainment.
First Insights.¶
Some of the insights of this first approach turns around to a moral objective in people which is to do good thing for the environment, to have an environmental consciousness and use it as motivation focused in an artifact for shaping behaviors. We find having an artifact with the characteristics of a living being very appealing to create a bound that works in different level, not just for an activity of waste management but also an interdependence.
Analyzing different projects about compost we determine that approach could add another dimension to the activity because most of the commercial compost bins are very similar to a trash can, and as well a cardboard a pallet, even a hole in the ground could be used for making compost. There is not much reference of common artifact related for making compost.
It’s true that exist in the market different alternatives for making compost, from the containers made in clay to ones made with recycled plastic but of the lack of an identity this artifacts end looking like pots, trashcans, containers or something for gardening. In this case the agency for an environmental activity was driven by the object and the bound formed with the user.
Other insight obtained in this stage was related to the information available for making the compost. It exists in many websites and literature different techniques and approaches to it. From the approach of the production in scale for farming to the waste management in the soil, although all have the same goal, the objective is different. In contrast with other type of technology or open source information, compost making is an activity that could be learned but in order to function has to be appropriated by experimentation; it is not the same to the same making compost for an industrial kitchen in the beach to a community garden in the mountain or in small flat in Barcelona.
Fortunately, we didn’t find any Intellectual Property or black boxes around the technology necessary for making compost, almost everything is open and available in books and websites and it could be easily adopted and must companies that commercialize compost bins offer information a capacitation as a strategy for encourage people to make compost.
About the food waste¶
One topic that we have in mind in the conversations, is about the food waste, because we didn’t want to encourage people to use food that strictly is not good for people, and furthermore we sought to develop alternatives for use organic waste for make bio materials for fabricate tools that could be used in the task for work with the compost. We have in mind since the beginning that the objective was to avoid organic waste and we wanted to avoid that people generate more organic waste just for feed the companion compost; that especially when our design interventions where performed for children.
Black boxes in the networks.¶
For the second interventions we interviewed different actors around the compost because we sought to escalate the impact of the project. In this research we found different approaches for this activity, one of them was an initiative in Madrid in where the neighbors in a block organize themselves in order to make a community compost. In the interview with them, they were very open about their process of organization and the political structure that have to follow in order to function, the relationships with different actors and their motivations and the approach which mainly is an environmental consciousness.
In contrast with another interview, we have the opportunity of listen a person with a more commercial approach; this interview showed us another perspective in which the motivation of environmental consciousness is linked to a commercial activity. We understand the compost making activity from a perspective of a company that search an income from it, and how the value chains are fundamental. From this perspective we question and reframe the purpose of our project; for us represent a paradox to pursue a regenerative practice with the environment and the community but at the same time search an economical income, although it is necessary for the operations eventually that lead to privatize certain information or process from the community, creating black boxes. For us it is more important to create an activity within the community and design what is necessary for the people to appropriate the technology and the value chain. Our goal change to design an interrelationship inside a community to have a regenerative practices empowered by the compost making.
Regenerative Communities¶
At this time in our project we are designing our intervention as a part of a community. For this intervention we find a community garden nearby IAAC, as an approach of the concept of design for the proximity detailed by Ezio Manzini.
In this intervention we approached to them under an approach of a participatory design asking them first the pertinence of the design intervention and in the process learning more about the internal government and their structure in order to have a design that is centered in them, in their context; that can allow us to have a sustainable intervention that could be appropriated and not discarded eventually.
We sought that the pertinence of the designed was based on the necessity of regenerate the soil for the plots of the garden as well to keep it healthy and avoid any commercial fertilizers or soils. We centered the participatory activity in the making of a compost bin which operates with a special feature, determining the habits and the activity around it. The design of the compost bin it is normative, it shows what thing have to be done, invite to create new discussions about what they have been using, what is good or bad for the plots. The design is moralizing explicitly for changing habits for regenerative practices. A strategy by design for it was to reuse a transform discarded pallets founded in the street, making a statement of the importance of a management of waste in a circular approach, having the moral benefits of having a less environmental impact in ones live.
After analyzing this strategy could be a principle for the member of the community garden for using discarded material for other purposes including the creation of new spaces for making compost. At this point of the project, it calls my attention a conflict that emerges in this design, is around the features of the compost bin; this design was shared with us by one of our professor but the design was taken for a company in New Zealand that commercialize one compost bin similar but fabricated in rotational molding plastic. Although the design doesn’t appear as patented or protected and it is not open source. Furthermore, we are not using the design for commercial purposes but for sure we are going to share the process and the information with people outside the community.
From now on¶
Eventually we sought as our final goal that we want to pursue as next actions in the next design interventions are that the technology or the process could be appropriated and transmitted in order to create new habits a practices that led to a regeneration of the soil; that people can be empowered by practicing and applying the knowledge around compost that could be found in the internet or in another media independently of what they can learn from us. Some comments that we consider as good signal about this, is hear from people that haven’t made compost before have found motivation to start doing it.