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Well, in the industrial design courses,
we have recently accepted what is called
The 2010 Imperative.
It’s a nationwide effort to commit to adding
a sustainability factor to everything we do,
to each project, to each curriculum.
And so, we have accepted that challenge
and whether it’s a drawing class or
a design studio class or a design history class,
the goal is to include a portion of
sustainability into all those pieces,
into all those courses.
I challenge the students with everything they
design and ask them what will happen to the
product when its useful life is over, you know,
how will they deal with the final disposition
of that IPod once the last tune is played,
and they have to answer that in their final
proposals and to think about how it might be
recycled, how it might be disassembled and
the components reused in some way,
or how that product can continue its life.
I think one of the things that inspires the
students, also, in the classroom, is what we,
as professors, do in our professional activities
or in other research and, you know, I think
as a student I looked to my professors
and wanted to know what their outside
projects were and I wanted to know what
they did as practicing designers and
the more they did the more impressed I was.
So, I do spend a lot of time, especially in
the summers, creating art and I entirely focus
on using industrial scrap, waste, garbage
as materials for my art and I have
successfully been doing this since 1999.
One of the primary products that I create are
baskets made from recycled metal strapping.
This strapping is used for banding lumber
or anything on a palette or in a crate comes
strapped with either plastic or metal banding.
I use the metal banding in its many widths
and colors and weave it into these different
receptacles and containers, and then I apply
to different arts and crafts fairs in the west
and sell these to many people.
A woman came into my booth in Sun Valley,
Idaho, and was very excited.
She saw they were band saw blades
incorporated into the basket and
I didn’t know who she was until she had left,
but Tom Hanks now owns one of my baskets,
purchased by his wife.