Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mr. Donnelley, and I'm so excited about this lesson.

It combines two of my great passions.

One of them is designing things that are environmentally friendly, And second one is chairs.

Now you may think, how on earth can someone be so excited about chairs, but I'm sure wherever you are you can see one,.

you always want to pick a comfy one, and hopefully together we'll design a chair which is functional looked great and is environmentally friendly.

You're going to need a pen and pencil, clear distractions away, find a comfy chair, and we'll get started.

So in this lesson, there are three things that we're going to do.

The first thing is, that we're going to conduct something called a lifecycle assessment.

The second thing we are going to consider our own environmental actions, and then, we're going to see if nature can make us more accountable for our actions.

With most of my lessons, you might've gathered by now, you will need some plain paper and a pencil to draw with.

During this lesson, there was some key terms and words, and it would be helpful if you understood them before we get started.

The first one is, life cycle assessment and this is about judging the environmental impact of something.

The second word is, carbon footprint, and this is related to a permanent mark you make on the environment, linked to the amount of greenhouse gas that you produce.

The next term is, cradle to grave.

This is a understanding of a birth of a product, from it being made from raw materials right up until when the product ends up being disposed off or more than likely end up in landfill, so, cradle to grave.

And then the last one, which is a far more favourable option, cradle-to-cradle.

This means that the product has got an end of life plan, and I'll explain a little bit more about that as we progress through the lesson.

So the first thing I mentioned was a life cycle assessment.

If you're going to conduct a life cycle assessment, there are five areas that you need to follow.

The first one is that if we take a product, and we look at the impact that this product has had on the environment.

The first thing you can do is look at which materials have been used to make that product.

The second one, consider what has had to happen to that product or that material for it to be in a usable form.

So you get raw materials from the ground, then it should be processed and made into something that's related to the manufacturing part.

Then, that will need to be transported.

After that the transportation will take something to either a shop or a distribution centre for retail.

And then lastly, that will be disposed off discarded.

So lifecycle assessment, it's got five points; raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, retail, and then end of life.

The next term I mentioned was a carbon footprint.

Well, you can't see a carbon footprint but the reason it's called that, is because if you put a footprint in the sand or the snow, you can see it, and by carbon footprint, it's still a permanent mark on the planet.

And it's related to the amount of greenhouse gas that's produced by doing something.

So even in the morning, if your phone rings an alarm it wakes you up, there is a carbon footprint associated with just that action.

Your phone needs charging, it needs power, carbon would be produced in generating that electricity.

The next term, I mentioned was it cradle to grave.

Now I've got two images there, one a cradle.

And then the next, quite a shocking image I always find of a grave and it should be considered exactly the same with a product.

So we've got to consider raw materials that are extracted to make something there's always manufacturing involved.

There's always transportation of either something that's made of the materials in that stock firm.

Most things end up in a shop, a warehouse or retail, retail distribution centre.

Then things end up in the bin.

Now, if we've got cradle to grave that's an assessment that you can make based upon working out the environmental impacts that each of those stages.

The next term cradle to cradle, this is a much better option than cradle to grave the other week, I bought a cup of coffee.

And it was from quite an ethical coffee shop and they use recycled cardboard cups.

And then they'll accountable cups aligned with a bioplastic and then impregnated within the cup.

There's actually some seeds.

So you can get your coffee, bury the cup and that end of life plan will produce a tree.

So actually means that you can buy a cup of coffee and then plant it in the ground the cup once you've finished with it and hopefully a tree will grow.

So there's an end of life plan for that cup.

I've got some pictures to show you now and I'd like you to see if you can spot the link whilst they flashed up on your screen.

So the first one is a dandelion.

The second one is that dandelion You can probably guess the third ones that dandelion Can you spot a link between those three pictures if you struggling, there's another three to help So we have got a Caterpillar, a cocoon, like Caterpillar is inside and a butterfly.

I'm sure you've spotted the link, but if you haven't each one has got an end of life plan.

A dandelion in the form of a flower will become the dandelion full of seeds.

the wind will blow the seeds, The seeds will become dandelions and it just goes round and round in that same cycle.

We've got a butterfly that will lay some eggs that will become a Caterpillar, a cocoon, butterfly some eggs and so on.

So there's an end of life plan in nature.

Ideally designers can apply that same thinking when they design a product.

So rather than getting to the point where the product gets thrown away try to plan for an end of life.

When you create something.

I've got a simple question now, how much UK waste goes to landfill? So to help you the word landfill that means that it will be a large area of land and rubbish, which isn't recycled gets put there.

So a huge amount of waste goes to landfill.

So you can see from these two numbers either 9 million or 5 million tonnes.

If you're struggling to picture that a tonne is the weight of a walrus.

And if a walrus isn't quite so familiar to you I hope it's not than a small car would suffice.

So if you want to pause the video have a quick look out your window, find a small car and then a managing either 9 million or 5 million of those.

What do you think? Shocking? Isn't it 9 million tonnes.

So if you imagine 9 million walruses, that same weight of rubbish hasn't been recycled has gone straight to landfill.

So here we've got a picture of some landfill on a walrus.

Now I'm expecting already, you know that there is 9 million tonnes, but there is also 2 million TV sets, and 2 million tonnes of plastic.

What ridiculous numbers, 9 million tonnes, 2 million TVs, and 2 million tonnes is plastic.

So you might be asking yourself what can you do to stop things going to landfill? Well there's an easy solution.

This is a picture that shows something called a three and a half inch floppy desk.

I used to use these for storing data on years ago and they've been glued together to make a container.

The next someone has got some wine corks and the decorated the top of a table looks like someone's got a tin and they're using that.

And they're going to make it into something new.

Last picture shows a football that's been used for growing plants.

So if you're wondering what you can do to stop things going to landfill, you need to plan what you going to do with the waste that would normally go in the bin.

So rather than put your things in the bin, look at them.

And if you can see some value in the material then the thing that you would be doing is up-cycling.

So if you up-cycle, it means that you all stop throwing things away.

Then you will do something with them to make them more useful.

Do you know what these symbols mean? I know you will have seen this one.

This symbol means that something can be recycled.

It doesn't mean that it's been recycled and that actual symbol is called a Mobius loop.

So if you see that symbol on a package, or product, then it can be recycled.

Next symbol.

This one is often mixed up and people think it's exactly the same as the top symbol.

This symbol is called the green dots.

And if you see this symbol, it's normally on packaging.

So packaging only, and it means that some thoughts will go into what happens to that package when it's been finished with.

So that package will be dealt with in an ecological manner Here I'm going to show you two pictures.

The first one is a toothbrush.

The second one is a pallet.

What I'd like you to do is pause the video when you see the icon and have a think about what you think you could do with these two products.

And then in a minute I'll tell you what I've done with them in the past.

So if you have these items at home rather than throw them away, what do you think you could do with them to give them extended life? So pause the video, have a think.

Have you thought, what I did once in fact what I do every time with the toothbrush is I use it for cleaning.

So cleaning the shower, cleaning small items. A toothbrush is a great little tool, soft bristles and you can clean silicone, and between the grounds in a bathroom.

So that's one thing that I always do with the toothbrush.

The next thing I've done with one in the past is I've actually used it upside down in a plant pot for seeds to grow up rather than using a garden cane.

Unusual, but that's what I've done.

The next thing pallets.

I've made loads of things out of pallets.

If you've got something called a claw hammer, bit of bootstrap and some help, then you can sometimes bash the pallets apart, remove the nails.

Then you end up with some decent pieces of usable timber.

If you summed playing them down, then you've got planks of wood and you could make pretty much anything with them.

Sometimes old timber actually looks better than buying new timber that you could go and buy from a DIY shop.

So here I've got a task there's two pictures and I'd like you to try to guess what the task is by looking at the pictures.

Did you manage the guests of the task? So what I'd like you to do go to a bin.

I picked the one in my kitchen to do exactly the same task.

And I looked at the materials that were in the bins.

So I've got three bins in my kitchen, one for cardboard one for different items that are metal or plastic.

And then another one, which is for general waste.

In fact, I've got a fourth one as well for our compostable by vegetable waste.

So I looked in the, the one to do with metal and plastic and the cardboard bin.

So they were the two that I looked at for my task.

And then the next thing I did was locked in the cupboards.

And all I want you to do is try to be mindful of thinking that if something is in a cupboard you bought the product because you want the contents.

So assume it's a tin of beans.

You buy that because you want the beans and you don't think about the packaging.

As soon as you've opened the beans you put the tin in the bin.

What I'd like you to start thinking to change your mindset about waste.

If you can find things in your kitchen, think, well, I know that we're going to use the contents cause we'll eat them.

But then the package if you could use that for something else, even if just every household in the country, made one thing from a bean thing for one day, that would be a huge impact.

And if you did it two days a week, it would be even bigger.

So one small action could lead to a huge change if everybody got on board.

So next time you do some shopping try to buy things that you think the package is good.

It's well designed.

It's got made from nice material and then plan to do something with it rather than throw it away.

This term, the six Rs is one that teaches you quite a lot.

When talking about environmental issues there were six words I'm going to put them on the screen and I'm going to say something about them.

So you have an understanding of the context.

Then I'd like you to rank order them.

And that will be explained further on the next slide.

So rethink, if you were going to buy something could you rethink about the products that you buying? If you're going to design something could you totally rethink how it's built and put together based upon what you know about the environment.

Repair, how much better is it to repair something than to throw it away? Reuse, typical example, If you bought a five P bag from a supermarket because you forgot some of the more biodegradable ones.

If you reuse it over and over until you can't reuse it anymore that's much better than throwing it away.

Reduce, first thing that Springs to mind for me is reducing packaging.

If you combine foods that's just there on the shelf to pick, rather than fruit that's in a bag, that'd be much better.

Recycle, I'll give you a clue.

This is my least favourite one.

So if you're struggling to rank order these put recycling at the bottom, then you've only got five to go with.

The reason I've got recycling at the bottom is because the product has already been made.

It's already been bought.

And if you go to recycle it then it means you've thrown it away.

It's got to be salted, heated up, melted down chopped up into pieces, washed and cleaned, and then used again.

If you can do some of the other things, it's preventing it from actually being discarded in the first place.

And then the last one refuse, you can refuse to buy something.

That's not environmentally sound.

There are some coffee shops.

If you've got your own cup, you can take it to the coffee shop, get it filled up with coffee, and it would cost you a little bit less because you've turned up your own cup.

So if you refuse to just be given one of the plastic cups that you may get, that will be a great choice.

So I hope you want just to pause the video at the end of that slide just to read over the words and have a think yourself you might want to play that slide again and listen to what I said about all of them, your task now sketch sheets of paper, write down the six words give each one of them a number and then try to rank order the six Rs.

So now you've got a good understanding of the six Rs, and you know that we're going to design a chair.

What I'd like you to try to do is see if you can use these six Rs to guide you in the way that you design.

So, you know, we're going to design a chair, here I've got six pictures of chairs just to get you in the mind frame of looking at wall, picking a favourite and trying to think the chair that you'll design has the same sort of characteristics and fall.

I've done one, which you'll see a bit later on.

And I decided on a sun lounger.

I don't know if you can tell from my voice bots I live in the North of England, this Manchester and normally it's horrible.

I do love Manchester in the North of England.

Whenever it's wet, it's cold really miserable.

Most of the time.

I think it rained over 300 days last year.

So Manchester can be pretty grim.

I decided on a sun lounger just to mentally get away from the, the gloomy weather that we have.

If you want to do the same and then bring a bit of sunshine to your design, you could do exactly the same as me.

But if you can't then have a think of a chair that you like the look of from the six that we've got there.

So if you're wondering how we can use the six Rs to design a chair, hopefully this slide will help you.

So we've got a chair.

There's a picture of it there.

I'm going to go through the six Rs.

There'll be a pause icon, pause, have a think.

And then I'll introduce you to the task.

So do you think that we could rethink the whole chair, rethink everything? You could take it apart, have a look at why it's made from do a lifecycle assessment of all the materials and rethink the whole thing.

Do you think that we could make a chair, that you know which parts will need repairing and allow someone to buy a chair and then the parts that they actually need to be pallets.

Do you think that there's something that you could reuse when you finished with it? Do you think we could reduce the materials? Do you think you could reduce the packaging that comes in if it was bought? Do you think that the part of it could be recycled when it's finished? Do you think all of it could be recycled or better still could it be made from a material that's being recycled and the last one refuse, could you make a stand now to think as a designer I'm refusing to use a plastic or polymer which has been made from crude oil.

So pause the video and have a think.

So this is the main task of the lesson on the next slide you'll see my example.

But before you move to the next slide you can pause the video in a moment read carefully what it is that you've got to do.

And then you can look at mine.

So you've been taught about the six Rs, you know the importance of them.

You've been taught about up-cycling and how we can make things from materials that some people throw away would be great if you could have a go at doing that as well, by the way.

The next thing is, you're going to need paper and a pencil.

Choose your chair.

I would like you to design a chair.

That's been led guided by your knowledge of the six Rs.

So here's mine.

So some lounger and if there's a repeating part like the actual bit that supports your body I've only chosen to draw one part of it that will save time.

So if you want him to do a quick sketch do one little bit of the drawing.

And then when you look at it, you know the rest of it would be the same.

I've decided to make it out of a bamboo I've used PLA which is made from a column that would be 3D printed.

And I've decided that if this chair was sold those beds might actually break.

So you can actually download something called an STL file to 3D print your own.

And the actual chair itself is made from something called sea grass.

And there's a picture of it on there just to help.

So bamboo and sea grass are sustainable calm is very simple to grow.

And 3D printing is more environmentally friendly than other materials.

So we're quickly going to revisit the keywords from before.

The first one was life cycle assessment.

You should know now that a lifecycle assessment is related to making a judgement based upon a product and knowing every stage from raw materials to throwing something away A carbon footprint that's related to the production of greenhouse gases, which eventually heat up the atmosphere and get the planet to be hotter than it is.

Cradle to grave.

That's the term used.

It's a symbol similar to lifecycle assessment and cradle to grave is a term for understanding a product being bombed from vault materials and then being discarded and thrown away.

When a more preferable option is if you combine or design things that are used the term cradle to cradle.

That means that there is a new lease of life of an end of plan for that product.

So you buy something and then there is a plan of what to do with it when you finish with it.

I hope you've enjoyed the lesson I really have.

And if you'd like to share your work on social media there's a slide that comes up next with the information on how to do that.

Thank you very much.