Near the camp I work at, there’s this natural spring. It’s in this deep sort of gorge and it is probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The hike from my camp to the springs is about three miles, and the last time I hiked there, I saw this. It’s a staging area, cleared so that the logging company can bring trees here, to load them onto trucks. This area will take longer to regrow than other logged areas, since the soil’s been compressed. When you walk out of the woods, into this clearing, it’s instantly ten degrees hotter.
This is where my trees used to be.
When I first saw the logging, I got angry. Angry and sad. Then I realized that I want to design stuff, and when you design stuff that’s going to be produced, that uses resources. It’s just that right now, it’s all a lot closer. That shouldn’t make a difference though. There’s no reason that I should care about these trees any more than I care about someone else’s trees.
That, for me, is why we must consider sustainability in design. No matter how well we design things, we’re going to be cutting down someone’s trees. We have to do this as little as possible, and when we do cut down someone’s trees, we have to use them well, so that we can continue to cut as little as we can.
This is why we talk about sustainability.