CCA News
Rethinking the Disposable Diaper
Posted on Friday, January 5, 2007, by Kim Lessard
It has long been said that hindsight is 20/20. Nowhere is this more evident these days than in America's growing interest in greening its mass consumption. While new ideas abound for sustainable materials, they are one of many approaches for reducing a product's negative impact on the environment. A product's lifecycle—the path it takes from concept, manufacturing, distribution, use, potential reuse, and ultimately landfill—is complex.
This past fall, in an interdisciplinary studio class called Lifecycle: Empathy and Design for Complex Processes, students at California College of the Arts (CCA) took a broad look at the cultural assumptions and expectations of some common mass-produced items found today in households across America. The class was taught in partnership with IDEO, the world-renowned company responsible for the design of widely used consumer products ranging from Procter & Gamble's Swiffer Sweeper and packaging for Crest toothpaste, to Palm Pilots and TiVo boxes.
Working in groups of five, students chose icons of mass production that included Converse shoes, Barbie dolls, disposable diapers, PDAs, and compact discs. They first conducted extensive cultural research on the public perception and user behavior around their chosen product. They then took on the challenge of reinventing each product in the context of its lifecycle, making it smart, user centered, and ecologically sound.
"The depth, creative passion, and energy brought to bear on this creative process was inspirational. Each project resulted in unique and highly imaginative designs that traverse disciplines and boundaries with the common goal of placing design front and center as a tool to create change in our world," said Katherine Lambert, chair of CCA's Interior Design Program and one of the teachers for the course.
The disposable diaper has long been despised by environmentalists with a passion equal to that with which parents of infants embrace its convenience. The students who took on this controversial icon had to look beyond the obvious—a green disposable diaper alternative—and meet the challenge of improving the product, the process for consuming it, and simultaneously increasing the value for the consumer while decreasing its environmental impact.
What they came up with was both innovative and feasible. Their proposal incorporates optional home delivery and pickup of ecologically made diapers as well as pickup of any brand of commercial diaper for disposal into municipal recycling programs. The process would increase convenience for consumers by not only delivering new diapers but also by providing a portable, reusable receptacle specially designed to contain the waste and odor of the discarded diapers until they are picked up for recycling.
Prototypes of all the projects created in the Lifecycle class will be exhibited for the public January 11 through 31, 2007, at the Thoreau Center for Sustainability at 1016 Lincoln Boulevard in San Francisco's Presidio. Admission is free.
Lifecycle: Empathy and Design for Complex Processes, was taught in partnership by a team of designers from IDEO and faculty from California College of the Arts. Instructors for the studio included Gretchen Addi, Soren DeOrlow, Mary Foyder, Alex Grishaver, Katherine Lambert, Anne Pascual, and Clark Scheffy.
About the College
Founded in 1907, California College of the Arts is the largest regionally accredited, independent school of art and design in the western United States. Noted for the interdisciplinary nature and breadth of its programs, CCA offers studies in 20 undergraduate and 6 graduate majors in the areas of fine arts, architecture, design, and writing. The college offers bachelor of architecture, bachelor of arts, bachelor of fine arts, master of architecture, master of arts, and master of fine arts degrees. With campuses in San Francisco and Oakland, CCA currently enrolls over 1,600 full-time students.