Greening the Grocery Store
Junior year, spring
Our throw-away society functions on a presumption: somebody else is taking care of this waste. Investigation suggests otherwise. The landfill is a flawed design. Even recycling, in its current mode, is deficient. This project supplies a problem-rich context that begs novel communicated solutions.
The goal of this assignment is to address radial systems. Up until this point, we concentrated on systems found within a single design project. Now we extend that level of thinking to systems found in society. How can design reach out to the community? How can education work on two levels, first by continuing to cultivate the student, and second by allowing them to design for “real life”? Second-semester juniors are ready to work on assignments that are relevant, not contrived. (Society needs their help.) They are also ready to identify and rectify their own design problems.
Warm-Up Assignment
Before attacking the main project, our class needed to understand global recycling practices. Are there better ways to recycle? Yes. Germany’s Green Dot program was our exemplary case study. Instead of a research paper, a diagram project asked students to compare Germany’s practices with America’s in order to reveal the differences.
Britt Cobb’s Green Dot case study—paired posters (above)—uses sticky notes to both represent recycled waste and provide information on recycling. Nida Abdullah’s Green Dot poster (left, detail) follows a similar visual strategy, focusing on re-use and recycling of glass bottles in Germany.
We researched greatly during this time. Our attitudes aligned with Michael Braungart and Bill McDonough in “Waste = Food”. Day 1: We viewed “The Story of Stuff” online ★ and started thinking in better ways. Day 2: We invited the state recycling commissioner, Kelley Dennings, to lecture our class. Day 3: We toured a “Merf” (MRF, Materials Recovery Facility). Days 3–6: We fleshed out diagrammatic language and sought to utilize root metaphors.
Primary Assignment
In America, recycling is a problem that exists on the systems level. In other countries, manufacturers are are responsible for the lifecycle of their products—but not here. Here the onus to recycle is placed on the consumer. Education about materials and the recycling of materials is often invisible or cryptic. In every state and every district, recycling practices differ. Yet the products are the same. Manufacturers make products that pollute the environment, and are allowed to do so. Citizens are not aware.
This portion of the assignment runs through 12 class periods of this 6-credit studio. Greening the Grocery Store was core to the junior studio in the spring of 2008 at the NCSU College of Design. Class meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for 3 hours. Students at the College of Design have dedicated desks with 24-hour access.
Task Brief
The students were asked to design for the supermarket—to educate and instigate. We focused on the grocery store because that’s where people need to go; it’s where they buy the things that will eventually find their ways into recycling systems, compost, or landfills.
Caitlin Garrison’s door graphics are both instructive and seductive. They ready you for shopping: “Stop before you shop: Some packaging is better than others.”
Our process:
- Through research, the class evaluates the current system.
- Germany’s Green Dot system is studied and diagrammed.
- We visit and, with permission, photograph two supermarkets.
- We conceive of information-spreading campaigns.
- The students pitch ideas; one is selected; they write a brief.
- We focus on the individual and their interaction in the supermarket and at home.
- The class collaborates to design a supermarket system that takes advantage of multiple areas (to be designed individually).
- We publish our work on Design Observer ★—in part to stress the importance of dissemination and dialogue.
- One student—Darwin Campa—produces an educational website as a living document of the work product.
Floor graphics (top left) provide packaging information at product selection (David Mitchell) and bag facts at checkout (Kristen Morrison). Conveyor belt graphics inform at checkout (Rachel Cannon). Britt Cobb’s receipt redesign (left) provides selection ratings at checkout and then at home.
The students were asked to consider these questions at all levels of planning, collaboratively or individually:
- What can I do about such a big problem?
- Why is it important to recycle?
- Why should I think about this when I’m shopping—what consequences are there for me personally?
- What are the effects of my purchasing patterns (what impacts do my decisions carry)?
- Do I add to the problem of waste?
- If I’m concerned about sustainability, what should I consider in my purchases?
- What are some easy ways to be green in my purchases?
- How can I get insight into my buying practices?
- Can I influence manufacturing through purchasing power?
- Can I learn more about materials from this information?
- Can I shop more strategically?
- Will this change my habits?
- How do you convince people to change?
Some freezer containers can be recycled. Caitlin Garrison’s charming “buy me” door decals help identify them.
This was a self-driven project. The students were to come up with their own design briefs. The only constraint was to avoid overlap in idea or location. Nevertheless, there were shared objectives:
- To work backwards.
- To learn basic research practices.
- To learn how to recognize a flawed system.
- To develop one’s own assignment, under an umbrella topic, not driven by the teacher’s limitations or preconceptions.
- To systematize iconic language.
- To create a proposal.
- To seduce a targeted client.
- To present to a client.
Susan Baker’s rating system (below) could run throughout the supermarket, supporting green decision-making at any given moment that the shopper attends to it.
Outcomes
This group enjoyed working on environmental graphics. They liked designing in space and imagining surface possibilities—from conveyor belt graphics to automatic glass doors that are continuously in flux. We talked about how visually cluttered a supermarket is, and how to set our designs apart. We addressed marketing issues and talked lightly about tone and appropriateness for our audience. The students were worried that the supermarket would never adopt their designs—fearing that our graphics would dissuade buying. I answered that we were “future-thinkers”, and not to let current practicality squelch design progress. We were the ones to advance society.