Name: Eva Solo
Date: 20/11/19
Professor: Marcela Godoy
Reading Response:
The Biomimicry chapter in Design Is The Problem was the most relatable text to my personal values as I believe we collectively created distance from us and nature, thus being one of the fundamental issues in ecological problems today. In the text they even highlighter ‘inspirational’ as strength of biomimicry and I could not agree more. With the abundance of technological distractions we have put the environment as a secondary priority, and movements like this one is a way to bring our values back to where we came from. It is difficult to imagine the world without the infrastructure we have, but maybe we don’t need to be cave people to be respectful of the land we inhabit. “Nature has no waste”(110) yet it birthed us, and we are creating it like it was our main priority. I like to imagine what the world looks like from a third-point, intelligent-alien type of perspective, how the landfills appear from the perspective of someone not understanding the circulation of our society’s conception habits. Through the insights from this chapter, I prioritise taking an example from nature rater than people. It is more difficult to derive your own conclusions without someone telling you how you should behave or what you should do, but what if their suggestions are bias without us evening considering it. In the text The Truth About Bioplastics, I consider what I have learnt about recycling. Before this course I ended the line of sustainability at recycling being the solution. Now I giggle at the extent of understanding that I then have, and further consider how important individual contribution is. The solutions to a more sustainable way of living exist, as well as the tests that people already attempted, but somehow this information is still a secret at the surface level and requires extensive research to be reached. At this point I consider the suggestion our guest speaker recently shared with us about creating facilities to store all of our waste till a few centuries later when we can safely discard them. It almost sounds like the only option considering the amount of waste that is currently polluting our Earth at the time I am writing this response.
Experiment Reflection:
I was making potato starch based replacement for plastic and was very surprised by the physical qualities of the final product. The material was transparent, and flexible when very thin, as well as durable when thicker. It directly reminded me of takeaway packaging due to its physical qualities. We acknowledged a few errors in the heating process, and I am currently testing different techniques in achieving alternate results (posting a separate journal entry documenting these experiments).
I was also very interested in the coffee grounds material as it stood very durably and saw uses for it similarly to how KFC created their edible cup. I am interested to see how potato starch material could be used to contribute to my final project.
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