Nike - Design Company Of The Year

The Honorees of this year's innovation by design awards have discovered Novel-And Often Beautiful ways to point business toward a more sustainable future

What Happens To Our Devices:

after we’re done with them? About 70% of the world’s discarded electronics are not recycled, and much of the waste is illegally shipped to developing countries, where poor workers—many of them children—mine the contraptions for precious metals under dangerous, unregulated conditions. Ore Streams, one of this year’s Innovation by Design (IBD) honorees, proposes a novel use for all those old phones and laptops: Turn them into office furniture, such as filing cabinets made of aluminum computer cases and chairs inlaid with mobile phone components that literally force people to sit with the consequences of their consumerism.

The project hints at an important new role for the design industry. Since the early days of the digital revolution, design has catered to users’ insatiable appetite for instant gratification. Sleek interfaces let us hail rides at the press of a button and summon cheap clothes to our doorsteps. But all that seamless, fast design has a cost. It hides from us the immense environmental toll of our everyday habits, turning us into great consumers of technology, but terrible stewards of the earth. If there’s one thing that this year’s top designs illustrate, it’s that the Jobsian quest to create one perfect “revolutionary” device has ended. Today’s most compelling design innovations tackle big, systemic problems—including how to dispose of products without damaging the planet.