Fioen van Balgooi

The life of a product nowadays is a descending line from the cradle to the grave. Within ecodesign and sustainable design the most important strategy is eco-efficiency. It is about doing more with less. Important terms are; reduce, reuse and recycle. This is a good start, but not the solution. Reduction means you slow down the process, but in the end there will still be waste. Reuse is a nice idea, but if you reuse products that are not meant to be reused you still have toxic chemicals in the end product. Recycling is mostly downcycling. The quality of a material reduces every time you recycle it, because products are melted together.

Eco-effectivenessis what the C2C concept wants to achieve. Think about the effects of what you make, for instance the way we use things. Rubber is a toxic material when it leaves little parts in nature, e.g. a car tire wears out or someone walking on rubber shoe soles. But as isolation it does not harm the environment. Eco-effectiveness forces you to make a mind shift towards circular thinking. Important is to give something back to nature, instead of making it less harmful.

The designers I worked with for my case studies developed a garment while I researched the effects (material, technique, colour, usage and service) on the ecological, economical and social/cultural environment. I talked with them and more designers by mail, telephone and meetings about the problems they bump in to while designing eco-effectively. 

A few problems they have are defining environmental friendly, the high prices of materials, the information, which is hard to get and being stuck in a way of thinking by which they want to keep working.  

That's why I started Refinity, a research & advise service to help fashion designers to become eco-effective.

 www.refinity.eu