ABSTRACT

Post-petroleum designers are changing the way we make our world—creating plastic-free products with little or no petroleum or waste. As we have seen, products like Izhar Gafni's cardboard bike (Chapter 12), Werner Aisslinger's hemp chair (Chapter 14), and the Mercedes-Benz Biome (Chapter 8) point the way to a post-petroleum future less dependent on fossil fuels and less damaged by their side effects. But post-petroleum designers face considerable challenges in rebuilding a world that runs on oil. Take distribution, for instance. At Gone Studio, we design and manufacture products with zero plastic, zero waste, and zero electricity. But when it comes time to put those products in the hands of our customers, we have no choice but to rely on vehicles that burn oil. Mike LaVecchia and Brad Anderson of Grain Surfboards (Chapter 12) host build-your-own workshops around the country and source local woods, but even then, Mike and Brad, along with their students, tools, and materials, have to get to the workshop. Scott Constable, the designer of the House of Tree (Chapter 13), has toyed with the idea of hand-delivering his products by boat around the San Francisco Bay, but that doesn't leave much time for design and production.