ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a rather different approach to design for sustainability from that offered by such methods as product life cycle assessment, eco-efficiency and other essentially technocratic paths. These tend to fall within an eco-modernist approach to sustainability, which has been criticized for its techno-economic optimism and for providing only incremental improvements to a fundamentally unsustainable system. The chapter explores one such direction, a direction for designing sustainability through reasoned argument and design engagement. It shows in addition to the products themselves, value also tends to be ascribed to the intellectual challenges associated with their technological development, as well as to the entrepreneurial challenges they present, which include the pursuit of business opportunities and business development. Over the course of the past half century or more, design's allegiance to prosaic outer concerns has contributed to the and rapid disposability of consumer products, environmental damage, exploitation of labour in developing countries and a crisis of meaning in richer countries.
