Key Takeaways from ReDesign Day

Environmentally-friendly businesses play a key role in supporting local economies.

Custom Collaborative is a multi-faceted enterprise.“We have a training program,” notes Ngozi, “a business incubator, and a cooperative development arm.” This model generates new jobs and the potential for new businesses and creators. At Big Reuse, founder and executive director Justin Green is thinking the same thing. “We have created about fifteen jobs here,” Justin says. “We work with job training programs...this can be multiplied across any neighborhood in terms of a sort of self-sustaining program that makes jobs and keeps material out of landfill.”

Big Reuse operates a reuse super-center in Brooklyn that takes in all manner of objects, from computers to building materials to sofas, and resells them to the public. Justin says that this solution to waste reduction is also an engine of economic growth: “There’s so much value in that material,” he explains. “Generate jobs, generate revenue. A model to create a local economy.” Big Reuse’s profit is put back into the business, creating new programs, like a composting initiative, that gives back to its surrounding communities.

Big Reuse

Convert your passion into positive impact and push businesses to do the same.

The drive to create new businesses can also be detrimental to the environment. Jonsara Ruth, co-founder and design director of Parsons Healthy Materials Lab, details her own story of designing wholesale furniture before seeing its impact on health issues for factory workers and their families and on the air quality around the factory. Instead, she thought, “How can I do my passion but not negatively impact other people or the planet that we live on?” 

Julie Raskin agrees. As executive director of the Sanitation Foundation, Julie says that the accountability of businesses should be extended to the full life-cycle of its products.“The real shift is going to come,” notes Julie, “when we really engage furniture makers...and put the onus on producers to help fund and solve for the end-of-life use for their objects.” Companies, no matter the size, can take responsibility for enhancing  the circular economy through intentionality in waste reduction, shipping practices, product design, and more.

Malika Leiper, a researcher, storyteller, and strategist, pushes that idea further. She encourages entrepreneurs to ask themselves, “Do I really want to bring more into this world that will then potentially be disposed and maybe not in the most friendly way?” Malika says, “I think there is value in doing less, or not doing.” The constant creation of new companies that do not grow thoughtfully, as Phantila noted, end up fostering landfill size rather than holistic business models that take into account manufacturing, recycling, and design.

This idea can also be applied to consumers. Laurence Carr, CEO of sustainable interior design firm Laurence Carr, Inc., describes her mission as “regenerative design,” or creating homes that use sustainable materials and make environments of wellness and comfort. She says that the constant production of furniture “all starts with consumer demand,” and so it is imperative that buyers do their own research into furnishing companies and find out how they ship, design, and give back. Questioning those producers, as Phantila explains, “puts more pressure” on businesses to step up their game.