Design For The Real World by Victor Papanek

 Papanek, V., 1972. Design For The Real World. London: Pantheon Books.

Chapter 5: Our Kleenex Culture page 96

In all likelihood it started with automobiles. Dies, tools, and moulds that are used in manufacturing cars wear out after about three years of usage. Since WW2 car manufacturers have sold the American public on the concept that it is stylish to change cars every three years, at the least. With this has come sloppy workmanship and no quality control. This results in unnecessary waste-making. And from this, people start to assume that everything is a throw-away item, and consider all consumer goods to be disposable. Furthermore, it promotes the idea that anything is disposable, a marriage, global scale countries, entire sub-continents.

Chapter 10: Conspicuous Consumptives: Design And The Environment page 241

If design is ecologically responsive, then it is also revolutionary. All systems - private capitalist, state socialist, and mixed economies - are built on the assumption that we must buy more, consume more, waste more, throw away more, and consequently destroy Life raft Earth. If design is to be ecologically responsible, it must be independent of concern for the gross national product (no matter how gross that may be). In pollution, the designer is more heavily implicated than most people. 

Often the designer has controlled, or partially controlled, selection of materials and processes. For instance, the choice of aluminium as a better material for beer cans has been inaugurated by the merchandising staff of Alcoa. The fact remains that designers created the cans and the new 'zip-openings' on them, which make them so attractive to the public. Industrial designers developed the cans, creative problem solvers came up with the new opening method, and visual and graphic designers concerned themselves with brand identity, corporate identification, labels, trademarks, and selling the entire package to the public. What's wrong with that? For one thing, the process wastes millions of tons of precious raw materials that can never be replaced. But more importantly, aluminium is a material that breaks down very slowly. 

The introduction of aerosol cans in the fifties revolutionised the merchandising of drugs, foods, home remedies, cosmetics, and many other items. Industry has embraced the aerosol concept eagerly: it makes it possible to sell a smaller quantity at inflated prices. Almost without exception, aerosol cans are constructed so that the consumer can not use all of the product. Hence, more waste. Designers, both industrial and graphic are much to blame in helping with the introduction of aerosol cans.