Sustainability – Get Your Students Excited about Unit 2 and AHL Unit 8

The new Design and Technology syllabus has a renewed and more comprehensive focus on sustainability and sustainable design, The core Unit 2 – Resource Management and Sustainable Production and the High Level Unit 8 Sustainability mean that teachers need to ensure students know in a much greater depth the importance of sustainability in every area of design from the moment a design is thought of and sketched for the first time through to manufacture and ultimately being marketed and sold. Many will say in the design world that it is the most important issue facing us and the new designers entering the profession.

Unit 8 areas

• Sustainable development, Sustainable consumption, Sustainable design, Sustainable innovation

Unit 2 Areas
• Resources and reserves, Waste mitigation strategies, Energy utilization, storage and distribution, Clean technology, Green design, Eco-design

These areas as all are best covered showing and using examples that are real, and show case studies of what creative designers can do to make better designs than even before the sustainable agenda was so important. So bring on the examples : –

• The 100% recyclable – Stand Up Desk – Just brilliant – and students lucky enough to be in a DT department with laser cutters could easily make and manufacture!
• The Better Cup – Simple recyclable paper – make in 5 seconds coffee cup
• The Go Anywhere Chair – The most flexible – one material so easily recyclable chair