Even though humankind has gone pale and pasty from excessive indoor living, they somehow still find joy in eating outdoors. Trees rustling, birds chirping, congealed hame and cheese on whole grain wheat, Ahhhhhh. It’s one of life’s great mysteries; there’s something about nature that makes eating more satisfying. Of course, you’d be remiss to go…

From food manufacturers to e-commerce giants, the pressure is on to have at least some form of sustainable business practice as more consumers align with environmentally-friendly businesses. Loop is one way some larger brands are starting to dabble in becoming greener without resorting to completely uproot their existing supply chains. Created by recycling company TerraCycle, the online…

We can all (mostly) agree that being environment-friendly and leaning towards sustainable manufacturing methods is a good thing. So is eating well and being healthy. So by the unspoken rules of the universe, doing both at the same time is doubly good and an all-around best-case scenario. Design firm Carly Ratti Associati (CRA) and multinational oil and…

Sustainability is the burning hot topic in many industries, and hospitality is is in the hot seat. QSRs (quick service restaurants) are shoveling food into our mouths and plastic cutlery out in trash bags and hotels won’t clean your room unless you absolutely request/demand it. But, back to the QSR sore spot. If you eat…

Many kids are told to never play with mud. In the case of a team of designers from London’s Royal College of Art, however, playing with mud is a foundation for making the world a better place. Bauxite residue, also known as “red mud,” is a byproduct of the creation of aluminum. By refining bauxite…

It’s usually never official until a sizeable multi-national company does it. While smaller electronics companies have been using paper and other recyclable materials for their products for years, Samsung is only now catching onto the environment-friendly trend. In a recent press release, the electronics division of the company has announced that instead of using plastics…

As far back as anyone can remember, batteries in our phones, flashlights, laptops, and other gadgets have all been powered by lithium-ion batteries. And while both the disposable and rechargeable versions could easily power tech of the late 90s and early 2000s, the 2010s and beyond see the introduction of more power-hungry machines. Though the…

Back in February 2018, Nike challenged innovators around the world to come up with solutions to two significantly impactful athletic footwear issues: material waste and how to improve the recycling process to create more useful resources, footwear-related or otherwise. Over 600 applications came from around the world, with five winners tasked with creating new inventions…

Chances are you have a ton of plastic containers at home with even more plastic lids that never fit the particular container you want. Though plastic containers are sturdier than plastic bags, they aren’t very space-efficient. Why not blend the two to create the best of both worlds? Such is the premise behind Zip Top…

As plastic continues to pollute our oceans and overtake our landfills at an all-time high, it’s clear that to reverse the effects of a potentially unlivable planet; it’s up to consumer product manufacturers to take matters into their own hands. Along with Nike and Apple—both of whom are spending billions to try to reverse the…

While just about everybody loves dogs, caring for their daily needs is far from easy—the midnight yelps, the endless appetite, and perhaps the most time-consuming of all, taking them out after every meal. The last problem in particular is what the designers of BrilliantPad aim to solve. The BrilliantPad is a self-cleaning dog potty which,…

Corn. It’s not just for soaking in butter or rotating on a drill at 2500 RPM. While Nike has made huge strides to minimize their environmental footprint, and Adidas has been introducing shoes made from plastic sourced from ocean waste, Reebok is the latest footwear company to get in on the sustainability action with the…

It’s no secret that e-waste is on the rise. While socially conscious companies are starting to ramp up design for disassembly or otherwise take a closer look at their supply chains, we’re still not exactly in a desirable place when it comes to a worldwide effort – as outlined in a new report from United…

When it comes to finding new uses for old tech, there’s more than one way to skin the cat. From turning an old tablet into a smart home controller to creating a dedicated home entertainment server with an old laptop, the possibilities for keeping your devices protected against the principles of Moores Law are seemingly…

If there’s one thing that just won’t go away no matter how hard we seemingly try, it’s the amount of waste that ends up in our oceans. While everybody from GStar to Adidas has announced changes to their supply chains or entirely new product lineups made from waste sourced from oceans, few are as passionate…

As one of the most heavily produced and discarded materials in the world, it’s a dang good thing that paper is also so good at being reused, too. While it’s fairly common for discarded paper to be recycled into yet more reams of paper, New Zealand designer Woojai Lee just might have one of the…

With over 70 people killed or injured by anti-personnel (land) mines each day, unmarked minefields not only destroy communities with death and injury but also through the loss of usable land and economic development. Having grown up in minefield-stricken Kabul, Afghanistan playing soccer just yards away from active minefields, product designer Massoud Hassani set out…

According to designers Piergiorgio Robino and Andrea Sanna of Italy-based Studio Nucleo, the best way to learn about an object is to construct it yourself. Frankly, we couldn’t agree more. But what about growing an object yourself? Robino and Sanna’s TERRA! Growing Furniture collection might be a good place to start. Having originally appeared at…

Every summer, thousands of people around the world flock to a handful of Greek islands to spend their summer vacations in a Mediterranean paradise. Similar to what happens in other seasonal small towns around the globe, this influx of vacationers tests the limit of small infrastructures designed for a very small population that lives there…

Like others who found their way to a career in product design, Dimitris Niavis spent a significant amount of his childhood tearing apart toys, figuring out how they work and ultimately reassembling them again. Today, the designer is using that same train of thought to rethink local manufacturing with the goal of creating a synergy…

With an estimated 1 trillion plastic bags being consumed worldwide each year, it’s unfortunate to know that less than 5% of those bags ever end up being recycled. This effectively leaves roughly 95,000,000,000 opportunities for toxic chemicals to end up where they shouldn’t be. While thought leaders, lawmakers and grocers continue to find alternative solutions…

As far as LEGO-inspired block building sets go, aspiring entrepreneurs have ran through the entire gamut of possibilities including different methods of interlocking the pieces to ways of fabricating them using a 3D printer. But how many people have simply just scaled up? In what might be a childhood fantasy come true for some, a…

Although the Lego brand hasn’t yet found a solution for the inevitable rogue Lego brick that somehow always ends up being stepped on with a bare foot, the company has been actively looking into ways of making their seemingly perfect toy bricks a better product. Among other ways they can make Lego bricks better? Make…

Having featured his designs at over 16 international design exhibitions since he started studying product design nearly five years ago, young South Korean industrial designer Seungji Mun has shown no signs of slowing down his hustle. The designer, who attended the Kaywon School of Art and Design in South Korea and graduated in 2012, has…

Last time we checked in with self-described “Stuffmaker” Mac Premo, the Brooklyn-based multimedia artist, videographer and designer was waxing philosophical about why he creates and why “(being) the arbiter of good stories is to live forever”. Since then, the 7-time New York Emmy® Award-winning Promo has been focusing on a different kind of project that…

Starting next month, some flat-pack college dorm furniture may be more design and environmentally-savvy than that table you bought last year that you swore would be handed down to your grandchildren. Thankfully, the flat-pack furniture in question won’t take too much of a dent out of your wallet in the case that you want to…

Back in 1965, neo-futuristic designer, architect, philosopher and all-around badass Buckminster Fuller designed and patented an “autonomous dwelling machine” that he coined the Fly’s Eye Dome. The designer, whose fascination with material usage and energy efficiency in design and architecture led to a career highlighted with a variety of geodesic dome designs, sadly passed away…

With reports in the past few years indicating that bees are moving slowly towards extinction, it would make sense to look into ways of creating more bee-friendly environments. While bees do exist in sprawling urban environments, there are few ‘urban beekeepers’ that focus on raising the bees and providing a suitable hive for which they…

Call them the Devo of upcycling…an Illinois music group by the name of Electric Waste Orchestra has been turning old and discarded hardware into new musical instruments. Born out of Makerspace Urbana in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois (135 miles south of Chicago), the group creates fully-functional musical equipment that not only keeps e-waste out of landfills but…

We’re always talking about the future of design, the future of technology, the future of MAKING. In a world where umbrellas can act as personal mobile weather stations, a world where virtual windscreens can easily add augmented reality to automobiles…how do we find the next ‘big thing’? MakerGalaxy is a show that explores the crossroads…

Brooklyn-based jewelry maker Carolyn A’Hearn is known for one-of-a-kind unique pieces that border somewhere on the line between classic and sci-fi. Her process for creating the pieces is almost just as interesting (if not more interesting) than the final pieces themselves. Using scraps of metal ranging from the size of a nail all the way…

Already ranked number 43 of the 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World, Coca Cola has been working relentlessly to improve their image in the realm of recycling plastic bottles. While one could argue that doing away with plastic bottles would be the end-all solution, the fact of the matter is that plastic bottles aren’t…

Having been criticized about their contribution to e-waste in the past, Apple has been working tirelessly to reverse their image and set themselves more in line with what is the environmental equivalent of their design ethos. Released by Apple in honor of Earth Day today, ‘Better’ aims to show Apple’s commitment to putting the Cradle…

With it’s earthy tones and fibrous appearance, it almost looks appetizing enough to eat. Inspired by alternative manufacturing processes that could help re-shape the Greek economy, University of Edinburgh grad Spyros Kizis has developed a way of using Artichoke Thistle fiber mixed with a new waste-oil biological epoxy resin to create a plastic-like material that…

As designers, we all want our designs to last forever but we are also beginning to see what a terrifying world it would be if everything we create really did last forever. The permanence of plastics has gone from a dream to a nightmare where literally everything that we have made out of plastic that…

Love it or hate it, McDonalds food is here to stay. While little can be done to ween people off of the iconic convenience food, simple ways of re-thinking existing design elements in the McDonalds ecosystem can have a dramatic domino effect worldwide—15% of the total weight of a McDonalds order is packaging alone. Take…

You may have noticed a more frequent collection of 2D printing-based news here on the ‘Smack in recent weeks. Why? Well…because in this 3D printing-obsessed world, it’s become a refreshing mental break to see new ways of doing something that for decades was done literally the exact. same. way. every. frickin’. time. Additionally, 2D printing…

Originally developed nearly 20 years ago for Axor as a simple outdoor farm tap, Phillipe Starck’s latest foray into the world of taps is aimed at not only providing an organic aesthetic to your wash basin, but also helps keep water usage down to a trickle…without feeling like a trickle.

In the case that you love watching products turn on a lathe as much as I do, you are in mucho luck today. Product designer Ingo Schuppler has recently released the lathe-heavy process video for his latest design, “Schwarzes Gold’. The coal-based lamp design is in response to Germany’s energy usage and, according to the…

I’ve always had a little bit of a problem with sustainability software. You jam some criteria into it and it throws a comparison of materials, location, the impact your choices have on the environment, and a pretty report you can give to your boss or client to prove you’ve done your research. The thing is,…

3D modeling apps can’t make it to the web soon enough and Chris Chalmers of Bios Design Collective could very well be pointing the way. His new, custom lamp fab site Fabripod is the foundation of a Kickstarter project set out to combine 3D design and web based visualization in a ingenious way… and as…

When you feel like chowing down on some freshly woven steel mesh, a timber panel or simply a charred piece of ceramic, you’ll be happy to know there’s been a lot of research put into those materials you’re ingesting. We know they’re useful for such activities as ‘building stuff’, but how do they react to…

Can you think of a more uncomfortable chair to sit in than an airport chair? I can’t. Add to that the delight of sharing the vast majority of the world’s germs, bacteria and food particles with the other happy people at the airport and really, sitting just doesn’t get any better. One thing that can…