Haha, nice one.

Tell you what, give me 10 grand and I can save you from spending anything on unsustainable shite. And I’ll plant a tree in your name. A real one.

1. Most of our critics above have not read the in-depth Life Cycle Assessment report about said tree available at http://www.buronorth.com which clearly illustrates the trees eco-performance in terms of energy use, water and greenhouse emissions.

2. Most are unaware that the Buro North Studio is 50 % qualified graphic designers and 50 % qualified industrial designers… additionally, the expertise of a Life Cycle Assessment guru from the RMIT centre for design (who actually writes LCA programs for designers – aka he’s the guru to the experts) and a PhD student currently researching sustainable consumption were called upon to assist in the development of this project. The Buro Graphic designers did the packaging, but the Industrial designers created the tree…

Now for those that won’t be trawling through the report, we’ll summarize; the locally-sourced plantation pine was the most ecologically sound option AVAILABLE… it’s the best of a bad lot. As any designer who has seriously engaged in the task of designing for sustainability knows, sometimes the material choices are significantly limited, and there is not always a clear winner. But we can assure you that the wastage was minimised (as seen in the image attached by designjourn), the CNC machining process employed to create the tree was the most energy efficicient… and every detail of this design has been considered, including the Forestry Stewardship Certified paper through to the vegetable ink used for printing. And despite the incredible financial incentives to manufacture and import from China, the tree was manufactured and packaged locally and ethically. They would have been a sixth of the cost if made in China, sold in their millions and we’d be having our Christmas party in Hawaii… so clearly, we’re not in it for the glory of financial gains, but trying to challenge our capacity to create sustainable design outcomes through our self-funded studio projects.

So is this greenwash, or solid contribution to designing for sustainability at the current time?!

To contextualise the intention of the tree further… obviously, creating product to replace product does not radically challenge ecologically-damaging consumerism, but it does get a conversation going (clearly) and that’s very important at this time when designers are making a shift from designing to feed the consumerist beast (or their ego), to designing for sustainability. So the tree is in part, an awareness-raising strategy.

The cost of the tree has come under fire and safe to say, getting people to tie up their money in expensive, long-lasting goods is an excellent form of sustainable consumption because they won’t have the funds to buy all the other unsustainable shite they would get their hands on others wise- as people spend proportionately to what they earn.

To those that don’t think our tree looks so sexy, we are sorry and will try harder next time….

Thanks for the feedback and particularly to the designjourn for bringing that to our attention, we’ll be in contact with our manufacturers immediately (they work saturdays.!.) to ensure the off-cuts are recycled appropriately.