Sustainable Indulgence

Personal Design Practice. Design Philosophy. 2024

The Question: What is my take on sustainability?

Sustainable Indulgence: A Philosophy of Sustainability That Embraces Consumerism

With climate change becoming a more urgent issue everyday, especially at the hand of society’s built environment and products, I have seriously considered many times giving up my career as a designer and lifestyle as a modern metropolitan citizen and wandering the wilderness for the rest of my life as a way to completely guarantee that I am living a life that is actually good, or at least neutral, for the environment. But then when I think about how much beauty the world of design has to offer, I can’t help but think that there must be a way to reconcile it with a sustainable future. I’ll be honest, even though I’m passionate about saving the planet, I also really like living in my house, wearing my clothes (most of the time), and interacting with all of the fun products and technology that I don’t necessarily need for my survival, but definitely want. I’m beginning to believe that there is a way, and it’s the philosophy of what I like to call “sustainable indulgence”. Here are my thoughts:

I believe that sustainability is not a question of what we consume or how much we consume, but rather how we consume. In other words, the problem of climate change is not consumerism itself, but instead the way that we have been approaching consumerism, especially in modern times. This idea is the basis of sustainable indulgence, the notion that we can have everything that we need and want as long as it is compatible with the rest of nature.

Think about an orange tree in the wild. When you walk to it, there is more food than you could ever need or want. Many, if not most of these oranges, don’t even get eaten. They just fall to the ground and decompose. But this isn’t a tragedy - it’s simply nature doing its thing. The fallen oranges return to the earth and provide nutrients for the next oranges to fruit, creating a continuous, sustainable, cycle of life powered by sunlight.

So why in modern society is it considered unsustainable when we throw out an orange from our kitchen after it has spoiled? The answer is in how the orange was produced. Most modern farms rely upon artificial and toxic pesticides to produce their fruit, and then in order to make these fruits conveniently accessible for people they deliver them to grocery stores with fossil fuel transportation. Then, to preserve freshness the fruits are placed on air conditioned shelves, most likely using energy that was also produced from fossil-fuels. So when you eat an orange in modern society, it’s a lot different from eating directly from a tree in nature. Society has added more steps to the equation, and their toxicity is what makes a spoiled orange wasteful.

So what would happen if we produced the oranges without artificial and toxic pesticides and transported and air conditioned them with clean energy? Well, it would simply be no different than picking an orange from nature but with added convenience, dare I say a little bit of sustainable indulgence.

This philosophy can be applied to everything that we consume. Architecture, art, products, clothing, cars, food, medicine, you name it. With this guiding principle I think we can give ourselves these conveniences while living harmoniously with the rest of nature. After all, humans are a part of nature, and consumption is necessary for our survival. Regardless of what we think we need to survive, as long as it fits within Earth’s ecosystem we can indulge ourselves.

The Urgency of Climate Change and Taking Action

So what should we do before that wonderful time comes when we live in an ideal world where everything that we could ever need or want is perfectly sustainable? I believe that it is best to simplify our lives and reduce our consumption of unsustainable products as much as possible. Necessities are necessities, and if the food that you eat at the store or the car that you drive to work isn’t perfect, I believe that you shouldn’t feel bad about it as long as you’re trying your best to be as mindful of their consumption and usage as possible. After all, there’s only so much you can control, and to preserve your sanity you have to pick your battles, especially when you’re in a war this large. When it comes to luxuries, the things that you don’t need, I think it’s important to especially keep these to a minimum. Joy and recreation are important for our lives, so if you think that some of these things are necessary for it, that in a way turns these luxuries into a necessity. But that’s a slippery slope - just make sure to keep an eye on what you justify to be necessary for yourself. In time, everything will change. Thankfully, this isn’t goodbye to indulgence forever.

The Moral of the Story?

Things can be nice. We just have to make sure that we do them right.