ADVOCACY:
CREATIVITY X SUSTAINABILITY
As a young child in grade school, I would always bring my Tupperware tumbler (Did I just date myself?) to school and would hand it over to the cafeteria lady whenever I ordered soft drinks. I remember receiving judgmental stares from classmates every time—the type that nerdy kids receive in stereotypical movie scenes. Despite that, I did what I did even up until high school because of a very compelling reason, at least for the young me then:
In science class, our teacher showed a National Geographic (or what it Discovery Channel?) documentary about sea animals. The film tackled a topic that was not typical of science classes—the story angle was about our trash making their way to the ocean, suffocating and poisoning helpless animals. One of the most poignant moments in the film was a dolphin strangled by what seemed to be discarded rope, and it was fighting for its life.
I just couldn’t shake the heart-breaking vision off my head.
The most unexpected debris infiltrate the homes of helpless animals, our neighbors on earth.
Expectedly, they are from human homes made of non-biodegradable materials.
Pictured here, a plastic Christmas ornament washed ashore at Pantai Berawa in the southern part of Bali, Indonesia.
Fast forward to several years later, I was given the most wonderful gift to live in Bali during the pandemic. While proximity to nature is one of the most exhilarating aspects of my life in “The Island Of The Gods,” it came with the most eye-opening experience of seeing the destruction that we have already caused the world we live in. I am not just talking about, with all due respect to my 12-year-old self, trash that we conveniently irresponsibly leave behind, making their way to our mangroves and oceans. Having grown a bit wiser, I’m referring to a more deeply-rooted, wide-ranging, and compounded subject of ‘sustainability’, of which environmentalism is just a part.
In the photo, a Balinese shrine stands witness to the yearly exodus of trash brought by the monsoon season on the very place it stands.
At the time it was shot, rain clouds are just looming from a distance, but take note that the beach is already dotted with plastic litter.
LIMITLESS WANT, LIMITED RESOURCES
As a creative at work and, to some extent, in life, I learn from stories that I see and hear and from my own personal experiences. It’s no different when it comes to the subject of ‘sustainability’. However, I will not even attempt to sound all-knowing about the matter.
Traveling around Indonesia, I saw the destruction on a much bigger scale. And I’m sure it’s the same even in my home country and other parts of the world.
In this photo, a monkey forages on leftover food from a toppled trash bin. Entangled with the root system of this huge mangrove forest in Tarakan, Kalimantan Timur are shampoo bottles, instant “mie” wrappers, cigarette packaging, masks, etc. made up non-biodegradable materials.
It is not hard to figure out, though, that the one thing that drives unsustainable practices is consumerism. Yes, our insatiable, irresponsible tendency to want more things for ourselves is to blame. It happens to be one of the the hottest topics of conversation in the fashion industry today—the clamor for which negatively affecting fast-fashion businesses for good reason—and the one thing we all deserve to feel guilty about.
Consumerism feeds unsustainable workings and production practices. And we are all guilty as charged.
In this photo, I’m trying on a Balinese-inspired sarong at the Biasa+ store along Jalan Raya Seminyak. I’ve learned that supporting local businesses falls under the social component of sustainability; however, supporting local business might be too simplistic a take on sustainability.
The subject matter is so much more than that, and the moral issues it faces is also driven by consumerism. For instance, how can climate change and environmental vanguards effectively spot corporate greenwashing?
THE CREATIVE SOLUTION, LITERALLY
Just recently—perhaps driven by the free time that one accumulates while on a #DiRumahAja set up—I got into the existential exercise of questioning the sustainability of the way we currently produce for our creative pursuits.
WALK THE TALK
Kudos to my PT MEA clients who let go of one panel of the packaging for sustainable pursuits.
They allowed us to put two circular perforations that enabled consumers to reuse this other wise singe-use box.
For instance, starting close to home as a creative director for marketing campaigns, how can we make sure that the process, the utilization of resources (natural, technological, and human), the distribution of our output, the disposal of by-products, etc. will ensure sustainability of the industry? In retail, an industry that’s also relevant to me as a consumer as well as a designer, I find myself asking how we can use creativity to ensure that the pieces we create are pleasurable and enjoyable so that consumers keep them for long-term use and not easily disregard and dispose them. To me, it’s critical to push for not only creativity of process, but also of output.
This got me deducting: it seems that the more creative and attractive our output are, the more sustainable they are.
How can end-to-end creativity ensure a viable solution? That’s the least that we could do to counter decades-old unsustainable practices.
It is by collaborating with like-minded creative individuals that I came to learn the value of “slowing down” in ensuring creativity from start to finish, thereby maximizing the sustainability quotient.
Photo was taken at the Arta Derau Studio in Tegallalang, somewhere north of Bali, Indonesia. Pictured with me are Puti (left), resident artist and owner, and Kelly (middle), the efficient and effective production lead.
FMCG TO SMCG
I believe that creativity and sustainability are not mutually exclusive. In fact, given the catastrophic state of the world’s depleted resources, both concepts should always be seen as partners, always hand-in-hand with each other. After all, these ideas meet at the point that is the end-all and be-all of the subject matter of sustainability: human beings. The question I always ask myself is, “How can we positively produce for the our needs today without negatively affecting the same activity of future generations?”
I thought it was too simplistic to respond to that question with the answer, “Slow-Moving Consumer Goods.” Given my background in FMCG, I know that the most apparent ideas are often not the best. Or so I thought. As I slowly gained experience in creating retail goods and working on projects that are deliberate about the broad objective of sustainability, I realized that thorough research, thoughtful decision making, and though-through production are key to maximizing the sustainability quotient.
This way of working takes time. And perhaps that is why ‘fast’ is one of the enemies of sustainability. Hopefully, we come to a point in the future where ‘fast’ no longer means haphazardly unsustainable.
Time, thought, and thoroughness encourage creativity from start to finish.
Creativity ensures sustainability from generation to generation.
Pictured here are my collaboration pieces with Arta Derau in their studio among other collections. Also in the photo is a section where “imperfect” pieces are given the chance to find their home.
At this point, I may already be boring you, so with no further ado, and with all humility (knowing that I can all still improve on my knowledge of ‘sustainability’ and thus my work), I’m delighted to present some personal projects that are conscious about sustainability, end to end. These are works—oftentimes works of art, if you ask me—that like-minded creatives and entities collaborated on with me. They may not be substantial acts for now, but I think they’re a good start in the name of sustainability.
Here’s to practices that are thoughtful and thorough in ideation, process, and production. Here’s my ode to “creativity x sustainability.”
THE TWO-HEADED DRAGONS
Aside from recycling and up-cycling, any discussion on sustainability should include a discourse on efficient use of raw materials. For a precious resource such as wood, it is critical that by-products are not only used conscientiously but also used in many ways as possible.
Take wooden utensils for example, specifically those produced by Lagilagi (the retail arm of CushChush Gellery in Denpasar, Bali) that are made up of up-cycled wood scarps. I thought, “What if we could make use of its handle, the one segment that uses up the most raw materials, more than once?”
This led to the idea of the “Two-Headed Dragon.” It takes the iconic Lagilagi utensil, putting two functional heads at both ends (i.e., a sendok and a fork, a cooking spatula and a sauce, etc.) to come up with a new product that is an ode to pushing the sustainability quotient.
A quirky, witty approach to efficient use of resources.
With this conversation-starter homeware, one piece of up-cycled wooden handle is literally used twice: one end of the handle is a sendok or a fork while the other end is a bigger sendok or a knife.
OVERCONSUMPTION = EXTINCTION SCARF
One of today’s most topical discussions revolve around climate change, and the fashion industry is where this discussion is most relevant.
In a Louis Vuitton show, Extinction Rebellion protesters stormed the runway carrying banners saying “Overconsumption = Extinction.” The group is objecting the ‘excesses’ in the fashion industry, urging the French President Macron to act now. According to them, the fashion industry accounts for up to 8.5% of global greenhouse emissions.”
Photo credit: nytimes.com
After seeing this, I got in touch with my good friend, Reni Layon who owns the slow fashion brand RABA. I shared my idea of collating excess fabrics from local clothing factories, sewing them together in patchwork style. We will then come up with limited quantities of scarves and throws (perhaps the size of the actual Extinction Rebellion banners)—the quantity of which dictated by availability of excess material more than consumer demand. The twist to the project is that we will boldly print the text “OVERCONSUMPTION X EXTINCTION on the patchwork scarves and throws, almost turning it into a medium-as-message marketing material, but serving a functional and sustainable purpose.
This work is on its infant stages. We would appreciate collaborating with like-minded individuals to can help us see this project through.
TOILET GRAFFITI CERAMIC COLLECTION
You may check out the idea behind this collaboration here, but for now please allow me to discuss the sustainability angle of this piece of work.
When I approached Arta Derau with this idea, they immediately said “Yes,” to my surprise! Having received their go signal, it was almost automatic for me to push for producing in large quantities accompanied by a huge marketing spend during launch. However, the Arta Derau team enlightened me with their unconventional, more sustainable approach to our collaboration.
First, we decided on a few critical homeware pieces based on consumer demand, learning from Arta Derau’s years of practice. Then, we only produced a few pieces of each design because we wanted to know first what would actually resonate with consumers. Lastly, instead of a big, noisy launch, we silently distributed the finished products to online and offline stores from which we learned.
Currently, we know exactly how many pieces to produce for each design, and because the pieces are hand-made, we would not be biased against pieces that come out imperfectly from the kiln. I’m glad Arta Derau had sustainability already in their gene, and that they were generous enough to pass on their knowledge to newbies like me.
A thoughtful, thorough, time-nurtured creative exercise ensured sustainability for us on so many levels.
Producing in small quantities ensures no wastage of resources. Creating pieces consumers would want to collect and keep ensures these products don’t easily end up in landfills.
On top of that, at the end of their lifespan, we are assured by the materials we use that they won’t occupy landfills and litter our seas for years. They’ll simply go back into the circle of life without interfering.
There are more in the works: some ideas are good-to-go but are waiting for funding while some are still looking for the right people to co-nurture, co-parent them.
I spend time on ideating for these personal projects and even going to the extent of producing them given my limited personal resources because I want to prove that it is possible to bring creativity and sustainability together.
If we share the same passions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I can definitely use a hand, let’s collaborate!