Dying to dye

Climate change is the largest threat to humankind (and countless other life forms) today. Mitigating the crisis will require a paradigm shift in the way we understand current systems, and in the way we design systems that revolve around sustainability. As designers, we are enormously responsible for ensuring that the products we release into the world are designed within a circular economy model; 80% of environmental impacts occur in the design phase. However, it is also important to understand the factors that contribute to climate change that designers are not entirely responsible for, such as the factory farming industry. The animal agriculture industry is responsible for 50% of the world’s second hand greenhouse gases. Animals in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s) are forced to live under unimaginably cruel conditions, in order to yield as much animal product for the market as possible, as efficiently as possible. The waste produced by CAFO’s pollutes nearby waterstreams, thereby destroying natural habitats, decimating the land, and endangering the lives of factory workers and nearby residents. The animal agriculture industry is incredibly complicated, and understanding it is made even more difficult by the deliberate withholding of information from the public, by the corporate heads of the industry. Reducing our consumption of animal products, cow in particular, would significantly improve the situation.