I don’t know why sustainability isn’t a big thing here – we live in such a tropical climate that seems to get worse year after year.  But then again, the word “sustainable” often gets confused with “hippie”.   A few weeks ago, I went to the Sustainable Festival at the Botanical Gardens in Buenos Aires.  It was kind of lame.  No.  It was really lame. I expected a lot more sustainable design stuff, but I just managed to see a lot of hippies and things that weren’t really sustainable.  Yeah, girl who tells me that her products are sustainable because they’re made out of 100% wool and cotton, for example… uhm.  okay.  I asked, “Do you crochet these things yourself?” “No,” she replies, “I hire some people to do it for me”.  uh-huh.  I couldn’t stop this girl from talking about her product, and as she droned on and on all I could do was imagine some poor old Bolivian women in a sweat shop crocheting these materials for pennies on what this girl was charging.

Then there was the other “Recycled Buttons”  stand. ’nuff said.  It looked like every one of those buttons was purchased.

Or the worst possible idea ever… bookshelves made out of cardboard.  I understand that it’s recycled cardboard, but imagine you have a dog that isn’t quite yet potty trained and he accidentally pees on your bookshelf.  Then your books fall all over the place because the thing that didn’t look so stable in the first place is even less stable, and worst of all, stinky – for life.

Anyhoo, when I think of sustainability – I think of my friend Stiven who writes Sustainable Day.  I see that blog and I say, “Hey, THAT’S what sustainable design is about”.  I just wish he would translate it into Spanish so that Latin America can see what they’re missing, cause when I went to the sustainable design fair here in BA, I thought I would see a lot more of the kind of stuff that Stiven writes about.  Instead I saw a lot of tired old concepts and a lot of people trying to take advantage of the word “sustainability”.

When I think of cool sustainable stuff, I think about things like this: Sustainable Salmon Leather.  It’s leather, but it’s renewable. It takes the salmon skin that would normally be disposed of and turns it into usable, durable products. Imagine that.  One day, I’m totally going to get a bikini made out of that.

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