When we go to the dining areas on campus, we rarely notice the lack of trays or the separate bins for composting and recycling.  At Cornell, sustainability has become so commonplace in our daily lives that it’s hard to imagine life without it, but in fact, many other parts of the world lack the same kinds of environmentally friendly goods and services that we take for granted.  Currently, 90% of sustainable technologies are made for the wealthiest 10% of the world’s population, but a new “design revolution” in green technology aims to change that.

As part of this new initiative, M.I.T. hosted the International Development Design Summit this summer, a workshop where participants were tasked with developing products to help needy people that lack basic utilities such as clean water or electricity.  They came up with ideas such as a handcrafted plastic backpack to carry water long distances and a bucket that can generate electricity by combining charcoal and cow manure.  Their creations were also supposed to be constructed with local materials that would be affordable to most, as well as easy to repair and adaptable to different lifestyles.

M.I.T. is only one of many other organizations and businesses that are shifting their focus to helping disadvantaged people.  For example, as an alternative to bricks, which are produced by burning down trees, a construction firm based in Nairobi called COMAC has developed more environmentally-friendly stabilized soil blocks, which are cheap, durable, and already being used in many construction projects all over.  The design revolution represents a way to integrate sustainable design with meeting the needs of impoverished people, and will hopefully continue to gain even more momentum in the future.  For a list of more organizations that are promoting sustainable developments for poorer people, look at http://other90.cooperhewitt.org/resources.