Existing Ethical Design

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We are a global network of artists, writers, musicians, designers, poets, philosophers and punks trying to pull off a radical transformation of the current world order.

The Centre for Sustainable Design (CfSD) facilitates discussion and research on eco-design and environmental, economic, ethical and social (e3s) considerations in product and service development and design. This is achieved through training and education, research, seminars, workshops, conferences, consultancy, publications and Internet. The Centre also acts as an information clearing house and a focus for innovative thinking on sustainable products and services.





Lush - branding

• blockading a runway at London’s Heathrow airport to protest planned expansion
• occupying Westminster Abbey to oppose cuts to disability benefits
• campaigning fiercely against border controls
• Staff members once tried to board a train to France using a travel document called the “world passport.” (They failed.)
• generated a turnover of £574 million ($800 million) last year and a pre-tax profit of £31.3 million, now has 940 stores in 50 countries around the world
• gives financial support to activists groups making a stir in the US too. These include No New Animal Lab, which is trying to block an underground animal-testing lab at the University of Washington, and Peaceful Uprising, an environmental group that uses civil disobedience to highlight climate change.
• Last year, Lush paid a 47.3% effective tax on its total business (the UK corporate tax rate is 20%) because it refused to take advantage of tax havens and certain schemes in a bid to pay a fair tax in each country it operates
• It caps top salaries so they can’t be more than 14 times above those at the bottom. It refuses to test its handmade products on animals, or to buy from suppliers who do.

• In fact, Lush’s website says, “we reserve the right to civil disobedience” if any law requires the company to test on animals. It doesn’t sell in mainland China, which requires animal testing on imported cosmetics.
• “don’t copy, don’t steal”  successfully sued Amazon UK for using the word “lush” to sell knock-off goods (many others have failed to get Amazon for such violations). He also trademarked Christopher North, the name of Amazon UK’s managing director, to teach him a lesson, and created a new shower gel in his name with the tagline “rich, thick and full of it.” (The shower gel was never sold, but North was reportedly “hopping mad“.)
• The Body Shop in the mid-1980s it made waves in the UK business world by joining forces with Greenpeace for a “Save the Whale” campaign. It funded environmental and human-rights groups, refused to test products on animals, and openly supported fair trade.
• The company backed the US campaign Black Lives Matter; several employees joined the Mall of America protest in 2014. It went on a 24–hour mass hunger strike in support of Guantánamo Bay prisoners in 2008. And it called on customers to fight against lethal drone attacks in 2013.
• “We always prioritize small grassroots groups; always ones that are trying to change the world, not patch things up,” explains RebeccaLush. The entire retail price (minus taxes) of the Charity Pot goes to these groups, who can apply for up to £10,000 a year in funding.

Keith Haring - illustration / freedom of speech

• Haring’s wildly familiar and celebrated paintings of the 1980s, works driven by his sense of difference and a fervent political consciousness with which he pushed back at the Reagan-Thatcher conservatism of his time.
• Haring’s work entered into broad cultural consciousness with neon colours, energetic line work, and an urban pulse
• The Political Line, then, serves both as an art historical reconsideration of the artist’s popular output, as well as a welcome celebration of art with activist inclinations.
• The works on view tend toward black, ochre and red, with occasional bursts of more vibrant hues punctuating thematic sections. These organise Haring’s work according to various political and cultural concerns: sections of the exhibition are organised by themes of greed, racism, ecological disaster and disease.
• the last major museum show devoted to his work, organised in 1997 by the Whitney, focused on the public, convivial nature of his work, even including the muted thump of club music in the background, The Political Line has a more solemn, silent vibe – a room containing small, glowing black light paintings, for example, evokes a darkened catacomb rather than a disco.
• human-scaled fibreglass Statue of Liberty, her robes painted crimson and entirely inscribed with Haring characters, line work, and tags contributed by graffiti artist LA II. 
• a large painting of black-lined figures fleeing an alien ray
• a seemingly blood-spattered early drawing expressing a meat is murder message, adding to a passionate critical opposition to ominous forces of political power.
• The show goes on to provides humanising context with works and ephemera that speak to his position and range. 
• His 1978 Manhattan Penis Drawings for Ken Hicks, works he made in public places as a display of gay sexuality are seen here, as are ransom note-like collages made in 1978 from newspaper headlines, many referring to Reagan and cultural unease. 
• There is a case displaying Polaroids taken by Haring’s pal Andy Warhol, and spiral-bound journals in which Haring has handwritten his influences and insecurities.
• his infamous subway drawings in numerous works that depict surprisingly grisly, almost surrealistic acts of torture, some bringing to mind the photographs from Abu Ghraib, and in large, orgiastic images of crowds turned into patterns of primal violence.
• a recurring figure with a circular hole in its centre, a form inspired by the 1980 assassination of John Lennon.
• His prolific work ethic, some conjecture, was driven by a sense that his life would be cut short.