Turn over any product that you can at least lift and what do you see?
"Made in China."
Good, bad or indifferent. For almost all of us, it's simply not "here". Unless you're reading this in China, the situation is for them, almost an anomaly in modern labour arbitrage. Is it capitalist? Is it Communist? Is it a combination? For the ambivalent cynic, what does it matter, it's not made here. So what?
Well, there are colossal implications across the economic, ecological, geographical, social and political spectra. But this is not an un-nuanced predicament without its benefits. Many believe that super low-cost labour is the main reason. Well, it isn't. True, labour availability is much higher. But there are many considerable factors including:
- working conditions,
- ecological implications,
- currency valuations based on central bank borrowing and issuance,
- infrastructure costs,
- subsidized transport costs and
- economic levers that affect the entire supply chain across the world's mass shipping practices.
What does this mean for the one who conceives the idea, designs and makes the product here? The potential implications are huge in terms of benefits to these factors listed above. Therein lies a key feature in what has recently be coined, the 'Circular Economy' (CE). While not exclusive to the CE, there are numerous overlaps and synergetic functions. Not the least of which is...
* ENERGY *
Total energy output to make, pack for shipping, drive and load the freight-liner, unload and transport the goods to distribution centres and then on to your local shops or delivered via currier to your front door.
This is where efficiency should intuitively should payoff. Almost all of this could be drastically reduced and a lot of these factors eliminated.
And this is where local, individual and 3-D production can make a huge set of efficiency gains therefore. AKA, the craft approach to industrial design. A designer-maker has so many tools at their disposal today, rarely heard of only one decade ago. And today, circa 2013, the tools, both manual and digital are much less expensive than then. Further to this, workshop clubs offer memberships for low cost access to high-end manufacturing equipment.
We needn't a mass production line to make goods anymore.
And for many of these reasons above, we needn't contribute to the gravity of these consumptive production methods and supply chain practices.
Keep on crafting.
For related resources, Design for Disassembly, Eco-Design, Environment and AD Technology guidelines related to this can be downloaded for free at:
http://www.activedisassembly.com/strategy/
