Ecolect: A Sustainable Materials Community




Ecolect’s mission has always been simple, yet ambitious: to help designers find sustainable materials, to provide makers of new materials a space to publicize their innovations and create a vibrant forum for designers committed to sustainability to share their inspiration, occasional frustration, new information and everything in between.

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Transforming our built environment towards sustainability

One of the least sustainable aspect of our civilization is the built environment with all it’s physical objects. They are often constructed from materials that were either made available through unsustainable methods (e.g. clear-cutting forests, industrial process employing chemical toxins, etc.), or were unsustainable by themselves (e.g. toxic chemicals, non-biodegradable materials, etc.). Even when sustainable replacements for these materials are available, they are more often than not, difficult to find. If we want to have a built environment that reflects the principles of sustainability, we need to help our designers to have easy access to informations about these materials (properties, usage, supplier, etc.). Luckily, yesterday, a new website to help them do just that has been launched.

Ecolect is a new online sustainable materials database and community created “to be the largest, freely accessible sustainable materials library in the world.”

The site was created to save designers time and money by answering these questions: where do I find sustainable materials, what makes them sustainable, and who else is using them and how. Since it’s been created as a virtual two-way street, if you have a favorite sustainable material, they want to hear about it; drop them a line and you might see it up on the site a short time later.

Perhaps the coolest part about the new site is that it’s designed to be an interactive experience; users can create a real dialog between themselves by uploading pictures of their projects completed with the featured materials, writing reviews and providing case studies. That way, when you go looking for something, you’ll be able to see what other, real world people think about it, rather than just reading design and performance specs on a computer screen. Thus, in a way, Ecolect is an online version of William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s material-pool concept employed in their Cradle-to-Cradle design methodology, but with a community collaboration twist.

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The following information are taken from Ecolect’s website.

 

Mission and Vision

Our mission is simple: to be the largest, freely accessible sustainable materials library in the world.

Our vision is unique: To provide the tools and resources that make it easier for you to design responsibly.

Searching for reliable, state-of-the-art sustainable materials shouldn’t be a frustrating scavenger hunt around the Internet. Ecolect empowers you with:

  1. An easy-to-use website featuring only materials with sustainable attributes, a place that stimulates discussion about defining sustainability and is a source of accurate information
  2. A place for you to contribute user reviews and images of materials you use
  3. Helpful case studies on successful sustainable design
  4. An informative blog that discusses how design and ecology affect the world

Now that sustainability is becoming important to more people, we need to define its many levels and create tools to help implement those standards. We are convinced that Ecolect is an efficient way for you and others committed to sustainability to fill this gap in the growing green movement.

 

The story of Ecolect

In 2005, designers Joe Gebbia and Matt Grigsby, graduates of The Rhode Island School of Design, knew there had to be a better way to track down and obtain sustainable materials. The former RISD classmates had often complained to each other about how tough it was to find the right product or material for their projects. Even if they knew about the maker of a certain kind of material, they sometimes found manufacturer’s website was confusing, dated, or just plain wrong. These aggravating Internet scavenger hunts slowed their work and made it hard to keep deadlines.

Matt, living in Providence, was running a thriving business called Design Awareness. Joe, who lived in San Francisco, had accumulated an impressive client list for his design work, too, and had already successfully launched a product he called CritBuns–a portable seating cushion. Although they lived on opposite sides of the country, Joe and Matt began to talk about solutions, instead of complaining about the problem.

Initially the two agreed to create a shared database of suppliers of sustainable materials as they discovered them, so they wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel with each new project. And that helped–a lot. So much so, that they soon realized it was just too good an idea to keep to themselves. They knew that every designer needs easy, accurate and free information on sustainable materials if the whole green movement was every going to take off. So Joe and Matt decided to create such a place and call it Ecolect, a name derived from the words ‘ecology’ and ‘intellect’.

Ecolect’s mission has always been simple, yet ambitious: to help designers find sustainable materials, to provide makers of new materials a space to publicize their innovations and create a vibrant forum for designers committed to sustainability to share their inspiration, occasional frustration, new information and everything in between.

The two designers kept their day jobs and enlisted the help of designers at their alma mater, RISD, and a support team in San Francisco, to build an elegant, easy-to-navigate site. In building Ecolect, they consulted other colleagues and relied on a lot of sage advice from their RISD professors. This launch of Ecolect represents two years of work and the collective efforts of dozens of designers. But they know that all this work is just a beginning.

Now it’s up to you, users and fellow designers, to take the site and run with it. That’s how Ecolect can remain a growing, as a relevant resource. Joe and Matt urge you to get engaged, let them know how Ecolect can change and improve. Suggestions can be sent to design@ecolect.net. Be sure to have a go at Ecolect.

[via Treehugger]


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