A response to Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times, 28 Sept 2025
Edwin Heathcote’s latest column declares that “design has lost its way.” The climate crisis, he argues, is the direct result of over-production and over-consumption, and designers are complicit. Pushing blame is easy. Offering a credible alternative is hard.
The reality of sustainable design is complicated: A chair can be beautiful, repairable and made from recycled sawdust, but if it is shipped by diesel truck to a customer who throws it away after one Instagram post, the chair is not the failure—the economy around it is.
Instead of mocking designers for “performative guilt,” we should ask why they are the only profession routinely interrogating its own footprint. If we want to get rid of the throwaway culture of consumption, we need business models that profit from fewer objects. That conversation lives not only in the design studio, but also in finance, law and policy.
So I would like to give the Financial Times a new challenge: investigate how obsolescence is still treated as a revenue opportunity. Map the venture capital that bankrolls fast-fashion algorithms.
Until then, we should laud designers for having the conscience and ambition to tackle this immense challenge, instead of ridiculing them for trying and struggling.
How is your profession adjusting to a hotter planet? Let’s discuss!