Pune: The concluding day of Pune Design Festival (PDF 2018), organised by Association of Designers of India (ADI) with Sakal as the media partner, culminated with designers and designing thinkers from various disciplines coming together to talk about how design can be a tool to make our lives sustainable.
Neils Peter Flint, a social designer and owner, NPFlint Consultancy, highlighting the importance of micro-living and using lesser resources, said, “We need to think smart and holistic and for that, we must design strong innovative and pragmatic visions and action plans to solve the challenges of human life on earth. Technology must be put to use to create sustainable innovation, and materials like plastic and hemp and should be recycled, reduced, recreated and redesigned to make houses and settlement etc capable of preventing accumulation of waste in the
environment.”
He further added that it is time we began thinking about sharing resources including house, water, electricity and fuel and to do that, small groups of people from various communities coming and living together under the same is roof is the need of the hour.
Swapnil Chaturvedi, a social entrepreneur, founder of Samagra, popularly known as The Poop Guy, said, “The answer to wicked problems lies in the innovative use of psychology, technology and design. Around 60 per cent of the population in Mumbai lives in slums, while 40 per cent people reside in the slum area in Pune. Their houses are too small, where six to seven people live under one roof, and that’s where the problem lies. Where will they build the toilet? With accessibility of clean toilets, not only the chances of them getting infections will reduce, but also the cases of young girls and women being molested or raped will minimise since they won’t have to wait for dawn or dusk to go for open
defecation.”
He has been tirelessly working towards making urban public toilets accessible to all and keep them clean.
