Output details

Designing For Re-Use: The Life of Consumer Packaging

Designing for Re-Use connects the practice of packaging design with contemporary theoretical approaches - particularly theory of social practice . It collects case studies of packaging re-use to point to the diffusion and modification of designs through the circuit of production, consumption and re-use. It represents the aspect of Fisher’s work that inspects the potential for relationships between design research and work in other disciplines that share a focus on the materiality of objects and their function as elements in social practices, to point towards their ethical consequences. Here, this is directed towards the impact of packaging in environmental sustainability.

Informed by Fisher’s previous work on materials (plastics, see output 3). It draws from a body of ethnographic work by co-author Shipton. It was commissioned by Earthscan after the proposal went through blind peer review. It has received several reviews including on the ‘treehugger’ website, March 2010: http://www.treehugger.com/culture/designing-for-re-use-the-life-of-consumer-packaging-book-review.html ; at resource.co.uk: http://www.resource.uk.com/article/Books/Designing_Reuse_Life_Consumer_Packaging#.UGAhzK7Vu9U and in the Design Journal by Jim Collingham, (2011) ‘Designing for Re-Use: the life of consumer packaging by Tom Fisher and Janet Shipton’ book review, The Design Journal, 14, 3: 369-374

The book led to an invitation to participate in a US Environmental Protection Agency webinar on packaging waste in February 2011: http://www.epa.gov/smm/web-academy/2011/videos/feb/feb11_trans.htm . Some of the thinking on domestic practices presented to an audience of Archaeologists was published in a collection of papers from CHAT 2009:

Fisher, T. (2012) ‘Hoarding, reusing and disposing: the home as a repository for transient objects’ Studies in Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory 8, BAR International Series 2363, Modern Materials: Proceedings of CHAT Oxford 2009, Laura McAtackney and Brent Fortenberry (eds) pp51-59, Oxford: Archaeopress, ISBN 978 1 4073 0950 7 Modern Materials: the archaeology of things from the early modern, modern and contemporary world, Keeble College Oxford, October 16th – 18th.