Today, sustainability means thinking, choosing and consuming differently. It means optimising, integrating, transferring, rethinking materials and energy to find new functions and innovative objects. Design has always tried, throughout its history and in ways appropriate to the times it has passed through, to respond to these needs. From the first phase, that of ecodesign, which was concerned exclusively with the environmental impact of the product, we moved on to the phase of eco-development and then to that of sustainable development, which shifted the focus from the local to the global sphere and broadened the field from the ecological to the economic and social sphere. Actors on the scene are entrepreneurs, producers, designers and consumers, called upon (according to their roles) to confront strategies, materials, technological innovation and new forms of energy. A green design that knows how to go beyond the product, considering everything that surrounds it: the production process, the impact of production on the environment and local production realities, with the enhancement of craftsmanship. To achieve a definition of progress and well-being that can deliver to future generations a better quality of life than today.
5
