Lorrie Vogel: Pioneering Designs
Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 9:00PM 
Lorrie Vogel works for Nike’s Considered team. As General Manager, she’s leading Nike’s research in sustainable product design. We are moving to a new economy, a “green economy”, which has no roadmap. So how does a big company like Nike do it?
photo by Kris Klug
From the PopTech blog:
Nike’s first area of focus was reducing their footprint and the amount of waste. They’ve reduced their waste 50% in the past ten years. They’ve also focused on energy use and removing toxics from their products. Reducing your footprint, says Vogel, will never get you to a “green economy”. That needs to be done at the product level: they were at first inspired to try and create a shoe that you could plant in the ground and it would biodegrade. Their second thought was to try and make a product that would last forever. But from a human nature standpoint, that wouldn’t work and the products would ultimately end up in a landfill.
The answer seems to be creating a closed loop product, one that would keep the materials in play. Vogel describes this as “designing for disassembly”. The two main materials they currently use are polyester and cotton, neither of which is sustainable due to their environmental impact. Vogel’s team is working on creating better materials, even with the challenges presented by cost, accessibility and a broken recycling pipeline. Vogel believes we need a sort of materials DNA so that tagged materials can be easily identified. Recycling must happen in a world of diminishing sources and ever-increasing population.
As the video she showed us demonstrating the closed loop paradigm stated, “a shoe can’t change the world, but an ethos can.”
Business, Product Design, Renewables, design, sustainability in Pop!Tech 2009
Reader Comments (13)
These nike shox are also available for the michael jordan shoes sizes are in demand. nike dunks gone crazy after mbt shoes cheap these sneakers are made the cheap mbt shoes decision at the right moment. These cheap nike shox are manufactured with nike air force 1 spots on the nike shox sole that added stylish look to them. The nike shox of these cheap jordan shoes are high but are affordable to buy during the custom nike air force 1 These sneakers give nike shoes and can run for long nike shoes One of the jordan shoes feature a black upper with a matching mbt shoes sole that gives a new look this pair of sneakers.
I appreciate for your post! I am focus on you. I also want to make friends with you and share my blog with you, fashion lv handbags blog and fashion accessories blog. Welcome to visit it.
Loved the article - I needed an idea for a birthday gift for my friends. Hopefully they will enjoy them as you have. omega wrist watches
Your work is very good, I like you write articles! I believe you will create more outstanding works great, I'm looking forward to my! Hope good luck has been accompanied by you! replica Monogram Mini Louis Vuitton
Teas in the listener's eyes are the finest possible reward for any singer.-Bell & Ross BR 01-94 Swiss watch replicas