Born-Again Activist : Ex-Industrial Designer Now Wants to Be Part of Pollution Solution

Budd Steinhilber’s environmental awakening developed in small stages over the last few years, but it was on a trip to the dump that he really saw the light.

“I saw a big pile of those blow-molded plastic containers and it hit home,” he recalled.

Steinhilber years earlier had designed those same plastic containers for supermarket use in shipping food. He remembered selling them on the basis of convenience: After one use they could be thrown away--no muss, no fuss, no bother.

And now, there they were, in perfect plastic shape, taking up space in an already overflowing Hawaiian landfill. They had been produced by the millions. They would last forever.

“I saw the waste I had helped to create coming back to affect me,” says Steinhilber, 65, who had semi-retired in Hawaii from San Francisco after 47 years as a successful industrial designer. “When I stepped back and looked at my career, I realized I had unintentionally been part of the pollution problem. Now I am trying to be part of the solution.”

He has become an environmental activist. The extent of his new philosophy--which he calls “thinking beyond the Dumpster”--will be evident when the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) meets in Santa Barbara Aug. 8-11.

For the first time in the group’s history, its members--the men and women who design all the products we live and work with--will be asked to take a hard look at the environmental effects of the bottles and cans, wraparound plastic packaging and corrugated cardboard boxes, computers and cameras and refrigerators and automobiles clogging the nation’s landfills.

“As designers, we’ve been spending our lives thinking about how we put things together,” said Steinhilber, who had planned to spend his retirement as a water colorist before he got caught up in saving the planet. “Now we also have to think about how to take them apart.”

That new concept is one of the hottest subjects in design today, says design society staffer Kristina Goodrich: “Color and shape are still important in design, but from a real soul-searching point of view, the trend is towards making products that are environmentally sound. This will be a major focus at the Santa Barbara conference.

“It’s still too early for products to be on the market, but a lot of designers have been thinking about this independently and Budd has been a catalyst,” she added.

Steinhilber considers it a breakthrough that the Santa Barbara conference will devote two major sessions to environmental issues. “We tried to get on the program last year, and couldn’t make it,” he said.

This year his Environmental Concern Committee is coming in at full speed with such speakers as a recycling consultant, an economic analyst from the Environmental Defense Fund, experts in packaging and alternative energy systems, a specialist in designing products for durability, and designers involved in projects to recycle plastics or utilize nontoxic inks and paints.

“I’m not sure these people have black and white answers, but it should be interesting to hear them,” says Steinhilber. “This is like an introduction to a whole new way of thinking.”

That’s the situation the entire design world is starting to experience. “There’s definitely a movement out there,” said Stephen Hauser of S. G. Hauser Associates in Calabasas, chairman of the upcoming conference. “The environment is an issue that’s been raised off and on for years but until now it’s been a little awkward to discuss, because you couldn’t keep an audience interested.”

Now, he said, clients are beginning to demand such items as recyclable plastic: “I think it really hit home when we begin to read about the enormous amount of waste in things like diapers and Styrofoam cups--things that can’t be destroyed. The sheer numbers really hit you.”

Designers themselves, suddenly facing new demands to be “green,” are confused about the implications, said Amelia Amon of Manhattan, a design society environmental activist. “It’s a growing concern and we get calls every week for information. They know there is a potential to do damage with what they design--colors that were ‘fun and happy’ turn out to be toxic pigments with cadmium and lead. I’ve just been told that interior latex contains mercury. There are something like 30,000 plastics now available.

“I think designers are starting to feel they are being asked to put their fingers in the dike that may be beyond their control--there are so many products,” she said, adding that the crisis situation also presents an opportunity because “Everything in the world needs to be redesigned.”

Steinhilber’s goal is not quite that sweeping. But he does find himself on a timely mission, suddenly in demand on the lecture circuit as a speaker and increasingly being called for interviews or information.

“I’m a newcomer to the bandwagon, if that’s what it is,” he said in a recent phone interview from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, where he and his wife Ginny moved three years ago. “I opened my mouth and challenged some of my colleagues.”

Having long ignored the nagging voice that asked “Where are all of these empties going to wind up? Do our landfills really need a million of these things a month?” he is now determined to preach repentance, he says, because he believes that designers can make a tremendous immediate impact.

He explains: “Whereas you as a consumer, trying to decide between paper and plastic, will only influence a few pounds a year, or only choose one car every few years . . one design decision can affect millions of items.”

His colleagues acknowledge his determination. “Budd is a driving force,” says Ken Hunnibell, the head of Rhode Island School of Design’s industrial design department who is working on the design society committee. “I’ve been trying to talk about this stuff for 10 years, and so have other people, but it needed somebody with his professional clout. Budd is a national officer and also a Fellow in our society--the highest honor.”

Steinhilber is also trying to educate himself. “I’m not an expert and I’m not on an ego trip. I am trying to concentrate on the things I know. I want to be sure of the facts that I might be inclined to spew out in a talk, and my main thrust is in areas where I see we can have an immediate effect.”

Besides his speaking and writing, he has become an ardent researcher, partly because of an NEA grant he received to develop a handbook or newsletter as an environmental materials resource for designers. In the process, he is collecting case histories of design projects that have licked the throwaway problem. His progress so far: “A lot of rhetoric and just a few models.”

But he can cite some success stories. Germany’s new BMW Z-1 roadster, for example, is designed of plastic, rubber and glass that can be 80% reclaimed and reused, including 18 plastic body and floor panels. “Ordinarily, that car would end up in a dump, but BMW provides exact instructions on how to take it apart--like a printout for the salvage person,” he says. “And they’re also building a recycling center.”

He also has found a Maine company that produces millions of audio and video cassettes (a major landfill candidate) but has designed them “so that the metal part can be snapped out and both plastic and metal parts can be recycled.”

He also emphasizes that designers can influence product repairs: “We’re known as the throwaway society and that concept of planned obsolescence, quite frankly, has been encouraged by some manufacturers. We don’t have that much in the way of renewable materials. There are billions and billions of dollars worth of goods and perfectly usable components buried in landfills.”

This can be turned around, he thinks, with some attention by the designer-manufacturer to ease of access. “We can’t repair a computer chip, but we have made some things so complex like the automobile that even trained mechanics can’t get at them without a computer printout.

“And another area is to see if we can establish a set of guidelines, so that designers are knowledgeable about materials, and to start building a computerized environmental data bank.” Steinhilber hopes designers will leave the Santa Barbara conference with some of the zest he has developed for looking at products across their full life cycle, not just their creation.

But with “green” designs still in the talking stage, he is uncertain whether he is leading a cause or is a lone voice in the wilderness.

“I get a lot of response from people saying ‘Yeah, you are right,’ ” he says. “But I’ll be very frank--the meager set of (environmental) examples I’m getting is frustrating.”