Entry 3

Part one: A good question is one that requires more than a “yes” or “no” as a reply. When asked a good question it sparks intriguing anomalies and discourse. A question must serve to retrieve information but it must also generate trust. Even with the best question, without trust no one will answer.  There must be a way to encourage an interviewees truthful opinion, and it’s possible if you ask in the correct way. How do you know when to trust an answer? A question serves as the introductory palette for information to be shared. In order to retrieve the most information a question could be asked in a multitude of different ways, creating unique responses each time. More specific questions help to expand answers and asking questions of those questions provokes deep thought and understanding.

The questions leading my end research paper have formed almost as a collage, starting from one idea and branching out to explore others. I started simply with: how can upcycling benefit the economy while improving the environment? This was a question I had already explored and gave me my basic understanding of upcycling and cradle-to-cradle systems. But, I wanted to focus on something more specific that I could relate to. How can fashion design benefit upcycling? This last question seemed to be too broad until I stumbled across one of my articles and was inspired by a critique. The author criticizes upcycling as being too generalized and says it lacks critical design elements. Which brought me to: how can quality design better benefit upcycling compared to generalized design? This question has helped me find tons of data to explore an interesting arguable topic. Next I hope to find answers to questions like how does the economy benefit from quality upcycled products.

Part two: For my research I joined an online community in order to observe. I created a twitter and started following upcycling companies or similar organizations. So far I have observed a lot of publicity for upcycling and green washing. Organizations like Ecouterrre and Inhabitat are constantly posting interesting information for the public and plenty of news updates on environment-friendly happenings. Interestingly, I find hardly any economic information from following these companies. This makes me wonder whether they are really beneficial advancements. Today I learned that it takes $4,000 to break down and reuse plastic bags that end up only being worth $32. This kind of information really sparks my interest and makes me want to learn more about my topic.