The Toaster Boys

Rich Gilbert, Matthew Laws and Adam Paterson were called The Toaster Boys in college.

Today, they are often referred to as The Green Team because of the environmental design strategies they help London-based Native Design Ltd., develop and implement for clients.

“For us, sustainability is the core to good design,” says Paterson. “It's not some extra element which you incorporate into your design principles. It's absolutely fundamental to everything you do.”

The trio studied at the Royal College of Art, earning the nickname, Toaster Boys, for a project that allowed them to apply what they learned from their research of end-of-life waste systems.

“When you think of all the kind of finesse and intelligence that goes into assembly, none of that's there for end of life,” says Gilbert.

“We deliberately chose an object that was a classically industrially designed object and used that as a platform for our thinking,” Laws says.

In considering the end-of-li