An important player in the design world, Valerie Casey had been pitching new packaging and product-design strategies to corporate giants with less-than-stellar environmental resumes. Hesitant to even broach the topic of sustainability at the risk of scaring off her potential clients, and anguished at her own cowardice, she began, there on the plane, to write a "Kyoto Treaty" of design, a call to action for the design industry to turn away from environmentally irresponsible, profit-driven practices and commit itself to sustainability. That impromptu manifesto has now been formalized as the Designers Accord, and a broad coalition of 100,000 designers, engineers, and corporate leaders have committed to the ideal of environmentally and socially responsible design.