Our strategy for sustainable design is based on the new Cradle to Cradle design strategy, which proves that company growth is notnecessarily a threat for the environment, but even helps to createecological, social and economical values. It represents a fundamentalconceptual shift away from the flawed system design of the IndustrialRevolution, not just a damage management strategy.
In response to widespread environmental degradation, many industrieshave adopted a strategy known as "eco-efficiency"-minimizing waste,pollution, and natural resource depletion. But eco-efficiency is not astrategy for long-term success. It seeks to make the current,destructive system sustainable.
Waste Equals Food
Minimizing toxic pollution and the waste of natural resources are notstrategies for real change. Designing industrial processes so they donot generate toxic pollution and "waste" in the first place is truechange. Long-term prosperity depends not on the efficiency of afundamentally destructive system, but on the effectiveness of processesdesigned to be healthy and renewable in the first place.
Cradle to Cradle Design's strategy of eco-effectiveness is rootedin the systems of the natural world, which are not efficient at all,but effective. Consider the cherry tree. Each spring it makes thousandsof blossoms, which then fall in piles to the ground-not very efficient.But the fallen blossoms become food for other living things. The tree'sabundance of blossoms is both safe and useful, contributing to thehealth of a thriving, interdependent system. And the tree spreadsmultiple positive effects-making oxygen, transpiring water, creatinghabitat, and more. And it is beautiful!
Eco-effectiveness seeks to design industrial systems that emulatethe healthy abundance of nature. The central design principle ofeco-effectiveness is waste equals food.
When waste equals food, the "be less bad" imperatives of efficiencyfade. When a product returns to industry at the end of its useful lifeand its materials are used to make equally valuable new products, theminerals or plastics of which it is made do not need to beminimized-because they will not become waste in a landfill. Industrysaves billions of dollars annually by recovering valuable materialsfrom used products. Similarly, products designed to be made of natural,safely biodegradable materials can be returned to the soil to feedecosystems instead of depleting them.
Transforming the Making of Things
This fundamental conceptual shift leads to design strategies that somemight find surprising. For example, instead of minimizing theconsumption of energy generated from coal, oil, and nuclear plants, whynot maximize energy availability using solar and wind sources? Insteadof using only natural, biodegradable fibers like cotton for textileproduction (a pesticide-intensive agricultural process), why not usenon-toxic synthetic fibers designed for perpetual recycling into newtextile products? Instead of directing intelligence towards regulationcompliance and liability reduction, why not design industrial processesand products so safe they do not need regulation, and direct creativitytowards maximizing economic, social, and ecological benefits?
Eco-effectiveness has profound implications for industrieseverywhere. Rather than lamenting a world of hazardous waste, scarceresources, and limited opportunities, it celebrates an abundance ofcontinuously valuable industrial and natural materials, of rich anddiverse living systems, of economic and environmental wealth.
The eco-effective future of industry is a "world of abundance" thatcelebrates the use and "consumption" (by people, nature, andintelligent industrial systems) of products and materials that are, ineffect, nutritious-as safe, effective, and delightful as a cherry tree.
Source: MBDC.com
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