CRADLE TO CRADLE VERSUS SUSTAINABILITY COMPARING CRADLE TO CRADLE TO TRADITIONAL REGULATORY AND CORPORATE INTERPRETATIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY

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Delphia Morgan
6 years ago
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1 COMPARING CRADLE TO CRADLE TO TRADITIONAL REGULATORY AND CORPORATE INTERPRETATIONS OF

2 Conventional sustainability starts by evaluating impacts of a material or activity on the environment, then attempts to minimize those impacts. [often optimizing the wrong thing] starts by assessing the functional purposes of products for users and applying the three principles to product and process design. [asking what is the right thing to do]

3 Durability Product cycles get shorter in almost every industry due to technological improvements. However Sustainability often promotes the opposite; durability. Is it practical for a PDA to last 25 years? Defined Use Periods turns planned obsolescence into a benefit by designing products according to defined use periods, so manufacturers know when they get their resources back or arrange to have them recycled.

4 Minimization Many sustainable activities are often defined in terms of minimization e.g. minimizing human impacts, zero footprint, banning substances, and reducing energy use and pollution. Abundance recognizes that humans, just like sunlight, termites, elephants, trees,and volcanoes are abundant and have big impacts. The challenge is to make abundance beneficial. Efficiency is applied to accelerate use of abundant renewables

5 Tell Your Customer to Minimize Sustainability policies often force companies to make customers their enemies by discouraging them from buying their products e.g. keep your old toxic product for another year to be more durable. This approach only slows changes while making customers feel guilty about purchasing new things. Invite your Customer to Buy encourages customers to buy more products from innovative companies. The more you buy the faster the company can convert. achieves this without mindless consumption by creating service concepts for products, where customers, suppliers and manufacturers are partners.

6 Energy Efficiency Sustainability aims to minimize impacts of energy by reducing" its consumption. However as the numbers of e.g. buildings or cars multiply, energy efficiency is negated by new demand. Energy Effectiveness aims to design energy delivery systems where the involved material media are biological or technical nutrients. E.g. link renewable energy production with cleaning air and water. uses efficiency to enhance the right kind of energy instead of minimizing the wrong kind of energy.

7 Sustainability as Cost Despite the new marketing term People Planet & Profit, sustainability is still often perceived as a cost for reducing human impacts, due to the restrictive aspects of most legislation. Quality Improvement as a Benefit is an innovation platform to enhance economic benefits by improving quality and marketability while anticipating new legislative restrictions.

8 Being Ethical This less bad approach is often defined in terms of ethics. e.g. unsustainable activities are unethical. Being Smart Although encourages people to be good, it does not rely on ethics to qualify things. Bad products are not unethical, they are just poorly designed. Good products are not ethical, they are just well designed.

9 Nature is Friendly Partner Mother Nature Many interpretations of Sustainability romanticize Nature as fundamentally good whereas technology has impacts on the Nature which are of course negative. Environment has no Morality Natural disasters and disease are not romantic. Animals often kill young offspring. Instead of romanticizing Nature, humans require technology to protect themselves from, and find a balance with, the environment.

10 Closed Loops Regulatory definitions of Sustainability often attempt to "close loops" for industrial processes. Companies think they have to take their products back and reuse them in their own new products to close loops. This limits future innovation. Continuous Metabolism In the living environment materials are constantly transformed without losing their capability as nutrients. Instead of recycling apples into apples, organisms transform them into nutrients for other organisms. In continuous industrial metabolisms,supply chain management can be innovative by using materials from one industry to support another.

11 acknowledgements

Environmental Worldviews, Ethics, and Sustainability. Chapter 26

Environmental Worldviews, Ethics, and Sustainability Chapter 26 ENVIRONMENTAL WORLDVIEWS AND VALUES Your environmental worldview encompasses: How you think the world works. What you believe your environmental