Editors Note: This is the fourth of a
five-part series examining a new vision of industry that celebrates
natural, cultural and economic abundance. The first two installments
explored the authors views of what they describe as the
unproductive free of . . . strategy incorporated
by many companies, as well as how personal preferences (based
on scientific experience) can help make the best choices among
products available today. The third article explored the concept
of passive positives. This article examines active
positives before the last installment gives specific steps
to take for reinvention. |
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We now come to Step Four in the series we have been describing:
the Active Positive List. As you may recall, we have discussed the
Free of . . ., Personal Preference (with scientific
experience) and Passive Positive List steps. With Step Four, we
reach the point where a product becomes truly eco-effective, achieving
a paradigm shift that is the crux of reinventing the world. Here,
the overall goal is to make a product actively good
rather than less badto take it as far into the
eco-effective realm as it can go, within the existing framework.
This step is particularly delightful because it is founded on the
idea of nutrients: every element of a product is conceived of as
a nutrientas nourishing, enriching food for either
biological cycles (the systems of nature) or technical cycles (the
systems of industry). Step Four cannot exist without a clear definition
of whether a product and its ingredients can be biological and technical
nutrientseach ingredient of the product recipe
is fully defined. But it doesnt stop there. With Step Four,
we actively and positively define the effects of that product on
the world.
Perfection (or Near-perfection) Within
the Existing Framework
To return to our food analogy, imagine you have made a soup that
turns out far too spicy for your tonguetoo much garlic, onions
and pepper. If you make that soup again, using the same recipe,
you would remove the offending vegetables and herbs to avoid that
unappetizing taste, wouldnt you?
In Step Three, the Passive Positive List, the most irritating chemicals
from a product recipe are identified and removed. We
examine ingredients and categorize them according to A (ideal),
B (principally ideal), C (problematic, but not a critical urgency)
and X (urgent removal). At this point, we are most concerned with
removing X-listed items and finding safe replacements (this is important;
some dangerous elements removed from products to be
replaced with ones that are equally harmful). Step Three might,
in fact, make a product free of hundreds of items, instead of just
one.
How does this lead to Step Four? Lets return to the soup example.
You have decided you will make a soup for dinner, but instead of
just removing a few things that you dont favor or that may
be irritating to your guests, you review all of the ingredients
in the soup, distinguishing between those that you like and want
to leave in and those that are unsavory or unnecessary. With pleasure
and a joyful outcome in mind, you fine-tune the soup ingredients
to suit your needs and desires (and those of your dinner guests).
At the market you purchase everythingherbs, vegetables, meats,
oils, spices and herbsof the best quality possible with your
selection criteria of Free of . . . and Personal Preferences
in mind. Your role is not limited to simply selecting ingredients
(which, in this case, might be organic vegetables and spices, free-range
chicken or kosher meats), but also with the preparation of the entire
meal: you work in partnership with the cook to make sure the soup
becomes the best soup it can be, adding herbs for more
flavor, tasting it as you go along, until perfection is reached.
In this sense, you are the director of the process, defining what
the ingredients are and where they come from. You have actively
defined what will be in the soup and how it will be preparedthis
is a soup you want in the world.
How to Cook a Car
Translate this to a product example: Lets say a client asks
us to work with them on creating an Active Positive List for a car.
We learn everything about the ingredients and the manufacture of
the car. We choose materials that will return to biological and
technical cycles safely and prosperously. We might, for example,
pick substances for brake pads and rubber for tires that can be
products of consumption (they can abrade into nature safely) and
fabrics for seating that are edible upholstery and can
be safely taken up by the mouth and nose when they abrade due to
shifting in the seat. We would make sure valuable technical materials
like steel and plastic are defined as technical nutrients
to be circulated in industrial cycles and that the car is designed
for disassembly. (All of which, by the way, we are currently working
on.)
We think these are vast improvements on the current paradigm of
car. But even so, consider the limitations. In this
case, the design assignment is not, I need transportation
of some kind, but, I need a car. The product,
whatever it is, is perfected within the existing framework; not,
for example, Hmmm. What about a new form of transportation?
What would that look like?although you may indeed have
this question in the back of your mind as you face the limitations
of what you are able to accomplish today.
So, this Step Four car is composed of materials designed to be technical
or biological nutrients. It will not become useless detritus down
the road. And yet . . . it is still a car. The current system of cars on widening
berths of asphalt is not necessarily ideal for the world of abundance
we envision. Buckminster Fuller used to joke that if extraterrestrial
beings landed on the planet, at first sight they would probably
think it was inhabited by cars. Certainly, individual cars can be
fun, but terrible traffic jams and a world of urban surfaces covered
with asphalt are not.
Communities, companies and cultures might want to reconsider this
individual-vehicle-based system of mobility as the solution to transportation
needs worldwide, given the larger eco-effective agenda for health,
wealth and delight. In this case, re-invention might call for a
different kind of transportation systemone that, in appropriate
places, delivers the services that cars and trucks currently provide.
(We like to dream up creative mobility systems that transport people,
goods and services for entire communities with vehicles that enhance
cultural, community and material richness by contributing value
at every turn.)
But that is the next step. With your current soup recipe, you arent
thinking, Maybe my guests dont need dinner. Maybe, since
many of them have plenty of caloric intake as it is, they would
like a poetry reading or a walk in the woods or a discussion of
the new political administrationthat would really feed their
needs! It is clear that you are making dinner for your guests.
It is clear that you are producing a car, a carpet, a pair of blue
jeans or whatever the targeted product may be. The first application
of the Active Positive List is to existing things. The next application,
which happens in Step Five, is to things that are only beginning
to be envisioned or are not yet imagined. To take another product
example, an eco-effective, Active Positive List shoe might consist
of shoe soles designed to become biological nutrients; they abrade
into safe molecules for worms and soil. The shoe uppers
could be either biodegradable or infinitely recyclable as technical
nutrients to make new shoes, or they could be what we call up-cycled
into other products. Yet, this item, designed around nutrients,
is still a conventional shoe. What about an entirely new form of
footwear? If Step Five, Optimization, were the project goal, the
shoe company might be imagining new ways to make packaging for feet
that are quite different from the conventional idea of shoe
currently expressed in the marketplace and which you are used to
seeing and using. What that new foot packaging might be at the moment,
we dont quite know yet, but someone is probably imagining
it.
Although Step Four attempts to perfect something within its existing
framework, it will not necessarily result in a product that is perfect
in every way. The entire industrial infrastructure at the moment
is imperfect and probably will be for some time during this transitional
phase. One does the best one can do. You may be able to make sure
all the ingredients for your soup are organic or that a particular
steel or wool for various portions of the car is derived from a
source you know and trust, but you cannot, at this point in history,
guarantee that these items will be transported to you or processed
by way of renewable energy sources. For economic reasons, too, it
is extremely important to begin redesigning materials and their
uses within the existing framework. Keeping the product in production
and active in the marketplace and maintaining customer demand is
vital: the more customers buy, the more resources manufacturers
have to pursue optimization of products.
Re-materialization (Not De-materialization)
With Step Four, you examine the entire system, perfecting what you
can, defining the product positively (what goes in, not simply what
gets taken out). This makes a products materials desirable
and joyfulnot things to feel guilty or bad about.
Products of all kinds are either consumption products (they are
literally consumed by nature), service products (their
technical materials return to industries, while the service
of them is purchased) or hybrids (some materials, such as polymers
that we are developing, can return safely to both soil and industries).
We are not concerned with de-materialization, as many efficiency
converts are. Today, if you are buying a conventional car, you might
mull it over a bit first, thinking, Do I really need to buy
a car? You might feel guilty about your role as a so-called
consumer, especially since the current system of extraction,
manufacture and disposal is flawed. With a vehicle actively defined,
its materials are technical nutrients that add to a pool of value
for the industry. Other materials might feed nature or be compostable.
Consumption is fun.
So, think re-materialization, not de-materialization. Life is based
on materialsliterally. Lets celebrate that fact.
An Active Passport
In an earlier column, we mentioned a type of polyester designed
with the Passive Positive List in which certain dyes might be replaced
with positively selected ones. But Step Three can only go so farthink
passive versus active. With a Passive Positive
List product, someone might glue a safe polyester to a chair with
undefined glues and sell it without any sense of its activity in
the world, making its recyclability useless. Someone might even
take Climatex, our Lifecycle fabric product, which we would
consider an eco-effective product (we like to say it is the flag
of the Next Industrial Revolution), and use it ineffectively. What
if this safe, healthy fabric were glued to a plastic chair and sold,
eventually ending up in a landfill? Its an interesting dilemma.
Although the fabric itself, when used for upholstery, is a useful
improvement over conventional upholstery because it is edible, we
would not consider this treatment of the fabric to be actively positive.
Even if the chair is resold as used, if it is not channeled
into the biological metabolism via the composting process after
use that it was designed for, it is still a passive eco-effective
product.
For Step Four, polyester would not just be antimony free or even
considered in light of its additives, dyestuffs and so forth. We
examine the entire products activity in the world: as part
of cycles and as part of a system of delivery, recapture and reuse.
All of the materials in the polyester essentially have an active
passport attached to them: we know where they came from, and
we know where they are going next. For example, the next step beyond
designing a safe, healthy fabric might be to work on integrating
that fabric into an entire framework of defined uses within cycles.
In the future, companies will understand materials and products
through their entire existence, from conception through cycles and
cycles, so all materials are actively, positively engaged within
a system of delivery and enjoymentand intergenerationally
so.
Up-cycling
The Active Positive List includes the potential for what we have
coined as up-cycling: an existing product or materialeven
products that are sub-optimal todaycan be improved and brought
into the eco-effective realm and back into the market. A conventional
nylon such as Nylon 6, for example, can be up-cycled into a new
product, improving its characteristics and obviating the need for
coatings such as Scotchguard (pulled from the market when 3M found
out it was a persistent toxin). A polymer, like the new Savant
nylon that we are working on with BASF, can support essentially
infinite recyclability; it can even be made from up-cycled existing
products. There are lots of possibilities, once materials and substances
are actively defined.
Cumulative Quality, Arrived at Step by
Step
Moving through steps one, two and three to Step Four results in
a product of cumulative quality, arrived at step by step. The experiences
of making Free of . . . choices, Personal Preference
choices and creating a Passive Positive List are all drawn upon
during Step Four, a more complex undertaking than any of the others
taken individually. These previous steps also help companies identify
the things that are missing from the modern worldproducts
and ingredients humans need to become eco-effective or create re-evolutions
of delivery and service systems that we already use and need (such
as transportation). That process of re-evolution comes next. Well
speak more about it in our next article.
William A. McDonough, FAIA, and Michael Braungart
are founders and principals of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry,
a consultancy leading a wide variety of companies into what the two
call the Next Industrial Revolution by implementing eco-effective
design and commerce strategies that will result in a future of sustaining
and long-term prosperity. For more information, visit www.mbdc.com.
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