Sustainable Design Practices

Contents

Nature as a system

Principles for redesign

Cradle to Cradle design

Case study – Interface

How to redesign!

Manufacturing Process

Raw Materials

6% Product94% Waste

0% Waste

US$33 trillion p.a.

Natural systems

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Only 6% is product!

There is no accumulation of waste in nature

• In living processes of nature, raw materials are used to produce ‘usable goods for the system’ and ‘waste’ is continually broken down and reconstructed into new resources.

• Waste from one organism is a resource for another

– Oxygen is waste from plants

– Carbon dioxide is waste from animals

– Dead plants and animals become food for bacteria and fungi and for other animals

– Bacteria and fungi help plants to decompose and give off carbon dioxide that then feed plants

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There is accumulation of waste …

• We tend to ignore the lessons that we have learnt from nature and treat resources in a linear rather than cyclic way. In contrast to nature, most modern human economic systems are linear, not cyclic:

Resources →Products →Rubbish

… due to human economic systems.

• Our economic system recognises very few of the ‘costs’ of waste.

• Waste is an ‘externality’.

Raw materials extraction & processing

Manufacturing Transportation Use Disposal

Minerals, timber, oil, water, electricity, fossil fuels, pesticides, labour, land $ etc

Heavy metals, greenhouse gases, persistent chemicals, dioxins, landfill waste, traffic congestion, illness, $ etc

Adapted from Forum for the Future’s ”Buying a Better World”

Linear Supply Chain Systems

What are the options for

reducing waste...

And saving money?

©2001 The Natural Step: All rights reserved

Cyclic Hierarchy

8. Virgin Resources

7. Landfill or Incineration

1. Dematerialisation,Efficiency, Durability

2. Reuse

5. Composting

6. Energy Recovery

3. Recycling

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Cradle to Cradle (C2C)

• It models human industry on nature's processes in which materials are viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms.

• Put simply, it is a holistic economic, industrial and social framework that seeks to create systems that are not just efficient but essentially waste free.

• An alternative to the linear cradle to grave model we currently follow.

• In China, whole cities are being built with this theme in mind. To find out more about C2C watch http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/william_mcdonough_on_cradle_to_cradle_design.html (20 mins)