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Where Is Away? Or, What Happens When You Flush the Toilet.
10/12/2005
Cradle to Cradle (C2C): It’s a Design Problem
William McDonough is probably the lead proponent in making the case that our industrial system can be redesigned to be a creator of goods and services that we want, “while generating ecological, social and economic value.” His book, which is printed on “treeless” paper that is manufactured to be part of a closed loop process that re-uses its chemical content over and over again, is called Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things.
He is making an impact on the design and manufacturing worlds. Here is an interesting article about how a model residence was designed using C2C principles by a team of seven architects and planners, many of whom were SCUP members.
He points out, convincingly, that what we now see playing out in the news media as an inevitable conflict between the environment and industry need not be so. The system that provides us consumer goods in 2005 is “an outgrowth of purely opportunistic design,” with tragic and unintended consequences.”
So, while you are reading this take a good look at your computer and imagine a gigantic funnel above it, holding more than a ton of water, metals, and other chemicals. At the top of that funnel are environmental impacts from poking around the earth collecting raw materials from the environment. Balancing the funnel by its tip is your tiny, high-powered machine. Below it is another funnel, this one with the tip up, on which your computer balances. The open (bottom) end of that funnel is waste. Wouldn’t it be nice if that “waste,” instead of being thrown “away” entered a pipeline to return it to the wide open end of the top funnel?
In the IT world, we are a little bit closer to achieving cradle to cradle, if only because the fact that our machines are so dense with valuable chemicals and metals means that it’s more worthwhile spending the time to figure out how to not waste anything in the process.
But industry needs a nudge once in a while, and the more of us who think about these things, and act on them when we can, the better off our great-great-grandkids are going to be.
P.S. Join a wide mix of people somewhere on your campus, or a nearby one, on
October 26 when large groups of people from faculty, staff, and students –
and across departments and disciplines, will join each other on Campus Sustainability
Day III to connect with the fast-growing number of folks in academia who want
our campuses to be models of learning about and operating by sustainability
principles. Here's a list of campuses currently
signed up.
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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