Sustainable Design Practices
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Transcript of Sustainable Design Practices
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
Copyright © BusinessLAB Ltd 2008
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
Copyright © The Natural Step
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
Decreasin
g m
aterial qu
ality (entro
py)
Eco
no
mic
op
po
rtu
nit
y
4.
Tra
nsm
ate
ria
lisa
tio
n
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)