1

READING LIST Sustainability ABC and Fashion Trends: Edwards, A. R., (2005), The Sustainability Revolution – Portrait of a Paradigm Shift. Canada, New Society Publishers, page 11-27 Fletcher, K., (2008), Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys. UK, Earthscan, page 41-73. Black, S., (2008), Eco Chic – The Fashion Paradox London, Black Dog, page 7-21 Schumacher, E. F., (1973), Small is Beautiful. UK, Abacus Books, page 1-19 Cradle to Cradle: Elgar, E., (2004), The International Handbook of Environmental Technology Management. McDonough, W. & Braungart, M. (2003), Remaking the way we make things – Creating a New Definition of Quality with Cradle-to-Cradle Design. Page 1-15 Datschefski, E., (2001), The Total Beauty of Sustainable Products. Switzerland, RotoVision, page 1-7 Keoleian, G. A. and Menerey, D., (1993), Life Cycle Design: Guidance Manual. Cincinnati, OH: US EPA, page 62-92 Consumption and Consumer Behavior: Jackson, T., (2009), Prosperity without Growth. London, Earthscan, page 9-13 Nordic Fashion Association / BSR, (2012), The NICE Consumer: Framework for achieving Sustainable Fashion Consumption through Collaboration. New Business Models, Sustainability and Commerce: Durning, A., (1992), How much is enough?: The Consumer Society and the Future of the Earth. UK, Earthscan, page 172-179 Edwards, A. R., (2005), The Sustainability Revolution – Portrait of a Paradigm Shift. Canada, New Society Publishers, page 49-74

2

Grant, J., (2007), The Green Marketing Manifesto. UK, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., page 1-16 Freeman, R. E., Institute for Corporate Ethics: What is Stakeholder Theory? Interview / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih5IBe1cnQw Hutter, L., Capozucca, P., Nayyar, S., (2010), Deloitte review, issue 7 | 2010, page 46-58 Further resources: Centre for Sustainable Fashion Students and tutors are encouraged to put forward contributions for the website. www.sustainable-fashion.com Fashioning an Ethical Industry An excellent network of fashion educators focusing on worker’s rights. Website and regular events provide outstanding information available to tutors and students. www.fashioninganethicalindustry.org WWF Published a series of excellent reports, including Deeper Luxury, and Natural Change. www.wwf.org.uk New Economics Foundation An independent think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being. Excellent free reports available to download such as the Happy Planet Index. http://neweconomics.org/ Sublime Magazine http://sublimemagazine.com/

E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, London, Abacus Books, 1973.

Selected Quotes

Chapter 1: The Problem of Production

One of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that "the problem of production" has been

solved.

The arising of this error, so egregious and so firmly rooted, is closely connected with the

philosophical, not to say religious, changes during the last three or four centuries in man's attitude

to nature…Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force

destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won

the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.

The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements,

has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion

is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters

most. Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it

conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really

matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without

which he can do nothing.

…we are estranged from reality and inclined to treat as valueless everything that we have not made

ourselves.

…we have indeed labored to make some of the capital which today helps us to produce – a large

fund of scientific, technological, and other knowledge; an elaborate physical infrastructure;

innumerable types of sophisticated capital equipment, etc. – but all this is but a small part of the

total capital we are using. Far larger is the capital provided by nature and not by man – and we do

not even recognize it as such. This larger part is now being used up at an alarming rate, and that is

why it is an absurd and suicidal error to believe, and act on the belief, that the problem of

production has been solved.

Is it not evident that our current methods of production are already eating into the very substance

of industrial man?

The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product.

Statistics never prove anything.

…one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that the problem of production has been

solved. The illusion…is mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system,

with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which it has been erected. To use

the language of the economist, it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income.

And what is my case? Simply that our most important task is to get off our present collision course.

And who is there to tackle such a task? I think every one of us, whether old or young, powerful or

powerless, rich or poor, influential or un-influential.

To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now.

We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature and,

above all, with those Higher Powers which have made nature and have made us; for, assuredly, we

have not come about by accident and certainly have not made ourselves.

Now that man has acquired the physical means of self-obliteration, the question of peace obviously

looms larger than ever before in human history. And how could peace be built without some

assurance of permanence with regard to our economic life?

Chapter 2: Peace and Permanence

It is clear that the "rich" are in the process of stripping the world of its once-for-all endowment of

relatively cheap and simple fuels. It is their continuing economic growth which produces ever more

exorbitant demands, with the result that the world's cheap and simple fuels could easily become

dear and scare long before the poor countries had acquired the wealth, education, industrial

sophistication, and power of capital accumulation needed for the application of alternative fuels on

any significant scale.

…that economic growth, which viewed from the point of view of economics, physics, chemistry, and

technology, has no discernable limit must necessary run into decisive bottlenecks when viewed from

the point of view of the environmental sciences. An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the

single-minded pursuit of wealth – in short, materialism – does not fit into this world, because it

contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly

limited.

The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these

are not accidental features but the very causes of its expansionist success. The question is whether

such causes can be effective for long or whether they carry within themselves the seeds of

destruction.

If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing

less than a collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things

as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become

failures. If whole societies become infected by these vices, they may indeed achieve astonishing

things but they become increasingly incapable of solving the most elementary problems of everyday

existence.

…the foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modern sense, because

such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as

greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of

man.

No one is really working for peace unless he is working primarily for the restoration of wisdom.

From an economic point of view, the central concept of wisdom is permanence. We must study an

economics of permanence.

The exclusion of wisdom from economics, science and technology was something which we could

perhaps get away with for a little while, as long as we were relatively unsuccessful; but now that we

have become very successful, the problem of spiritual and moral truth moves into the central

position.

The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of

freedom and peace. Every increase in needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces

over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of

needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife

and war.

That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human

nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no

amount of "bread and circuses" can compensate for the damage done – these are facts which are

neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence – because

to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central

preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.

The neglect, indeed the rejection, of wisdom has gone so far that most of our intellectuals have not

even the faintest idea what the term could mean. As a result, they always tend to try and cure a

disease by intensifying its causes. The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace

wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure. But what is wisdom? Where can it

be found? Here we come to the crux of the matter: it can be read about in numerous publications

but it can be found only inside oneself.

[The insights of wisdom]…enable us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness of a

life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the neglect of the spiritual. Such a life

necessarily sets man against man and national against nation, because man's needs are infinite and

infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.

How can we disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves;

perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even

scrutinizing our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.

An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.

Chapter 3: The Role of Economics

Economics…deals with goods in accordance with their market value and not in accordance with what

they really are. The same rules and criteria are applied to primary goods, which man has to win from

nature, and secondary goods, which presuppose the existence of primary goods, and are

manufactured from them. All goods are treated the same, because the point of view is

fundamentally that of private profit-making, and this means that it is inherent in the methodology of

economics to ignore man's dependence on the natural world.

The market…represents only the surface of society and its significance relates to the momentary

situation as it exists there and then. There is no probing into the depths of things, into the natural or

social facts that lie behind them. In a sense, the market is the institutionalization of individualism

and non-responsibility. Neither buyer nor seller is responsible for anything but himself.

…the reign of quantity celebrates its greatest triumphs in "the Market." Everything is equated with

everything else. To equate things means to give them a price and thus to make them exchangeable.

To the extent that economic thinking is based on the market, it takes the sacredness out of life,

because there can be nothing sacred in something that has a price.

To press non-economic values into the framework of the economic calculus, economists use the

method of cost/benefit analysis. This is generally thought to be an enlightened and progressive

development, as it is at least an attempt to take account of costs and benefits which might

otherwise be disregarded altogether. In fact, however, it is a procedure by which the higher is

reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price. It can therefore never serve to

clarify the situation and lead to an enlightened decision. All it can do is lead to self-deception or the

deception of others; all one has to do to obtain the desired results is to impute suitable values to the

immeasurable costs and benefits. The logical absurdity, however, is not the greatest fault of the

undertaking: with is worse, and destructive of civilization, is the pretence that everything has a price

or, in other words, that money is the highest of all values.

An expansion of man's ability to bring forth secondary products is useless unless preceded by an

expansion of his ability to win primary products from the earth; for man is not a producer but only a

converter, and for every job of conversion he needs primary products.

…the effort needed to sustain a way of life which seeks to attain the optimal pattern of consumption

is likely to be much smaller than the effort needed to sustain a drive for maximum consumption.

Since there is now increasing evidence of environmental deterioration, particularly in living nature,

the entire outlook and methodology of economics is being called into question. The study of

economics is too narrow and too fragmentary to lead to valid insights, unless complemented and

completed by a study of meta-economics.

Chapter 4: Buddhist Economics

Economists themselves, like most specialists, normally suffer from a kind of metaphysical blindness,

assuming that theirs is a science of absolute and invariable truths, without any presuppositions.

Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man's work. And work, properly conducted in

conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it equally their products.

Modern economics does not distinguish between renewable and non-renewable materials, as its

very method is to equalize and quantify everything by means of a money price.

As the world's resources of non-renewable fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—are exceedingly

unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their

exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost

inevitably lead to violence between men.

…it is not a question of choosing between "modern growth" and "traditional stagnation." It is a

question of finding the right path of development, the Middle Way between materialist

heedlessness and traditionalist immobility…

Chapter 5: A Question of Size

Even today, we are generally told that gigantic organizations are inescapably necessary; but when

we look closely we can notice that as soon as great size has been created there is often a strenuous

attempt to attain smallness within bigness.

…it is true that all men are brothers, but it is also true that in our active personal relationships we

can, in fact, be brothers to only a few of them, and we are called upon to show more brotherliness

to them than we could possibly show to the whole of mankind.

Economics, which Lord Keynes had hoped would settle down as a modest occupation similar to

dentistry, suddenly becomes the most important subject of all.

There is no such thing as the viability of states or of nations, there is only a problem of viability of

people: people, actual persons like you and me, are viable when they can stand on their own feet

and earn their keep. You do not make non-viable people viable by putting large numbers of them

into one huge community, and you do not make viable people non-viable by splitting a large

community into a number of smaller, more intimate, more coherent and more manageable groups.

The economic calculus, as applied by present-day economics, forces the industrialist to eliminate the

human factor because machines do not make mistakes, which people do. Hence the enormous

effort at automation and the drive for ever-larger units. This means that those who have nothing to

sell but their labor remain in the weakest possible bargaining position.

The conventional wisdom of what is now taught as economics bypasses the poor, the very people

for whom development is really needed. The economics of giantism and automation is a leftover of

nineteenth-century conditions and nineteenth-century thinking and it is totally incapable of solving

any of the real problems of today. An entirely new system of thought is needed, a system based on

attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods—(the goods will look after themselves!). It

could be summed up in the phrase, "production by the masses, rather than mass production."

What is the meaning of democracy, freedom, human dignity, standard of living, self-realization,

fulfillment? Is it a matter of goods, or of people? Of course it is a matter of people. But people can

be themselves only in small comprehensible groups.

Chapter 6: The Great Resource - Education

All history – as well as all current experience – points to the fact that it is man, not nature, who

provides the primary resource: that the key factor of all economic development comes out of the

mind of man.

At present, there can be little doubt that the whole of mankind is in mortal danger, not because we

are short of scientific and technological know-how, but because we tend to use it destructively,

without wisdom. More education can help us only if produces more wisdom.

On the basis of experience and conscious thought small ideas may easily be dislodged, but when it

comes to bigger, more universal, or more subtle ideas it may not be so easy to change them. Indeed,

it is often difficult to become aware of them, as they are the instruments and not the results of our

thinking—just as you can see what is outside you, but cannot easily see that with which you see, the

eye itself.

The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on

the kind of ideas that fill our minds.

The essence of education…is the transmission of values, but values do not help us to pick our way

through life unless they have become our own, a part, so to say, of our mental make-up. This means

that they are more than mere formulae or dogmatic assertions: that we think and feel with them,

that they are the very instruments through which we look at, interpret, and experience the world.

When people ask for education…I think what they are really looking for is ideas that would make the

world, and their own lives, intelligible to them. When a thing is intelligible you have a sense of

participation; when a thing is unintelligible you have a sense of estrangement.

What is at fault is no specialization, but the lack of depth with which the subjects are usually

presented, and the absence of metaphysical awareness.

We have become confused to what our convictions really are. The great ideas of the nineteenth

century may fill our minds in one way or another, but our hearts do not believe in them all the same.

Mind and heart are at war with one another, not, as is commonly asserted, reason and faith. Our

reason has become so beclouded by an extraordinary, blind, and unreasonable faith in a set of

fantastic and life-destroying ideas inherited from the nineteenth century. It is the foremost task of

our reason to recover a truer faith than that.

The typical problems of life are insoluble on the level of being on which we normally find ourselves.

How can one reconcile the demands of freedom and discipline in education? Countless mothers and

teachers, in fact, do it, but no one can write down a solution. They do it by bringing into the situation

a force that belongs to a higher level where opposites are transcended—the power of love.

It is only when we can see the world as a ladder, and when we can see man's position on the ladder,

that we can recognize a meaningful task for man's life on earth.

The true problems of living…are always problems of overcoming or reconciling opposites. They are

divergent problems and have no solution in the ordinary sense of the word. They demand of man

not merely the employment of his reasoning powers but the commitment of his whole personality.

…ideas are the most powerful things on earth…

What is to take the place of the soul and life-destroying metaphysics inherited from the nineteenth

century? The task of our generation, I have no doubt, is one of metaphysical reconstruction… Our

task – and the task of all education – is to understand the present world, the world in which we live

and make our choices.

Chapter 7: The Proper Use of Land

There are always some things which we do for their own sakes, and there are other things which we

do for some other purpose. One of the most important tasks for any society is to distinguish

between ends and means-to-ends, and to have some sort of cohesive view and argument about this.

We can say that man's management of the land must be primarily orientated towards three goals –

health, beauty, and permanence. The fourth goal – the only once accepted by the experts –

productivity, will then be attained almost as a by-product.

…we should be searching for policies to reconstruct rural culture, to open the land for the gainful

occupation to larger numbers of people, whether it be on a full-time or a part-time bases, and to

orientate all our actions on the land towards the threefold ideal of health, beauty and permanence.

We know too much about ecology today to have any excuse for the many abuses that are currently

going on in the management of the land, in the management of animals, in food storage, food

processing, and in heedless urbanization. If we permit them, this is not due to poverty, as if we could

not afford to stop them; it is due to the fact that, as a society, we have no firm basis of belief in any

meta-economic values, and when there is no such belief the economic calculus takes over.

Nature, it has been said, abhors a vacuum, and when the available "spiritual space" is not filled by

some higher motivation, then it will necessarily be filled by something lower – by the small, mean,

calculating attitude to life which is rationalized in the economic calculus.

In the simple question of how we treat the land, next to people our most precious resource, our

entire way of live is involved, and before our policies with regard to the land will really be changed,

there will have to be a great deal of philosophical, not to say religious, change. It is not a question of

what we can afford but of what we choose to spend our money on. If we could return to a generous

recognition of meta-economic values, our landscapes would become healthy and beautiful again and

our people would regain the dignity of man…

Chapter 8: Resources for Industry

The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little.

Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of

imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.

It might be said that energy is for the mechanical world what consciousness is for the human world.

If energy fails, everything fails.

Chapter 9: Nuclear Energy – Salvation or Damnation?

Even an economist might well ask: what is the point of economic progress, a so-called higher

standard of living, when the earth, the only earth we have, is being contaminated by substances

which may cause malformations in our children or grandchildren?

To mention these things, no doubt, means laying oneself open to the charge of being against science,

technology, and progress. Let me therefore, in conclusion, add a few words about future scientific

research. Man cannot live without science and technology any more than he can live against nature.

[Scientists] must work on public opinion, so that the politicians, depending on public opinion, will

free themselves from the thralldom of economism and attend to the things that really matter. What

matters, as I said, is the direction of research, that the direction should be towards non-violence

rather than violence; towards an harmonious cooperation with nature rather than a warfare against

nature; towards the noiseless, low-energy, elegant and economical solutions normally applied in

nature rather than the noisy, high-energy, brutal, wasteful, and clumsy solutions of our present-day

sciences.

Chapter 10: Technology with a Human Face

If technology is felt to be becoming more and more inhuman, we might do well to consider whether

it is possible to have something better - a technology with a human face.

Nature always…knows where and when to stop. Greater even than the mystery of natural growth is

the mystery of the natural cessation of growth. There is measure in all natural things – in their size,

speed, or violence. As a result, the system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-

balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing.

There is nothing in the experience of the last twenty-five years to suggest that modern technology,

as we know it, can really help us to alleviate world poverty, not to mention the problem of

unemployment…we had better fact the question of technology - what does it do and hat should it do?

Can we develop a technology which really helps us to solve our problems – a technology with a

human face?

We may say, therefore, that modern technology has deprived man of the kind of work that he enjoys

most, creative, useful work with hands and brains, and given him plenty f work of a fragmented kind,

most of which he does not enjoy at all…we might do well to take stock and reconsider our goals.

Taking stock, we can say that we possess a vast accumulation of new knowledge, splendid scientific

techniques to increase it further and immense experience in its application. All this is truth of a kind.

This truthful knowledge, as such, does not commit us to a technology of giantism, supersonic speed,

violence, and the destruction of human work-enjoyment. The use we have made of our knowledge is

only one of its possible uses and, as is now becoming ever more apparent, often an unwise and

destructive use.

What we have today, in modern industrial society, is not romantic and certainly not utopian…But it is

in very deep trouble and holds no promise of survival. We jolly well have to have the courage to

dream if we want to survive and give our children a chance of survival.

The…crisis of which I have spoken will not go away if we simply carry on as before. It will become

worse and end in disaster, until or unless we develop a new life-style which is compatible with the

real needs of human nature, with the health of living nature around us, and with the resource

endowment of the world.

…the present consumer society is like a drug addict who, no matter how miserable he may fell, finds

it extremely difficult to get off the hook. The problem children of the world – from this point of view

and in spite of many other considerations that could be adduced – are the rich societies and not the

poor.

..the poverty of the poor makes it in any case impossible for them successfully to adopt our

technology. Of course, they often try to do so, and then have to bear the most dire consequences in

terms of mass unemployment, mass migration into cities, rural decay, and intolerable social tensions.

They need, in fact, the very thing I am talking about, which we also need: a different kind of

technology, a technology with a human face, which, instead of making human hands and brains

redundant, helps them to become far more productive than they ever have been before.

Although we are in possession of all requisite knowledge, it still requires a systematic, creative effort

to bring this technology into active existence and make it generally visible and available. It is my

experience that it is rather more difficult to recapture directness and simplicity than to advance in

the direction of ever more sophistication and complexity.

…it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again. And this insight does not come

easily to people who have allowed themselves to become alienated from real, productive work and

from the self-balancing system of nature, which never fails to recognize measure and limitation.

In our work with the developing countries we are at least forced to recognize the limitations of

poverty, and this work can therefore be a wholesome school for all of us in which, while generally

trying to help others, we may also gain knowledge and experience of how to help ourselves.

…it takes a good deal of courage to say "no" to the fashions and fascinations of the age and to

question the presuppositions of a civilization which appears destined to conquer the whole world;

the requisite strength can be derived only from deep convictions. If it were derived from nothing

more than fear of the future, it would be likely to disappear at the decisive moment.

The power of ordinary people, who today tend to feel utterly powerless, does not lie in starting new

lines of action, but in placing their sympathy and support with minority groups which have already

started.

…the modern tendency is to see and become conscious of only the visible and to forget the invisible

things that are making the visible possible and keep it going.

…a technology with a human face, is in fact possible; that it is viable; and that it re-integrates the

human being, with his skillful hands and creative brain, into the productive process. It serves

production by the masses instead of mass production.

Chapter 11: Development

…we tend to think of development, not in terms of evolution, but in terms of creation.

That the developing countries cannot do without a modern sector, particularly when they are in

direct contact with the rich countries, is hardly open to doubt. What needs to be questioned is the

implicit assumption that the modern sector can be expanded to absorb virtually the entire

population and that this can be done fairly quickly.

Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organization, and

discipline. Without these three, all resources remain latent, untapped, potential.

If aid is given to introduce certain new economic activities, these will be beneficial and viable only if

they can be sustained by the already existing educational level of fairly broad groups of people, and

they will be truly valuable only if they promote and spread advances in educations, organization, and

discipline…It follow from this that development is not primarily a problem for economists, least of all

for economists whose expertise is founded on a crudely materialistic philosophy.

Chapter 12: Social and Economic Problems Calling for the Development of Intermediate

Technology

I am concerned here exclusively with the problem of helping people in the non-modern

sector…[because] all successes in the modern sector are likely to be illusory unless there is also a

healthy growth—or at least a healthy condition of stability—among the very great numbers of

people today whose life is characterized not only by dire poverty but also by hopelessness.

It is necessary, therefore, that at least an important part of the development effort should by-pass

the big cities and be directly concerned with the creation of an "agro-industrial structure" in the

rural and small-town areas.

The task, then, is to bring into existence millions of new workplaces in the rural areas and small

towns. That modern industry, as it has arisen in the developed countries, cannot possibly fulfill this

task should be perfectly obvious. It has arisen in societies which are rich in capital and short of labor

and therefore cannot possibly be appropriate for societies short of capital and rich in labor.

The bigger the country, the greater is the need for internal "structure" and for a decentralized

approach to development. If this need is neglected, there is no hope for the poor.

I believe, therefore, that the best way to make contact with the essential problem is by speaking of

technology: economic development in poverty-stricken areas can be fruitful only on the basis of

what I have called "intermediate technology." In the end, intermediate technology will be "labor-

intensive" and will lend itself to the use of small-scale establishments

I say, therefore, that the dynamic approach to development, which treats the choice of appropriate,

intermediate technologies as the central issue, opens up avenues of constructive action, which the

static, econometric approach totally fails to recognize.

The poor can be helped to help themselves, but only by making available to them a technology that

recognizes the economic boundaries and limitations of poverty—an intermediate technology.

Chapter 13: Two Million Villages

Social cohesion, cooperation, mutual respect, and above all, self-respect, courage in the face of

adversity, and the ability to bear hardship—all this and much else disintegrates and disappears when

these "psychological structures" are gravely damaged. A man is destroyed by the inner conviction of

uselessness. No amount of economic growth can compensate for such losses—though this may be

an idle reflection, since economic growth is normally inhibited by them.

The common criterion of success, namely the growth of GNP, is utterly misleading and, in fact, must

of necessity lead to phenomena which can only be described as neo-colonialism.

Methods of production, standards of consumption, criteria of success or failure, systems of values,

and behavior patterns establish themselves in poor countries which, being (doubtfully) appropriate

only to conditions of affluence already achieved, fix the poor countries ever more inescapably in a

condition of utter dependence on the rich.

The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge. A gift of knowledge is infinitely

preferable to a gift of material things.

Before we can talk about giving aid, we must have something to give. We do not have thousands of

poverty-stricken villages in our country; so what do we know about effective methods of self-help in

such circumstances?

Yet it remains an unalterable truth that, just as a sound mind depends on a sound body, so the

health of the cities depends on the health of the rural areas. The cities, with all their wealth, are

merely secondary producers, while primary production, the precondition of all economic life, takes

place in the countryside.

There is no answer to the evils of mass unemployment and mass migration into cities, unless the

whole level of rural life can be raised, and this requires the development of an agro-industrial

culture, so that each district, each community, can offer a colorful variety of occupations to its

members.

Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone

econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organization, discipline and,

beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance.

Chapter 14: The Problem of Unemployment in India

Can we establish an ideology, or whatever you like to call it, which insists that the educated have

taken upon themselves an obligation and have not simply acquired a "passport to privilege"? …It is,

you might well say, an elementary matter of justice.

As far as simple products are concerned—food, clothing, shelter, and culture—the greatest danger is

that people should automatically assume that only the 1963 model is relevant and not the 1903

model; because the 1963 way of doing things is inaccessible to the poor, as it presupposes great

wealth.

So let's not mesmerize ourselves by the difficulties, but recover the common-sense view that to

work is the most natural thing in the world. Only one must not be blocked by being too damn clever

about it…It is a fixation in the mind, that unless you can have the latest you can't do anything at all,

and this is the thing that has to be overcome.

The really helpful things will not be done from the centre; they cannot be done by big organizations;

but they can be done by the people themselves.

Chapter 15: A Machine to Foretell the Future?

Economics, and even more so applied economics, is not an exact science; it is in fact, or ought to be,

something much greater: a branch of wisdom.

I thus come to the cheerful conclusion that life, including economic life, is still worth living because it

is sufficiently unpredictable to be interesting.

In his urgent attempt to obtain reliable knowledge about his essentially indeterminate future, the

modern man of action may surround himself by ever-growing armies of forecasters, by ever-growing

mountains of factual data to be digested by ever more wonderful mechanical contrivances: I fear

that the result is little more than a huge game of make-believe and an ever more marvelous

vindication of Parkinson's Law. The best decisions will still be based on the judgments of mature

non-electronic brains possessed by men who have looked steadily and calmly at the situation and

seen it whole.

Chapter 16: Towards a Theory of Large-Scale Organization

Undoubtedly this is all a problem of communications. But the only really effective communication is

from man to man, face to face.

Nobody really likes large-scale organization; nobody likes to take orders from a superior who takes

orders from a superior who takes orders…Even if the rules devised by bureaucracy are outstandingly

humane, nobody likes to be ruled by rules, that is to say, by people whose answer to every

complaint is: "I did not make the rules: I am merely applying them."

Yet is seems, large-scale organization is here to stay. Therefore it is all the more necessary to think

about it and to theorize about it. The stronger the current, the greater the need for skillful

navigation.

The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within the large organization.

Ideals can rarely be attained in the real world, but they are none-the-less meaningful. They imply

that any departure from the ideal has to be specially argued and justified.

Intellectual confusion exacts its price. We preach the virtues of hard work and restraint while

painting utopian pictures of unlimited consumptions without either work or restraint.

If our intellectual leaders treat work as nothing but a necessary evil soon to be abolished as far as

the majority is concerned, the urge to minimize it right away is hardly a surprising reaction, and the

problem of motivation becomes insoluble.

Excellent! This is real life, full of antinomies and bigger than logic. Without order, planning,

predictability, central control, accountancy, instructions to the underlings, obedience, discipline—

without these, nothing fruitful can happen, because everything disintegrates. And yet—without the

magnanimity of disorder, the happy abandon, the entrepreneurship venturing into the unknown and

incalculable, without the risk and the gamble, the creative imagination rushing in where

bureaucratic angels fear to tread—without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace.

Chapter 17: Socialism

Both theoretical considerations and practical experience have led me to the conclusion that

socialism is of interest solely for its non-economic values and the possibility it creates for the

overcoming of the religion of economics.

The strength of the idea of private enterprise lies in this terrifying simplicity. It suggests that the

totality of life can be reduced to one aspect—profits.

In this respect, the idea of private enterprise fits exactly into the idea of The Market, which, in an

earlier chapter, I called "the institutionalization of individualism and non-responsibility."

[There exists a] modern trend towards total quantification at the expense of the appreciation of

qualitative differences; for private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only with

what it gains from production.

The point is that the real strength of the theory of private enterprise lies in this ruthless

simplification, which fits so admirably also into the mental patterns created by the phenomenal

successes of science.

If [businessmen] themselves pursue objectives other than that of profit-making, they cannot very

well argue that it becomes impossible to administer the nation's means of production efficiently as

soon as considerations other than those of profit-making are allowed to enter.

But while all fanaticism shows intellectual weakness, a fanaticism about the means to be employed

for reaching quite uncertain objectives is sheer feeble mindedness.

What is at stake is not economics, but culture; not the standard of living but the quality of life.

Economics and the standards of living can just as well be looked after by a capitalist system,

moderated by a bit of planning and redistributive taxation. But culture and, generally, the quality of

life, can now only be debased by such a system.

Socialists should insist on using the nationalized industries not simply to out-capitalize the

capitalists—an attempt in which they may or may not succeed—but to evolve a more democratic

and dignified system of industrial administration, a more humane employment of machinery, and a

more intelligent utilization of the fruits of human ingenuity and effort.

Chapter 18: Ownership

I have argued all along, no system of machinery or economic doctrine or theory stands on its own

feet: it is invariably built on a metaphysical foundation, that is to say, upon man's basic outlook on

life, its meaning and its purpose.

I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol worship of material possessions, of

consumption and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact

that "what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us."

The answer is self-evident: greed and envy demand continuous and limitless economic growth of a

material kind, without proper regard for conservation, and this type of growth cannot possibly fit

into a finite environment.

When we move from small-scale to medium-scale, the connection between ownership and work

already becomes attenuated; private enterprise tends to become impersonal and also a significant

social factor in the locality; it may even assume more than local significance.

In small-scale enterprise, private ownership is natural, fruitful, and just.

In large-scale enterprise, private ownership is a fiction for the purpose of enabling functionless

owners to live parasitically on the labor of others. It is not only unjust but also an irrational element

which distorts all relationships within the enterprise.

Chapter 19: New Patterns of Ownership

The truth is that a large part of the costs of private enterprise has been borne by the public

authorities—because they pay for the infrastructure—and that the profits of private enterprise

therefore greatly overstate its achievement.

Now, one does not have to be a believer in total equality, whatever that may mean, to be able to see

that the existence of inordinately rich people in any society today is a very great evil.

In other words, everybody claims to achieve freedom by his own "system" and accuses every other

"system" as inevitably entailing tyranny, totalitarianism, or anarchy leading to both.

All the indications are that the present structure of large-scale industrial enterprise, in spite of heavy

taxation and an endless proliferation of legislation, is not conducive to the public welfare.

Epilogue

In the excitement over the unfolding of his scientific and technical powers, modern man has built a

system of production that ravishes nature and a type of society that mutilates man.

There has never been a time, in any society in any part of the world, without its sages and teachers

to challenge materialism and plead for a different order of priorities…Today, however, this message

reaches us not solely from the sages and saints but from the actual course of physical events. It

speaks to us in the language of terrorism, genocide, breakdown, pollution, exhaustion.

Needless to say, wealth, education, research and many other things are needed for any civilization,

but what is most needed today is a revision of the ends which these means are meant to serve.

It is of little use trying to suppress terrorism if the production of deadly devices continues to be

deemed a legitimate employment of man's creative powers. Nor can the fight against pollution be

successful if the patterns of production and consumption continue to be of a scale, a complexity, and

a degree of violence which, as is becoming more and more apparent, do not fit into the laws of the

universe, to which man is just as much subject as the rest of creation.

Pollution must be brought under control and mankind's population and consumption of resources

must be steered towards a permanent and sustainable equilibrium.

Everywhere people ask: "What can I actually do?" The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we

can, each of us, work to put our own inner house in order. The guidance we need for this work

cannot be found in science or technology, the value of which utterly depends on the ends they serve;

but it can still be found in the traditional wisdom of mankind.

Taken from The Handbook of Environmental Technology Management (Edward Elgar, 2004).

The culture of innovation within the field of environmental technology and management is bringing forth significant change in the world of industry. From the growing influence of green chemistry and engineering to the emergence of environmental concerns in corporate research and development, one can see promising new initiatives in nearly every sphere of industrial activity.

Many of these developments, however, are limited by the "eco-efficient" framework in which they are applied. A widely adopted business paradigm, eco-efficiency is essentially a reductive agenda, its reforms rather narrowly aimed at minimizing the negative impacts of industry. New management tools based simply on efficiency, for example, may allow industry to use fewer resources, produce less waste and minimize toxic emissions, but they tend not to change the fundamental design of products or industrial production. In other words, efficient is not sufficient. As a result, even promising new technologies use energy and materials within a conventional cradle-to-grave system, diluting pollution and slowing the loss of natural resources without addressing the systemic design flaws that create waste and toxic products in the first place.

Global sourcing and lean production have standardized this state of affairs, with the result being a surfeit of products characterized by increasingly poor quality. Consider the off-gassing diagram of a name-brand children's toy from the United States shown below, which identifies more than thirty chemicals known to be mutagenic, desensitizing, or even suspected or known carcinogens.

[Figure 1: Off-gassing diagram of a name brand United States children's toy]

As the diagram illustrates, poor standards of quality result in everyday products

Artikel fra http://www.mcdonough.com/writings/remaking_way.htm

By William McDonough & Michael Braungart © 2003

that release hundreds of hazardous chemicals. Typically, these products, from electric shavers to carpets and upholsteries, are used indoors, where off-gassed chemicals accumulate. Energy efficient buildings, which are designed to require less heating and cooling, and thus less air circulation, can make things worse. A recent study in Germany, for example, found that air quality inside several highly rated energy efficient buildings in downtown Hamburg was nearly four times worse than on the dirty, car-clogged street.

The effects are hard to ignore. Where buildings with reduced air-exchange rates are common, so are health problems. In Germany, where tax credits support the construction of energy efficient buildings, allergies affect 42 percent of school age children between 6-7 years old, largely due to the poor quality of indoor air. This is what we would call chemical harassment. It is the result not of bad intentions, but of poor design.

A New Model for Industry Cradle to Cradle Design offers a clear alternative, a framework in which the safe, regenerative productivity of nature provides models for wholly positive human designs. Working from this perspective, we do not aim to be less bad. Instead, our design assignment is to create a world of interdependent natural and human systems powered by the sun in which safe, healthful materials flow in regenerative cycles, elegantly and equitably deployed for the benefit of all.

Within this framework, every material is designed to provide a wide spectrum of renewable assets. After a useful life as a healthful product, cradle-to-cradle materials are designed to replenish the earth with safe, fecund matter or to supply high quality technical resources for the next generation of products. When materials and products are created specifically for use within these closed-loop cycles-the flow of biological materials through nature's nutrient cycles and the circulation of industrial materials from producer to customer to producer-businesses can realize both enormous short-term growth and enduring prosperity. As well, we can begin to re-design the very foundations of industry, creating systems that purify air, land and water; use current solar income and generate no toxic waste; use only safe, healthful, regenerative materials; and whose benefits enhance all life.

This positive industrial agenda identifies a new definition of quality in product, process and facility design. From the cradle-to-cradle perspective, quality is embodied in designs that allow industry to enhance the well being of nature and culture while generating economic value. Pursuing these positive aspirations at every level of commerce adds ecological intelligence, social equity and cultural diversity to the conventional design criteria of cost, performance and aesthetics.

When these diverse criteria define good design, and when they are applied at every level of industry, productivity and profits are not at odds with environmental and social concerns. Indeed, as cradle-to-cradle design matures, we are increasingly able to design products and places that support life, that create ecological footprints to delight in rather than lament. This changes the entire context of the design process. Instead of asking, "How do I reduce the impact of my work?" and "How do I meet today's environmental standards?" we ask: "How might I increase my ecological footprint and enhance its positive effects? How might I grow prosperity and celebrate my community? How might I create more habitat, more health, more clean water, more delight?"

The Cradle to Cradle Paradigm Cradle to Cradle Design refocuses product development from a process aimed at limiting end-of-pipe liabilities to one geared to creating safe, healthful, high-quality products right from the start. In the world of industry it is creating a new conception of materials and material flows. Rather than seeing materials as a waste management problem in which interventions here and there slow their trip from cradle to grave, cradle-to-cradle thinking sees materials as nutrients and recognizes two safe metabolisms in which they flow.

In the biological metabolism, the nutrients that support life on Earth-water, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide-flow perpetually through regenerative cycles of growth, decay and rebirth. Rather than generating material liabilities, the biological metabolism accrues natural fecundity. Waste equals food. The technical metabolism can be designed to mirror natural nutrient cycles; it's a closed-loop system in which valuable, high-tech synthetics and mineral resources circulate in an endless cycle of production, recovery and remanufacture. Ideally, the human systems that make up the technical metabolism are powered by the energy of the sun.

[Figure 2: Biological Metabolism/Technical Metabolism]

By specifying safe, healthful ingredients, industry can create and use materials within these cradle-to-cradle cycles. Materials designed as biological nutrients, such as detergents, packaging or textiles for draperies, wall coverings and upholstery fabrics, can be designed to biodegrade safely and restore the soil after use, providing more positive effects, not fewer negative ones. Materials designed as technical nutrients, such as perpetually recyclable nylon fiber, can provide high-quality, high-tech ingredients for generation after generation of synthetic products-again a harvest of value.

Biological and technical nutrients have already entered the marketplace. The

upholstery fabric Climatex Lifecycle® is a blend of pesticide-residue-free wool and organically grown ramie, dyed and processed entirely with nontoxic chemicals. All of its product and process inputs were defined and selected for their human and ecological safety within the biological metabolism. The result: the fabric trimmings are made into felt and used by garden clubs as mulch for growing fruits and vegetables, returning the textile's biological nutrients to the soil. The first product on the market designed as a biological nutrient, Climatex Lifecycle® has been followed by many others since its introduction in 1993.

Honeywell, meanwhile, is marketing a textile for the technical metabolism, a high-quality carpet yarn called Zeftron Savant®, which is made of perpetually recyclable nylon 6 fiber. Zeftron Savant® is designed to be reclaimed and repolymerized-taken back to its constituent resins-to become new material for new carpets. In fact, Honeywell can retrieve old, conventional nylon 6 and transform it into Zeftron Savant®, upcycling rather than downcycling an industrial material. The nylon is rematerialized, not dematerialized-a true cradle-to-cradle product.

Ideally, technical nutrients are designed as products of service, a key element of the cradle-to-cradle strategy. Products of service are durable goods-cars, computers, refrigerators, carpets-designed by their manufacturer to be taken back and used again. The product provides a service to the customer while the manufacturer maintains ownership of the product's material assets. At the end of a defined period of use, the manufacturer takes back the product and reuses its materials in another high-quality product. Material recovery systems such as these are the foundation of the technical metabolism. Widely practiced, the product-of-service concept can change the nature of production and consumption as human systems powered by renewable energy reuse valuable materials through many product lifecycles.

The Practice of Cradle to Cradle Design The Cradle-to-Cradle Design Framework incorporates nature's cyclical material model into all product and system design efforts through a process called Life Cycle Development (LCD). While product development within this framework is not the same as life cycle assessment (LCA), "life cycle thinking" serves as an important structure for scientific inquiry and informs the process of cradle-to-cradle product design.

[Figure 3: Life Cycle Development Process]

LCD is a working, results oriented method for evaluating products and processes as they are being re-designed. While observing how a material or final product

flows through any of its various life cycle stages (raw materials production, manufacturing, use, and recovery/reutilization) and identifying human and environmental health impacts at each stage, LCD phases out undesirable substances and replaces them with preferable ones. The re-design process occurs during-not after-environmental and human health assessment. This simultaneous work saves costs for manufacturers and users and allows manufacturers to maintain market presence and continue to generate revenue as they improve their products.

The LCD process is made up of three phases, which follow an initial identification of a product's proper metabolism. Defining each product as either a potential biological nutrient or a potential technical nutrient sets up two different sets of design criteria and informs all phases of product development. Biological nutrients will need to be compostable, for example, while the recovery of technical nutrients might require chemical recycling. All products, however, are assessed and developed through three phases:

inventory of material flows impact assessment according to the life cycle of individual products optimization to produce a healthy, prosperous cradle-to-cradle life cycle.

These phases represent an iterative process that can be engaged at many levels. The process can start with an idea, as well as with a raw material (going into different products), a product (made of different raw materials), or a process.

Inventory The first step in LCD is a material inventory designed to collect full information on every material used in the manufacture of a product. Each material is then inventoried for its chemical constituents. The inventory process results in a complete listing of components by CAS (Chemical Abstract Service) number, name, function, and percent weight of the final material or product.

Impact Assessment Assessing materials encourages product transparency and the conscious selection of ingredients that will have the most positive impact on human and ecological health. A material's impact on human and environmental health is assessed in five basic categories:

Direct exposure covers the acute and chronic toxicological impacts on organisms that might be exposed to the materials, including carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, irritation of skin and mucous membranes, and sensitization.

The succession of generations includes potential impacts such as mutagenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, genetic engineering and persistence and biodegradation.

Food chains are evaluated by bioaccumulation potential.

Climactic relevance is evaluated based on global warming potential and ozone depletion potential.

Value recovery assesses a material's potential as a biological or technical nutrient. To recover value and maintain materials in closed loop cycles, materials must be either returned safely to the soil or be perpetually recyclable. Evaluation of the value recovery potential of a material is based on the following considerations:

Is it technically feasible to compos or recycle the material? Does a recycling or composting infrastructure exist for the material? What is the resulting quality of the recycled material or compost?

In addition, products must have a defined end-of-use strategy and be designed for disassembly so that recovery of materials is possible. Evaluating the recoverability of materials in a product is based on the following questions:

What is the take back strategy for the product and its materials? Can dissimilar materials be easily separated? Can common or readily available disassembly tools be used? Can the material type be identified through markings, magnets, etc.?

Optimization Once all materials have been assessed, those with the most positive human and environmental health characteristics and highest value recovery potential may be selected for inclusion in a re-designed product. Optimization is an iterative process. Complete optimization of a product or material may initially be impossible due to time or financial constraints, or lack of materials that meet the criteria for environmental and human health and value recovery. When all problematic inputs cannot be substituted, they can be prioritized for replacement and the manufacturing process can be re-designed to minimize exposure until a positive replacement is identified. Ultimately, the optimization phase is designed to yield positively defined products that enhance commercial productivity, social health and ecological intelligence.

Getting Results: Cradle to Cradle Design at Work

The LCD process is the foundation for designing biological and technical nutrients. Examining some of the details of the design of a particular cradle-to-cradle product illustrates the process at work and begins to suggest how it can yield extraordinary value. Consider the technical nutrient carpet tile developed by Shaw Industries. Seeking a safe, beneficial product for its commercial customers, Shaw undertook a thorough scientific assessment of the material chemistry of its carpet fibers and backing. Dyes, pigments, finishes, auxiliaries-everything that goes into carpet-were examined according to the Cradle-to-Cradle LCD and each ingredient was selected to meet its rigorous criteria. Out of this process has come the promise of a fully optimized carpet tile, a completely safe, perpetually recyclable, value generating product. And a highly regarded product as well: Shaw's new design won the 2003 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award.

Awards aside, Shaw's new product brings a much needed alternative to the commercial carpet market. Typically, carpet is made from two primary elements, a face fiber and a backing. Most face fiber today is nylon and most carpet backing is PVC. Commonly known as vinyl, PVC is a cheap, durable material widely used in building construction and a variety of consumer products, including toys, apparel and sporting goods. The vinyl chloride monomer used to make PVC is a human carcinogen and incineration of PVC can result in dioxin emissions. There are also concerns about the health effects of many additives commonly used in PVC, such as plasticizers, which off-gas chemicals known to be endocrine disrupters.

During conventional carpet recycling nylon face fiber and PVC backing are recycled together, which yields a hybrid material of lesser value. In effect, the materials are not recycled at all but downcycled-and they're still on a one-way trip to the landfill or incinerator. There, the PVC content of the material makes recycled carpet hazardous waste.

Responding to widespread scientific and consumer concern about PVC, Shaw developed an alternative, a safe polyolefin-based backing system with all the performance benefits of PVC, which it guarantees it will take back and recycle into safe polyolefin backing.

The face fiber of Shaw's technical nutrient carpet tile also changes the game. It's made from nylon 6, which can be easily depolymerized into its monomer, caprolactam, and repolymerized repeatedly to make high quality nylon 6 carpet fiber. The main competing face fiber, nylon 6,6 is not easily depolymerized for recycling. Following protocols for value recovery, Shaw is developing an effective

take-back and recycling strategy for all of its nylon 6 fiber.

In effect, Shaw's new carpet tile eliminates the concept of waste. The company now guarantees that all of its nylon 6 carpet fiber will be taken back and returned to nylon 6 carpet fiber, and its safe polyolefin backing taken back and returned to safe polyolefin backing. All the materials that go into the carpet will continually circulate in technical nutrient cycles. Raw material to raw material. Waste equals food. This cradle-to-cradle cycle, altogether different from eco-efficient recycling, suggests the benefits of a positive approach to managing material flows.

Other industries are also achieving significant results. Working with McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), the footwear manufacturer Nike is employing the Cradle-to-Cradle Framework to determine the chemical composition and environmental effects of the materials used to produce its line of athletic shoes. Focusing primarily on Nike's global footwear operations, the company's material assessment began with factory visits in China, where teams collected samples of rubber, leather, nylon, polyester, and foams, along with information on their chemical formulations.

In an ongoing partnership, when Nike and MBDC identify materials that meet or exceed the company's sustainable design criteria, those components are added to a growing palette of materials (a Positive List) that Nike will use in its products. These ingredients are designed to either be safely metabolized by nature's biological systems at the end of the products useful life or be repeatedly recovered and reutilized in new products.

Nike's systematic effort to develop a positive materials palette has begun to produce tangible results, such as the phasing out of PVC. After two years of scientific review, Nike set its sites on the elimination of PVC from footwear and non-screenprint apparel. In Spring 2002, Nike highlighted two PVC-free products, Keystone Cleats and Swoosh Slides, as a way to begin a dialogue with customers about its PVC-free commitment.

Integrating Cradle-to-Cradle Design Strategies Many companies begin adopting cradle-to-cradle principles by applying them to a single product. Ultimately, however, the strategy's effectiveness depends on its deep integration into the product development process. The furniture designer and manufacturer Herman Miller has gone a long way toward that end, developing an interdisciplinary Design for Environment (DFE) team that implements cradle-to-cradle material assessments, translates design goals throughout the company, measures environmental performance and engages its

supply chain in implementing design criteria.

Working closely with MBDC and the German design consultancy EPEA, the DFE team built a chemical and material assessment methodology that could be effectively used by the firm's designers and engineers. Throughout the design process, the multi-faceted assessment analyzes materials for their human health and toxicological effects, recyclabilty, recycled content and/or use of renewable resources, and product design for disassembly.

The DFE team includes a chemical engineer who incorporates findings from assessments into an evolving materials data base, and a purchasing agent who acts as a conduit and data source between the supply chain and Herman Miller's purchasing team. This strategy engages both groups as partners in implementing new design criteria, thereby ensuring the consistent procurement of safe materials. As one Herman Miller engineer has said, "getting a handle on supply chain issues from an environmental standpoint has also helped us get a handle on the organization and prioritization of materials." Now, for example, Herman Miller can use the new database to record the volume and content of the raw materials it uses and distributes, figures it had not previously tracked.

Herman Miller put the DFE team to work on the design of its new task chair, a complement to its popular Aeron office chair. After assessing production processes, as well as 500 chemicals in 850 materials, and integrating those findings into the overall design process, Herman Miller unveiled the Mirra. Noting its pioneering design, Metropolis magazine suggested that the environmentally sound, high-performance Mirra might be "the next icon." Perhaps. What's certain is that the Mirra's combination of ergonomic, aesthetic and environmental intelligence makes it not only extraordinarily comfortable and easy to adjust, but also a shining example of smart material and energy use.

Among other features, the Mirra is assembled using 100 percent wind power. Recycled content comprises more than 40 percent of its weight and nearly 100 percent of its materials can be recycled, a strong step toward a cradle-to-cradle product. The elimination of PVC makes the chair environmentally safe and its overall design makes it easy to disassemble. It is a bold move into 21st century product design. Managing Material Flows with Intelligent Materials Pooling By defining product ingredients and engaging their respective supply chains, Shaw, Nike and Herman Miller are all taking steps toward developing a safe, profitable technical metabolism. This is a critical step in the cradle-to-cradle strategy. Ultimately, the key to optimizing the assets of cradle-to-cradle

materials lies in the intelligent management of regenerative material flows, just as in the world of energy the optimization of the strategy would lead us toward an effective use of renewable energy.

After eons of evolution, nature is well-equipped to effectively manage the material flows of the biological metabolism. We need to be sure that the materials we design as biological nutrients can safely biodegrade, and we need to set up recovery systems to be sure they are returned to the soil, but nature does not need our help to run its nutrient cycles. The technical metabolism, however, can only be managed by human design.

To safely and effectively manage the flows of polymers, rare metals, and high tech materials for industry, we have developed a nutrient management system for the technical metabolism, which we call Intelligent Materials Pooling (IMP). IMP is a collaborative approach to material flows management involving multiple companies working together to entirely eliminate hazardous materials. Partners in an IMP form a supportive business community, pooling information and purchasing power to generate material intelligence and profitable cradle-to-cradle material flows.

The evolution of an intelligent materials pool unfolds in four phases. The first is a community-building phase in which companies committed to cradle-to-cradle design discover shared values and complimentary needs. A business network of willing partners emerges as each agrees to work together to phase out a common list of toxic chemicals.

Out of this shared commitment comes a community of companies with the market strength to engineer the phase-out and develop innovative alternative materials. The companies would share the list of materials targeted for elimination and develop a positive purchasing and procurement list of preferred intelligent chemicals.

The third phase involves defining material flows within the partnership. The partners would specify for and design with preferred materials. They would also establish defined use periods for products and services and individually set up take back programs. This phase establishes the infrastructure that supports the product of service concept, in which technical nutrients are designed to be returned to manufacturers for continual re-use. In effect, this transforms the partners into a material bank with renewable assets. Their "pool" of materials is not owned in common, but the partners' shared material specifications, their effectively managed technical metabolism, and their combined purchasing power

allows them to profitably use positively defined, high quality materials.

The final phase of IMP is open-ended, as it involves the strengthening of the business partnership through ongoing support. This can involve such mutually beneficial activities as the creation of preferred business partner agreements, the sharing of information, the development of co-branding strategies, and support for the mechanisms of the newly created technical metabolism.

Finding willing partners in the competitive world of business might be hard to imagine but it is hardly unprecedented. In the textile industry innovative mills like Victor Innovatex and Rohner Textil, along with MBDC and Designtex, have profitably collaborated on the design and production of ecologically intelligent fabrics. In the textile and apparel industry at large, several companies have expressed deep interest in establishing a "polyester coalition." With the technology for truly recycling polyester in development, a polyester coalition could begin to close the loop on the flow of this widely used industrial material. Design for the Triple Top Line The various aspects of the Cradle-to-Cradle strategy, from Life Cycle Development to Intelligent Materials Pooling, together offer a framework for good design. While the protocols within the framework can be rigorous and exacting, they also create a space for enormous creativity. When a company decides to develop a biological or technical nutrient, for example, the chemical assessment of materials is just one step toward the complete re-thinking of the design assignment. With a good scientific foundation and a positive, rather than reductive agenda, one can begin to ask some very interesting design questions.

The conventional design questions revolve around cost, aesthetics and performance. Can we profit from it? Will the customer find it attractive? Will it work? Advocates of sustainable development have tried to expand those questions to include environmental and social concerns. While this "triple bottom line" approach has given companies a useful tool for balancing economic goals with a desire to "do better by the environment," the concept in practice often appears to center only on economic considerations, with social or ecological benefits considered as an afterthought. Businesses calculate their conventional economic profitability and add to that what they perceive to be the social benefits, with, perhaps, some reduction in environmental damage-lower emissions, fewer materials sent to the landfill, reduced materials in the product itself. These are important steps toward identifying problems but ultimately they are strategies for managing negative effects.

What if this triad of concerns-economic growth, environmental health, and social

equity-were addressed at the beginning of the design process as triple top line questions rather than used as an accounting tool at the end? That's where the magic begins. Instead of meeting the bottom line through a series of compromises between economy, ecology and equity, designers can employ their dynamic interplay to generate revenue and value in all three sectors-triple top line growth. The goal is to create more positive effects not fewer negative ones. From this perspective, questions such as How can I create more habitat? How can I create jobs? become just as important as How much will it cost? Often, in fact, a project that begins with pronounced ecological or social concerns can turn out to be tremendously productive financially in ways that would never have been imagined if you'd started from a purely economic perspective.

The Fractal Triangle Working with our clients, we have found that a visual tool, the fractal triangle, help us apply triple top line thinking throughout the design process. Representing the ecology of human concerns, the fractal triangle shows how ecology, economy and equity anchor a spectrum of value, and how, at any level of scrutiny, each design decision has an impact on all three. As we plan a product or system, we move around the fractal inquiring how a new design can generate value in each category.

[Figure 4: Fractal Triangle]

In the pure Economy sector, we might ask "Can I make my product at a profit?" As we see it, the goal of an effective company is to stay in business as it transforms. The Equity sector raises social questions: "Are we finding ways to honor all stakeholders, regardless of race, sex, nationality or religion?" Moving to the Ecology corner, the emphasis shifts to imagining ways in which humans can be tools for nature: "Do our designs create habitat or nourish the landscape?"

As we move around the triangle, questions expressing a complex interaction of concerns arise at the intersections of Ecology, Economy and Equity. In the Economy/Equity sector, for example, we consider questions of profitability and fairness. "Are employees producing a promising product earning a living wage?" As we continue on to Equity/Economy, our focus shifts more toward fairness. Here we might ask: "Are men and women being paid the same for the same work?"

[Figure 5: Fractal callouts]

Often, we discover our most fruitful insights where the design process creates a kind of friction in the zones where values overlap. An ecologist might call these

areas ecotones, which are the merging, fluid boundaries between natural communities notable for their rich diversity of species. In the fractal triangle, the ecotones are ripe with business opportunities.

Triple top line thinkers tap these opportunities not by trying to balance Ecology, Economy and Equity, but by honoring the needs of all three. In an infinitely interconnected world, they see rich relationships rather than inherent conflicts. Their goal: to maximize value in all areas of the triangle through intelligent design. When designing a manufacturing facility, for example, they would ask: How can this project restore more landscape and purify more water? How much social interaction and joy can I create? How do I generate more safety and health? How much prosperity can I grow?

Questions such as these allow us to remake the way we make things. Today. Getting Results: Generating Value in the Design Process In projects already underway-indeed, already completed-triple top line thinking has sparked an explosion of creativity in our clients' decision-making. Consider, for example, the restoration of Ford Motor Company's Rouge River plant in Dearborn, Michigan. In May 1999, Ford decided to invest $2 billion over 20 years to transform the Rouge into an icon of 21st century industry. As we approached the design process with Ford many wondered if a blue chip company with a sharp focus on the bottom line could take a step toward something truly new and inspiring. Could inspiration and profits co-exist?

Well, yes. Using triple top line thinking and the Fractal Triangle, we explored with Ford's executives, engineers, and designers innovative ways of creating shareholder value. Rather than using economic metrics to try to reconcile apparent conflicts between environmental concerns and the bottom line, the company began to ask triple top line questions. Innovations would still need to be good for profits, but Ford's leaders began to examine how profits could be maximized by design decisions that also maximized social and ecological value.

Rather than trying to meet an environmental responsibility as efficiently as possible, Ford opted for a manufacturing facility that would create habitat, make oxygen, connect employees to their surroundings and invite the return of native species. The result: a daylit factory with a 450,000 square-foot roof covered with growing plants-a living roof. In concert with porous paving and a series of constructed wetlands and swales, the living roof will absorb and filter stormwater run-off, making expensive technical controls, and even regulations, obsolete. All this with tremendous first cost savings, with the landscape thrown in for free. According to Ford, the natural stormwater system alone, compared to

conventionally engineered water treatment systems, proved out a first cost saving of $5 million.

This is the power of positive, principled design.

Toward a Cradle-to-Cradle World Designs that celebrate this diverse range of concerns bring about a process of industrial re-evolution. Our products and processes can be most deeply effective when they resonate with the living world. Inventive machines that use the mechanisms of nature instead of harsh chemicals, concrete, or steel are a step in the right direction, but they are still machines-still a way of using technology to harness nature to human purpose. New technologies do not themselves create industrial revolutions. Unless we change their context, they are simply hyper-efficient engines driving the steamship of the first Industrial Revolution to new extremes.

Natural systems take from the environment but they also give something back. The cherry tree drops its blossoms and leaves while it cycles water and makes oxygen; the ant community redistributes nutrients through the soil. We can follow their cue to create a more inspiring engagement-a partnership-with nature.

Expressed in designs that resonate with and support natural systems, this new partnership can take us beyond sustainability-a minimum condition for survival-toward products and commercial enterprises that celebrate our relationship with the living earth.

We can create fabrics that feed the soil, giving us pleasure as garments and as sources of nourishment for our gardens.

We can build factories that inspire their inhabitants with sunlit spaces, fresh air, views of the outdoors, and cultural delights; factories which also create habitat and produce goods and services that re-circulate technical materials instead of dumping, burning, or burying them.

We can tap into natural flows of energy and nutrients, designing astonishingly productive systems that create oxygen, accrue energy, filter water, and provide healthy habitats for people and other living things. As we have seen, designs such as these are generators of economic value too. When the cradle-to-cradle principles that guide them are widely applied, at every level of industry, productivity and profits will no longer be at odds with the

concerns of the commons. We will be celebrating the fecundity of the earth, instead of perpetuating a way of thinking and making that eliminates it. We will be creating a world of abundance, equity and health and well on our way to an era of sustaining prosperity.

This is not a path one must travel alone. GreenBlue, a new non-profit organization established to encourage the widespread adoption of cradle-to-cradle thinking, is now providing the theoretical, technical and information tools required to transform industry through intelligent design. Its mission is to make commercial activity an ecological and socially regenerative force, and its tools are designed to empower designers to participate in this transformation.

And so we invite you to join us in leaving behind design strategies that yield tragic consequences and taking up a strategy of hope, a strategy that allows us to create a world of interdependent natural and human systems powered by the sun in which safe, healthful materials flow in regenerative cycles, elegantly and equitably deployed for the benefit of all. Doing so is ultimately an act of love for the future, an act that allows us to take steps toward not simply loving our own children, but loving all of the children, of all species, for all time.

<< Main | Shop Local through BookSense

| Order from Amazon

© 2005, William A. McDonough. All rights reserved. Site Credits: MassarelliDesign

Datschefski, E. (2001), The Total Beauty of Sustainable Products. Summary from Biothinking.com

Products are the source of all environmental problems. Major issues such as pollution, deforestation,

species loss, and global warming are all side-effects of the activities that provide consumers with

food, transport, shelter, clothing and the endless array of consumer goods on the market today.

Ecological and social issues are becoming more important than ever before, and a vital new role is

opening up for design. Many beautiful-looking products have an underlying ugliness that is hidden to

the consumer and is often invisible to the designer as well. This site reveals these environmental and

social impacts and shows how can they be designed out to create products that have a "total

beauty". Sustainable products are those that are the best for people, profits and the planet.

One issue is that most designers focus on improving form and function but they pay less attention to

fabrication -- how products are made. Fabrication is where many of the environmental and social

impacts lie, with damage being caused by the extraction of raw materials and by pollution rising

from manufacturing processes. Then there is the notion of producer responsibility. Products don't

disappear after being sold. All products die eventually when they come to the end of their useful life.

Where do they go to then?

Designers and discerning consumers are starting to look beyond pure surface, recognising that while

a chair for example may look beautiful, can a product really represent the pinnacle of mankind's

genius if it is made using polluting methods or by exploiting workers? The "total beauty" of solutions

presented on this site extends to elegant recycling processes, beautifully-crafted energy flows, and

materials that are so safe they could be eaten a la carte.

This site presents a radical but simple framework for sustainability. cyclic|solar|safe is an easy to

understand protocol for understanding products and how they can become more sustainable. It is

fast and easy to use, whether you are designing a product or considering buying it.

Environmental issues are complex and can seem hard to get to grips with. The approaches in this

book build on the lessons learnt through many years' experience and hundreds of product

innovations, and the book has been designed tomake the challenge of sustainable design more

approachable.

While some firms choose to undertake expensive and lengthy "life cycle assessment" studies, our

studies of what companies actually do is very revealing. Out of 500 products examined, over 99%

used just 11 basic innovative principles. So despite the complexity involved in understanding the

environmental impacts of a product, there are relatively few routes for innovation, and most of

them guarantee and improvement in environmental performance most of the time.

Innocent-looking products threaten the environment

It may seem surprising, but most environmental problems are caused by unintentional side-effects

of the manufacture, use and disposal of products. Looking at products closely highlights the

environmental problems they cause. Over 30 tonnes of waste are produced for every one tonne of

product that reaches the consumer. And then 98% of those products that do reach the end

consumer are thrown away within 6 months. This whole process is about 2% efficient in terms of

energy.

There has been a lot of improvement already. Billions of pounds are being spent on cleaning up

industry and environmental laws are getting stricter every day. But are these measures enough? The

answer is clearly no, as the environment is still in a mess. "Legalised pollution" is the problem -- firms

are allowed to put smoke into the air and poisons into the water, as long as they do not breach a

certain level. You are legally allowed to put pollutants into the air when you drive your car. But just

because these things are legal does not mean that they are right.

Many pollution problems caused in the manufacturing of raw materials and products are tackled at

the "end of the pipe", by fitting on expensive clean-up equipment. The far more elegant and

effective route is to design the process right in the first place. As green architect Bill McDonough

says, "regulation is a sign of design failure."

So while there have been some considerable improvements in the environmental performance of

the "usual suspects" like recycled paper and concentrated soap powder, we must expand our

horizons radically and start to look at everything, from hi-fis and golfclubs to doorhandles and

lipstick.

Design is the key

Consciously or not, the design of products and processes is the main determinant of environmental

impact. The engineers and environmental managers at a factory can reduce an emission here or

make less waste there, but there are limits to how much improvement can be made in those ways.

Design is the key intervention point for making radical improvements in the environmental

performance of products -- and all their by-products as well! A 1999 survey by Arthur D Little

revealed that 55% of senior executives in industry singled out design as the single most important

mechanism for their companies to tackle sustainability.

Sustainable products are products which are fully compatible with nature throughout their entire

lifecycle.

For example, the materials they are made from form part of a continuous cycle, and the energy used

to make them does not release persistent poisons into the air or water. Some sustainable products

become part of the living ecosystem, such as plant fibres which are grown and then turned into

board for packaging. At the end of the package's life, the material is composted and returned to the

soil once again. Another example would be aluminium sourced from recycling collection, now known

as "urban mines" or "above-ground mines", makes an excellent lightweight car body. The aluminium

is melted down using energy from biomass or small scale hydroelectricity, and is collected and re-

used at the end of the car's life.

Some designs don't make much of a difference to the environment. For example, the Starck

toothbrush has an attractive shape, but it is made in the same way as normal brushes and is neither

better nor worse environmentally. However, if the designer had chosen to chrome-plate the handle,

then the toothbrush would have been made worse environmentally -- much worse, as chrome

plating is notoriously polluting. The sustainable designer would have looked at how to make an

attractive and exciting brush just as Philippe Starck did, but would also have looked at the

environmental and social issues as well. This could mean making the brush recyclable, or perhaps

using much longer-lasting natural rubber bristles instead of nylon ones. This particular example is

examined in more detail later in the book.

All new products need to be designed in a sustainable way, but existing designs also need to be

revised. Diego Masera is a designer who developed a new chair for manufacture by small rural

workshops in Mexico. It used a quarter of the amount of wood and yet because of its stylish

appearance it sold for twice as much as traditional designs. This means that there is now much less

pressure on the local forests, which were becoming badly depleted.

There is a long way to go. Only about 0.001% of industrial products and services on the market today

could be described as having good environmental performance. A relative handful of firms have

already come up with product innovations there are maybe 1000 potentially sustainable products

on the market out of an estimated 100 million products on sale worldwide. Yet sustainability is

inevitable it's just about who will be first to gain a beachhead. Already firms are making major

strategic stakes in what will be a trillion dollar business in the next five years.

Simple lessons from nature show the way

Many environmental improvements arise from an improvement in efficiency -- if you have a washing

machine that uses less electricity, then there will be less fuel burnt at the power station and so less

emissions and pollution. The same idea holds for materials use -- less metal means less mining, and

so on. This concept, known as "eco-efficiency", is very popular, perhaps because getting a job done

using less energy or materials means there is often a cost saving as well as an environmental benefit.

However, there are technological and thermodynamic limits to how much savings can be achieved.

Some firms are managing annual improvements of about 2%, and so use for example 98 units of

energy to get a job done when they were using 100 units before. In an increasingly crowded world,

this is not really a fast enough improvement, and does not offer a significant competitive advantage

-- the general view is that we need to reduce energy and materials usage by 90%, or by a factor of

ten. This "Factor Ten" approach is important and a huge challenge, but is not enough by itself.

It's not sufficient to be eco-efficient. By adopting only an efficiency route, we are like the Titanic with

fuel-efficient engines -- yes, there is less smoke being emitted from the funnels, but we're still

heading for the iceberg ...

Life on earth has been around for billions of years (3.85 billion, to be exact), and it has a few tricks to

offer us. If we learn from nature and change the quality of the energy and materials we use, then we

can advance closer to being fully sustainable. For example, if we use solar energy, there can be no

environmental impact at all, so we can use as much as we like or can afford. Another important idea

is that the flows of materials in nature tend to be cyclic, so you can never run out of resources. By

recycling more minerals we can mimick nature. And obviously, using materials that have been grown

is also a good thing -- and there are now some very high-tech and high performance plastics made

from corn as well as wood and soya biocomposites to choose from.

It is very achievable to undertake mass production using the basic protocols followed by natural

systems. There are five design requirements for sustainable products. The first three mimick the

protocols used by plant and animal ecosystems:

Cyclic: The product is made from organic materials, and is recyclable or compostable, or is made

from minerals that are continuously cycled in a closed loop.

Solar: The product uses solar energy or other forms of renewable energy that are cyclic and safe,

both during use and manufacture.

Safe: The product is non-toxic in use and disposal, and its manufacture does not involve toxic

releases or the disruption of ecosystems.

The fourth requirement is based on the need to maximise the utility of resources in a finite world:

Efficient: The product's efficiency in manufacture and use is improved by a factor of ten, requiring 90%

less materials, energy and water than products providing equivalent utility did in 1990.

And the fifth recognises that all companies have an impact on the people who work for them and

the communities within which they operate:

Social: The product and its components and raw materials are manufactured under fair and just

operating conditions for the workers involved and the local communities.

For a given product, it is possible to score each of these requirements out of 100, and this

information can be expressed in a simple logo, or it can be presented in text as a vital statistics-style

index: 50|30|90|40|10.

We have the technical building blocks for a 100% sustainable industrial system in all but a few key

areas most of the staple technologies of the sustainable future already exist, and only a few will

require major new innovation, specifically electronics and microchip manufacture.

The goal of sustainable design is to make all products 100% cyclic, solar and safe.

The design of sustainable products is not conceptually difficult. Having analysed over 500 products,

we found that 99% of all environmental innovations use one of more of these eleven principles:

1. Cyclic Mined. The product becomes more cyclic by making use of recycled metal, glass or plastic,

by becoming more recyclable, or both. Example: Patagonia Synchilla Fleece Jacket from recycled

polyester

2. Cyclic Grown. The product becomes more cyclic by making use of grown materials such as wood,

leather and wool, by becoming more compostable, or both. Example: Bamboo Bike

3. Alternative Energy in Use. The product becomes more solar by using a renewable energy in use,

sometimes by using solar-generated electricity. Example: Clockwork Toothbrush

4. Alternative Energy in Manufacture. The product becomes more solar by using a renewable

energy source for its manufacturing process. Example: Urtekram Shampoo made in wind-powered

factory

5. Substitute Materials. The product becomes safer as a result of toxic materials or components

being substituted for safer ones. Example: Tungsten bullets (lead-free)

6. Stewardship Sourcing. The product becomes safer in the habitat preservation sense, and also

more social, by getting raw materials from fairly-traded sources or low impact sources such as FSC

approved forests. Example: Dolphin and Albatross-friendly Tuna

7. Utility. The product becomes more efficient by providing greater utility for the user, such as

multifunction products or rented products. Example: Black and Decker Quattro

Drill/Sander/Saw/Screwdriver

8. Durability. The product becomes more efficient in materials usage as it lasts longer. Example:

Spacepen Millennium II contains a lifetime's worth of ink

9. Efficiency. The product becomes more efficient in its use of energy, water and materials, both in

manufacture and use. Example: SoftAir Inflatable Chair

10.Bio-everything. The product becomes more cyclic, solar and safe as a result of using living

organisms or biomimcry techniques. Example: Foxfibre naturally coloured cotton.

11. Communication. The product communicates information that leads to a better environmental

performance, usually by changing the behaviour of users. Example: Plastics labelling to aid recycling

So despite all the complex lifecycle analysis people do, there are relatively few options open to

product developers. This also means that it is probably easier than people think to come up with

environmental innovations.

What seems radical today will be mainstream tomorrow. Becoming 100% sustainable is not only

possible, it can be achieved by the year 2100, and with the right belief we can give ourselves the

capability of redesigning every product to be 100% cyclic, solar and safe.

The other benefit of the "11 steps" is that they can easily be learnt. By taking our online course you

will be taking the first steps towards becoming an sustainability-literate designer.

The NICe CoNsumerFramework For aChIevINg susTaINable FashIoN CoNsumpTIoN Through CollaboraTIoN

The NICE Consumer project—a new joint initiative led by the Danish Fashion Institute and BSR under Nordic Initiative, Clean and Ethical (NICE)—aims to inspire changes in government policies and business practices to help consumers make more sustainable choices in the acquisition, use, care for and disposal of fashion items.

From November 2011 through May 2012, the NICE Consumer project developed the vision and framework for sustainable fashion consumption described in this document. This output is based on research and dialogue with leaders and stakeholders of the fashion industry.

We view sustainable fashion consumption as a long term journey, which we have only just begun, as shown below.

Achieving sustainable fashion consumption requires a long-term transformation in attitudes, behaviours and business models. The NICE Consumer project’s first phase focused on inspiring the fashion industry, policy makers and civil society to accelerate this transformation and to commit to collaborating in pursuit of sustainable fashion consumption and production. Subsequent phases will focus on making this vision a reality.

As part of the NICE Consumer project, BSR, the Danish Fashion Institute and the Copenhagen Resource Institute published a research report which:

− Presented a draft working definition for sustainable fashion and sustainable fashion consumption, and described in practical terms the changes in consumer attitudes and behaviours necessary to support them

− Identified current barriers to sustainable fashion consumption − Applied lessons from successful awareness raising and

behaviour change campaigns to the fashion industry − Outlined the potential roles for industry, government, civil

society and consumers in reshaping the fashion industry toward sustainable consumption.

Using the research report as a basis for discussion, a series of three public webinars and three in-person workshops were organised to share emerging good practices and to gather feedback to develop the framework for achieving sustainable fashion consumption. At least 250 individuals from brands and retailers, academia, NGOs and government agencies participated in the consultation process.

The framework presented in the following pages is intended to inspire and drive coordinated action and innovation over the long term so that consumers can enjoy fashion while improving their impact on people, planet and profit.

supporTNICe CoNsumer projeCT 2 | Mid-2012–2015 | TBC

– PoliCy design and iMPleMenTaTion

– Business iMPleMenTaTion and

CaMPaign PiloTing

perpeTuaTe

– exPanded ConsuMer CaMPaigns

– iMPaCT assessMenT

INspIreNICe CoNsumer projeCT 1 | January–June 2012

– rePorT release– PuBliC ConsulTaTion– reCoMMendaTions

To sTakeholders

2 | 3

For the purposes of the NICE Consumer project, we use the following draft working definitions:

Sustainable fashion is a dynamic process to develop and to implement design philosophies and business practices for managing triple bottom line impacts (economic, social and environmental) linked to the lifecycle of apparel, footwear, accessories and other fashion goods.

Sustainable fashion consumption is the use of clothing for purposes beyond utilitarian needs, which is achieved while enabling the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Fashion consumption encompasses a complex range of interactions between individuals and the fashion system (consumption and production).

The following diagram shows key material flows and processes throughout the current fashion production and consumption system. These represent focal points for managing impacts and re-thinking the current model.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We believe that a fundamental redesign of the fashion industry is possible, which will enable individuals to express their personal style through fashion, and for businesses to profit, while progressively reducing negative impacts. To achieve this, the current model, which is based on rapid responses to customer preferences, just-in-time manufacturing supply chains, successions of collections, and a continuous flow of new items, needs to be re-conceptualised to incorporate closed-loop thinking.1

Remaking the system is a big challenge, though we are certain that designers, entrepreneurs and brands will rise to it, and find ways to thrive in a redesigned fashion industry. However, we are also aware that our current ways of thinking will have to change and many incentives will impede the transformation. Thus we see a multi-dimensional, ongoing, and sometimes frustrating transition which is underway and continuing to evolve.

We need innovation at every stage in the value chain and throughout the system as a whole. Moreover, consideration of consumer desires and behaviours is critical during the design, retail, use and end-of-life phases.

1– Rather than “loopy thinking”,

the circular arrows are meant

to convey how actions in one

part of the value chain have

consequences for other parts.

For example, design choices

affect consumer behaviour and

impacts related to raw materials.

We believe a holistic view of the

current and desired future state

of the fashion consumption and

production system is needed,

and that holistic solutions are

an imperative to move toward

sustainability. In addition, the

loops are meant to signify the

conservation of materials, and

their diversion from landfill toward

re-use, recycling and upcycling.

SUSTAINABLE MODEL

RA

W M

ATER

IALS

TEXTILE PRODUCTION MANUFACTURING RETAIL EN

D O

F LIFE

CURRENT MODEL

FIB

ER P

RODUCTIO

N

DESIGN DISTRIBUTION USE

3 CoNsumers are aware oF aNd Care abouT The eNvIroNmeNTal, soCIal aNd eCoNomIC ImpaCTs oF FashIoN

3 CoNsumers FINd aNd aCQuIre susTaINable FashIoN goods aNd servICes

The NICe CoNsumer vIsIoNOur vision is that individuals and communities will interact with the fashion industry and enjoy innovative products and services while reducing the associated negative social, environmental and economic impacts, and while contributing to a more sustainable development process globally. The fashion industry can have a positive impact related to inspiration and creativity, employment, entrepreneurism and profit, and these should not be lost in the transition.

We envision four focus areas for sustainable attitudes and behaviours linked to fashion consumption:

Awareness: Individuals are aware of and care about sustainable fashion and the environmental, social and

economic impacts of the consumption and production of fashion

Planning, Searching, and Acquiring: Individuals act as sustainable stewards of their wardrobes and acquire

sustainable fashion goods and services, which are increasingly long-lasting, second-hand, or produced in a way that is more sustainable, including but not limited to certification to credible sustainability standards

Wearing, Caring and Sharing: Individuals keep and wear garments for more seasons and occasions; they care for

garments in a low-impact way, including low-temperature washing and line-drying; repair them whenever possible; and share them with friends and family members

End of life: Individuals contribute unwanted garments to second-hand, re-use and recycling schemes, including for

recovery or upcycling of fabrics and fibres

3 CoNsumers wear, Care For aNd repaIr garmeNTs IN a low-ImpaCT way

3 CoNsumers reCyCle garmeNTs For reuse or reCovery oF FIbres

4 | 5

Our assumptions in pursuit of this visionConsumers want to do the right thing—to be NICE while enjoying fashion—but they don’t know how and are sometimes blocked from doing so. Individuals want the opportunity to dress well and look great, without needing to always buy more stuff and change their wardrobes seasonally.

We do not believe that business is evil, that government is always bureaucratic, or that civil society is naïve. There are many promising efforts and initiatives emerging. However, these are often small scale and disconnected. In order to make sustainable fashion consumption mainstream, we believe that a common vision is required and that collaboration is critical to send a strong message to consumers that sustainable consumption is beautiful, cool, sexy and here to stay.

Below and throughout the following pages, we suggest a framework of actions to enable sustainable fashion consumption and what we need to measure so we know when it arrives in the mainstream.

How will we know we’ve achieved success?Collecting information is an expensive and time intensive process. However, establishing baselines and targets is a key priority for industry and policy makers to know if their actions are leading to changes in attitudes and behaviour. We suggest several options below for measuring progress toward sustainable consumption, which require further elaboration and resources to implement.

Awareness: Consumer surveys and behavioural studies can be used to confirm the current level of awareness of consumers. Some projects currently underway, such as the MISTRA Future Fashion project in Sweden, the Textile Waste as a Resource project in Norway, and the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan in the UK, will provide a good baseline from which measures and targets for increasing awareness and changing behaviour can be extrapolated and developed.

Planning, Searching and Acquiring: Attitudes and behaviours related to planning, searching for and acquiring fashion can be measured by tracking the number of garments in individuals’ possession, online searches for sustainable fashion-linked terms, and purchasing behaviours in retail and second-hand shops.

Wearing, Caring and Sharing: Attitudes and behaviours during the use phase can be difficult to track, although mobile technology and social media are creating new opportunities to both motivate and track consumer behaviour. Key measures can include the average useful lives of garments, and habits related to washing and drying. We can also collect data to determine if and to what extent items are being repaired in repair shops or by individuals at home. We need more knowledge of both public and private solutions and practices for caring and sharing.

End of life: Municipal waste agencies can help determine estimates for the number and weight of garments that are disposed in landfills every year. In addition, consumer behaviour studies can track what happens to garments when they are no longer wanted. Finally, the recycling industry itself can provide statistics on weight, value and fate of post-consumer materials.

We also believe that the industry can be more transparent concerning design choices and the sustainability attributes of products, such as lifecycle impact assessments, which are critical for understanding progress in reducing negative impacts. We also believe corporate governance and accountability are critically important for both the current and future states of the fashion industry.

CollaboraTIoN CaN aCCeleraTe The TraNsITIoN To susTaINable FashIoN CoNsumpTIoNThe NICE Consumer project’s research and consultation activities uncovered more than one-hundred tangible examples of individuals, brands, government agencies and NGOs working on changing the fashion consumption and production system to be more sustainable. We believe these efforts are necessary and should be scaled up and coordinated. In addition, we heard an interest in more focus on holistic and comprehensive solutions.

Below we set out an agenda for continued collaboration among industry, government and civil society, and in the following pages we describe a set of potential commitments that organisations (whether individually or collectively) could sign up to.

Agenda for Sustainable Fashion Consumption Collaboration − Ongoing dialogue among stakeholders to learn from each

other, provide input and support to each other’s work, and to explore and invest in new business models

− Baseline studies on consumer attitudes, behaviours and practices with particular focus on commonalities and differences by geography, gender, age and income levels

− Standards/guidelines for product transparency and care labels

− Co-developing and implementing consumer awareness and behaviour change campaigns

Below we present potential shared commitments:

1. The industry will engage in open and constructive dialogue with government and civil society to advance sustainable fashion consumption

— A formal structure, including a secretariat or coordinating body such as the European Commission DG Enterprise, is needed to take ownership and drive the agenda as well as to facilitate these discussions. The specific activities could include regular online discussions and workshops such as those conducted for the current phase of the NICE Consumer project, as well as monitoring of progress against goals and targets.

2. Fund, implement and collaborate on consumer awareness and behaviour change campaigns for sustainable fashion consumption

— Many examples of successful campaigns are included in the NICE Consumer research report. Successful campaigns exhibit the following success factors: partnerships comprised of government, civil society and industry, campaigns that target specific behaviour changes at the moment the behaviour takes place, and incentives to motivate change (including social pressure, financial incentives or intrinsic motivation). We see great possibility in conducting campaigns in retail stores, in homes and in workplaces that involve changing behaviours related to purchasing, washing and drying, and sharing and disposing of clothes to reduce negative impacts.

3. Provide for collection of unwanted garments and contribute to the development of second-hand markets, recycling infrastructure and service/sharing business models

— The professionalisation of second-hand markets, the proliferation of service and sharing markets, and the expansion of garment take back and textile fibre recycling infrastructure are all clear opportunities to move toward closed-loop materials systems in the fashion industry.

6 | 7

suggesTed INdusTry CommITmeNTsThe fashion industry can play a leading role to enable sustainable fashion consumption. A number of initiatives exist related to ethical sourcing and production, sustainable design and industry collaboration on product transparency standards. These represent an important foundation for expanded investment in sustainable business models for the fashion industry.

Below we present a set of commitments that we believe brands and retailers can support to enable sustainable fashion consumption.

1. Brands and retailers provide sustainability training and professional development opportunities to their employees, including designers, sourcing/production, marketing and advertising staff, and retail store staff

— Brands and retailers need employees who are knowledgeable about sustainability and that have the skills and tools to make decisions that support both financial success and sustainable consumption and production.

2. Adopt standardised and credible methodologies for measuring product-level environmental and social impacts, and guidance for disclosing and communicating impacts to stakeholders, including customers, investors and media

— Large industry initiatives such as the Sustainable Apparel Coalition are working on standards for measuring and disclosing sustainability impacts. Companies should seek to adopt industry approaches, or when they are lacking, to share their approaches with their peers. As standards reach maturity, these should be the basis for policy making to ensure their ongoing credibility and impact.

3. Improve care labels on products, and increase focus on consumer communication, education and motivation to promote responsible care

— Consumer care for garments comprises a large portion of the overall impact throughout a product’s lifecycle. Most important is that the industry makes clothes that require little cleaning and washing, and clearly communicates this to consumers. The design of care labels and adherence to them should be improved to drive desired behaviours, such as washing less frequently, full loading for every cycle, washing at lower temperatures, and using line drying or low heat.

4. Provide quality and longevity information about products, as well as warranties and servicing options

— The fashion industry needs innovative business models to remain competitive. Services such as warranties and repair services can accomplish both objectives.

5. Engage with consumers on responsible disposal and invest in developing and supporting second-hand markets for garments and recovered materials

— Keeping garments in circulation longer can reduce impacts from producing new products. Second-hand shops need professionalisation to overcome negative attitudes toward previously worn products.

goverNmeNT polICy opTIoNs Government’s role in encouraging sustainable fashion is one of setting the stage by:

− Providing the regulatory and economic framework within which the fashion industry operates

− Promoting trade and innovation that protects the environment and ensures respect for human rights and labor standards

− Ensuring that consumers are provided with accurate information and price signals

Below we present a set of policy options that we believe can be developed and adopted across the European Union, and potentially by governments in all developed countries.

1. Integrate sustainable fashion curriculum into primary, secondary, university and vocational education and research

— Primary and secondary education is a powerful vehicle to raise the awareness of future generations of consumers about the overall impacts of fashion production and consumption, and to teach basic skills (washing and repairing, for example) that will create good habits early on. University and trade education can help develop expert understanding of impacts and consumer behaviour, and industry management practices.

2. Support, implement and/or fund consumer awareness and behaviour change campaigns

— Given that awareness among consumers is low, education and incentives will be needed to change behaviours. New engagement models for awareness raising and behaviour change need to be developed, including for instance nudging and gamification.

3. Support standardisation of product transparency disclosures and drive consolidation of ecolabel(s) for fashion products

— The proliferation of sustainability labels has created a confusing landscape for consumers. At the same time, levels of disclosure about product impacts are low. A more robust standard for product transparency is needed for the industry as well as a consolidation of labels that are more accessible to consumers.

4. Enforce guidelines for product communications and marketing to discourage and penalize greenwashing

— There is an overwhelming amount of noise about sustainable products in the market. Claims of “natural”, “eco-” and “sustainable” are misleading. Government should enforce guidelines to prevent greenwashing to ensure credibility of product claims.

5. Execute voluntary agreements with industry covering extended producer responsibility

— Government can play an important role in establishing legitimacy for industry initiatives. Government should participate in and support significant efforts to take back, recycle and upcycle garments and fibres.

6. Explore and test economic incentives (such as tariffs, deposits, etc.) to internalize social and environmental costs of consumption and production

— The hidden cost of social and environmental impacts are currently externalised and invisible to consumers, and prices do not signal the true cost of products. A wide range of policies could be used to provide consumers with more and better incentives to make choices that are more sustainable, for example, collecting deposits at point of sale that can be recovered when selling or donating clothes to second-hand stores, or providing tax credits to retailers based on the amount of sustainable materials used in products.

7. Restrict harmful substances— Concern about chemicals and product safety continue to

be a top concern for consumers. There are also significant environmental impacts associated with chemical use. Government should revisit the approach and effectiveness of policy related to chemical use in the fashion industry, including chemicals used in the fibre or garment production processes, no matter if they take place in the European Union or not. In addition, new technologies, such as nanotechnology and GMOs, should be thoroughly investigated to determine whether and to what extent they pose a risk to human health and the environment.

8 | 9

poTeNTIal CIvIl soCIeTy CommITmeNTsThe role of civil society is often to create and communicate information and deviations from cultural norms and values. Certain groups act as watchdogs for consumers; others promote and nurture specific communities, lifestyles and sub-cultures; some create the foundations of knowledge; and others are intended to push industry to improve their standards and practices.

Below we present a set of actions that we believe civil society can take to steward the transition to sustainable fashion consumption.

1. Design and implement campaigns to raise consumer awareness of the environmental, social and economic impacts of fashion production and consumption and to influence and empower consumer behaviour changes

— The fashion industry, through seasonal collections and fashion shows, is currently oriented toward promoting fast and growing consumption. Civil society can raise awareness of the current model’s origins and impacts and define changes that are needed to become more sustainable.

2. Organise events for swapping and taking back unwanted garments

— NGOs are ideal partners to help collect garments and to gain support from the second-hand market.

3. Participate in the drafting of industry standards and guidelines and government policy making

— The credibility of standards and guidelines often rests with watchdog NGOs who have a mission to serve the public interest.

4. Contribute to and inform traditional media coverage of sustainable fashion consumption

— Fashion media play a major role in describing trends in the fashion industry, both to highlight good and bad practices, and in shaping how consumers think about the industry. The industry can be more transparent about its practices and the media can seek to highlight sustainable consumption solutions more effectively.

We hope that the NICE Consumer project’s first phase has inspired you to take action, both as an individual consumer, and as an empowered member of society who can influence the development of sustainable consumption.

The commitments contained in this document will be revised during Copenhagen Fashion Summit 2012 and then posted online where organisations can sign up to show their support for and commitment to sustainable fashion consumption.

The NICE Consumer project team hopes to continue our work of bringing stakeholders together, sharing good practices and shaping actions and policies to empower consumers. We also hope to begin large-scale campaigns to interact with consumers and showcase that sustainable fashion consumption is possible and happening today. We intend to continue to reach out via social media, online meetings and physical events to accelerate changes in the industry, and we encourage you to participate and shape the path of sustainable fashion consumption going forward.

10 | 11

The NICE Consumer project team would like to thank all the individuals who participated in research and public consultations. Your input was carefully considered in the development of the project outputs. Thank you for your time and attention and we look forward to your continued participation.

Stay connectedVisit our web pages at www.nordicfashionassociation.com and www.nicefashion.orgFollow on Twitter @NiceConsumer Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/NICE-Fashion/275437152524901

DE

SIG

N. J

Ak

Ob

bAy

. WW

W.b

AyS

IC.C

OM

The Social Contract Spring 1993177

Alan Durning is a senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute. This essay consists ofexcerpts from his new book, How Much Is Enough? (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992).

How Much Is Enough?By Alan Durning

The wildfire spread of the consumer life-stylearound the world marks the most rapid andfundamental change in day-to-day existence thehuman species has ever experienced. Over a few shortgenerations we have become car drivers, televisionwatchers, mall shoppers, and throw-away buyers. Thetragic irony of this momentous transition is that thehistoric rise of the consumer society has been quiteeffective in harming the environment, but not inproviding the people with a fulfilling life.... Measured in constant dollars, the world's people haveconsumed as many goods and services since 1950 asall previous generations put together. Since 1940,Americans alone have used up as large a share of theearth's mineral resources as did everyone before themcombined....

The average resident of an industrial countryconsumes 3 times as much fresh water, 10 times asmuch energy, and 19 times as much aluminum assomeone in a developing country. The ecologicalimpacts of our consumption even reach into the localenvironments of the poor. Our appetite for wood andminerals, for example, motivates the road builderswho open tropical rain forests to poor settlers,resulting in the slash-and-burn forest clearing that iscondemning countless species to extinction.

High consumption translates into huge impacts.In industrial countries, the fuels burned releaseperhaps three-fourths of the sulfur and nitrogen oxidesthat cause acid rain. Industrial countries' factoriesgenerate most of the world's hazardous chemicalwastes. Their military facilities have built more than99 percent of the world's nuclear warheads. Theiratomic power plants have generated more than 96percent of the world's radioactive waste. And their airconditioners, aerosol sprays, and factories releasealmost 90 percent of the chlorofluorocarbons thatdestroy the earth's protective ozone layer....

Only population growth rivals high consumptionas a cause of ecological decline, and at leastpopulation growth is now viewed as a problem bymany governments and citizens of the world.Consumption, in contrast, is almost universally seenas good—indeed, increasing it is the primary goal ofnational economic policy....

José Goldemberg of the University of São Pauloand an international team of researchers conducted acareful study of the potential to cut fossil fuelconsumption through maximizing efficiency andmaking full use of renewable energy. The entire world

population, they concluded, could live at roughly thelevel of West Europeans in the mid-seventies — withthings like modest but comfortable homes,refrigeration for food, clothes washers, a moderateamount of hot water, and ready access to publictransit, augmented by limited auto use.

The study's implicit conclusion, however, is thatthe entire world could not live in the style ofAmericans, with their larger homes, more numerouselectrical gadgets, and auto-centered transportation.Goldemberg's scenario, furthermore, may be toogenerous. It would not reduce global carbon emissionsby anything like the 60-80 percent that theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believesnecessary to stabilize the world's climate....

Of course, the opposite of overconsumption —destitution — is no solution to either environmental orhuman problems. It is infinitely worse for people andbad for the natural world, too. Dispossessed peasantsslash-and-burn their way into the rain forests of LatinAmerica, hungry nomads turn their herds out ontofragile African rangeland, reducing it to desert, andsmall farmers in India and the Philippines cultivatesteep slopes, exposing them to the erosive powers ofrain. Perhaps half the world's billion-plus absolutepoor are caught in a downward spiral of ecological andeconomic impoverishment. In desperation, theyknowingly abuse the land, salvaging the present bysavaging the future....

Redefining Our Needs If environmental destruction results when people

have either too little or too much, we are left towonder, How much is enough? What level ofconsumption can the earth support? When does havingmore cease to add appreciably to human satisfaction?Is it possible for all the world's people to livecomfortably without bringing on the decline of theplanet's natural health? Is there a level of living abovepoverty and subsistence but below the consumer life-style — a level of sufficiency? Could all the world'speople have central heating? Refrigerators? Clothesdryers? Automobiles? Air conditioning?

"If the life-supporting ecosystemsof the planet are to survive for

future generations, the consumersociety will have to dramatically

The Social Contract Spring 1993178

curtail its use of resources..."

Many of these questions cannot be answereddefinitively, but for each of us in the consumersociety, asking is essential nonetheless. Unless we seethat more is not always better, our efforts to forestallecological decline will be overwhelmed by ourappetites. Unless we ask, we will likely fail to see theforces around us that stimulate those appetites, such asrelentless advertising, proliferating shopping centers,and social pressures to "keep up with the Joneses." Wemay overlook forces that make consumption moredestructive than it need be, such as subsidies to mines,paper mills, and other industries with highenvironmental impacts. And we may not act onopportunities to improve our lives while consumingless, such as working fewer hours to spend more timewith family and friends.

Still, the difficulty of transforming the consumersociety into a sustainable one can scarcely beoverestimated. We consumers enjoy a life-style thatalmost everybody else aspires to, and why shouldn'tthey? Who would just as soon not have an automobile,a big house on a big lot, and complete control overindoor temperature throughout the year? Themomentum of centuries of economic history and thematerial cravings of 5.5 billion people lie on the sideof increasing consumption.

We may be, therefore, in a conundrum — aproblem admitting of no satisfactory solution.Limiting the consumer life-style to those who havealready attained it is not politically possible, morallydefensible, or ecologically sufficient. And extendingthat life-style to all would simply hasten the ruin ofthe biosphere. The global environment cannot support1.1 billion of us living like American consumers,much less 5.5 billion people, or a future population ofat least 8 billion. On the other hand, reducing theconsumption levels of the consumer society andtempering material aspirations elsewhere, thoughmorally acceptable, is a quixotic proposal. It bucks thetrend of centuries. Yet it may be the only option.

If the life-supporting ecosystems of the planet areto survive for future generations, the consumer societywill have to dramatically curtail its use of resources —partly by shifting to high-quality, low-input durablegoods and partly by seeking fulfillment throughleisure, human relationships, and other nonmaterialavenues. We in the consumer society will have to livea technologically sophisticated version of the life-stylecurrently practiced lower on the economic ladder.Scientific advances, better laws, restructuredindustries, new treaties, environmental taxes,grassroots campaigns — all can help us get there. Butultimately, sustaining the environment that sustainshumanity will require that we change our values....

Some guidance is thus needed on what

combination of technical changes and value changeswould make a comfortable — if nonconsumer — life-style possible for all without endangering thebiosphere. From a purely ecological perspective thecrucial categories are energy, materials, andecosystems, but such categories are abstract. For amore tangible approach, [we must] focus on threeaspects of daily life: what we eat and drink, how weget around, and the things we buy and use. In eachcase, the world's people are distributed unevenly overa vast range, with those at the bottom consuming toolittle for their own good—and those at the topconsuming too much for the earth's good....

Searching for Sufficiency The supply lines that feed the consumer class

encircle the globe. From large urban supermarkets,they fan out to Philippine plantations, American grainfields, African rangeland, and Indian spice farms.North Europeans eat lettuce trucked from Greece.Japanese dine on Australian ostrich meat by the tonand American cherries by the airplane-load. One-fourth of the grapes Americans eat come from 7,000kilometers away, in Chile, and half the orange juicethey drink comes from Brazil. Europeans get fruitfrom as far away as Australia and New Zealand....

These global supply lines leave indelible markson the terrestrial ecosystems they traverse. Malaysianplanters spray lindane and aldrin — chemicalsforbidden in the United States — on the cocoa thatturns into sweets for the consumer class. Cattleranching for export to American, European, andMiddle Eastern consumers is one motive behind theclearing of millions of hectares of South and CentralAmerican rain forests, while commercial ranches inBotswana that produce beef for Europe havedecimated the nation's herds of migrating wildebeests.

Coastal ecosystems are affected as well. Bananaplantations on Saint Lucia in the Caribbean have takenover much of the island's tropical forestland anddriven small farmers into the hills, where their slash-and-burn crop cultivation allows soil to washdownstream, choking coastal seagrass ecosystemswith silt. Sugar plantations on Fiji that supply theEuropean Community have taken over 4,000 hectaresof mangrove forest — despite the low agriculturalyields of converted mangrove soils....

If all the world's people nourished themselveswith the consumer class's regimen of meat, heavilypackaged and processed foods and drinks andspecialties transported great distances, we would usemore energy just for food and drinks than we currentlydo for all purposes — along with other naturalresources in equally mammoth quantities. Theultimate goal of reforming food and beverage systemsworldwide, then, should not be to raise the poor andmiddle income into the consumer class but to bringabout a convergence of the three groups. From the

The Social Contract Spring 1993179

middle-income class would come the basic menu of anabundance of locally grown produce and cleandrinking water. From the consumer class would cometechnologies such as small, super-efficientrefrigerators, advanced cooking stoves, and hot waterfor washing. The result of such convergence would behealthier people and a healthier planet....

Taming ConsumerismThe world economy is currently organized to

furnish 1.1 billion people with a consumer life-stylelong on things but short on time. The prospect ofrestructuring that economy is daunting, but theconsume-or-decline argument, which holds highconsumption indispensable for employing workers andcombating deprivation, is ungrounded. Highconsumption is a precondition to neither fullemployment nor the end of poverty....

"In the final analysis, acceptingand living by sufficiency rather

than excess offers a return to what is,culturally speaking, the human home..."

If our grandchildren are to inherit a planet asbounteous and beautiful as we have enjoyed, we in theconsumer class must — without surrendering the questfor advanced, clean technology — eat, travel, and useenergy and materials more like those on the middlerung of the world's economic ladder. If we can learn todo so, we might find ourselves happier as well, for inthe consumer society, affluence has brought us to astrange pass. Who would have predicted a century agothat the richest civilizations in history would be madeup of polluted tracts of suburban developmentdominated by the private automobile, shopping malls,and a throwaway economy? Surely, this is not theultimate fulfillment of our destiny.

In the final analysis, accepting and living bysufficiency rather than excess offers a return to whatis, culturally speaking, the human home: to the ancientorder of family, community, good work, and goodlife; to a reverence for skill, creativity and creation; toa daily cadence slow enough to let us watch the sunsetand stroll by the water's edge; to communities worthspending a lifetime in; and to local places pregnantwith the memories of generations. Perhaps HenryDavid Thoreau had it right when he scribbled in hisnotebook beside Walden Pond, "A man is rich inproportion to the things he can afford to let alone."�

This publication contains general information only, and none of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, its member firms, or its and their affiliates are, by means of this publication, render-ing accounting, business, financial, investment, legal, tax, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your finances or your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your finances or your business, you should consult a qualified professional adviser.

None of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, its member firms, or its and their respective affiliates shall be responsible for any loss whatsoever sustained by any person who relies on this publication.

About DeloitteDeloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, a Swiss Verein, and its network of member firms, each of which is a legally separate and independent entity. Please see www.deloitte.com/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and its member firms.

Copyright © 2010 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

i ssue 7 | 2010

Complimentary article reprint

By LawrenCe Hutter > Peter CaPozuCCa

and Sarita nayyar

> iLLuStration By kai and Sunny

A Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption

Deloitte Review deloit tereview.com

46

deloit tere vie w.com Deloitte Review

47A RoAdmAp foR SuStAinAble ConSump tion

Sustainability on a broad scale isn’t about scoring points or about star players. It’s a rewrite of the rules. While there are stra-tegically rewarding moves that individual

companies can and often should make with re-gard to sustainability, sustainable consumption will not be achieved by the work of a single company. Rather, it will require many companies innovating and collaborating across value chains and engag-ing consumers in a redefinition of value.

By Lawrence Hutter > Peter caPozucca and Sarita nayyar > iLLuStration By kai and Sunny

A Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption

A consortium of CEOs contributed their time and insight to the 2010 World Eco-nomic Forum’s Driving Sustainable Consumption initiative held in Davos, Switzer-land. They represent not only the consumer industries community, but also trans-portation, financial services, media and entertainment, mobility, IT, and chemicals. Having made their business case for sustainable consumption in the initiative’s early phase, the project board’s mandate is to now lay out a practical framework for migration to truly sustainable models of business and consumption.

Deloitte Review deloit tereview.com

48 A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

Sustainability at this level is no longer simply about increasing efficiencies or

complying with regulations – it is about making fundamental changes in the way

business is done and the way the world consumes. This will involve rethinking

business models and supply chains across industries and how value will be rede-

fined over the coming years.

There are benefits for individual companies. Business leaders have an opportunity

to create new business models that internalize social and environmental capital

and that focus on innovation – all of which can better position their companies

for a low-carbon economy based on smarter consumption and changed percep-

tions of what value really means.

the problem with incremental change

The economic downturn is still making headlines, but the global consumption

trajectory remains largely unchanged. There will be two billion new middle-

class consumers in the next 20 years;1 water systems are already stressed, and there

is increased cost and volatility associated with natural resource supplies and prices,

with businesses becoming more vulnerable to these shocks.

Without question, moves toward sustainability are accelerating. In both developed

and developing markets, environmental concerns among consumers are rising2 and,

despite the recession, sustainability remains high on the business agenda. Govern-

ments, meanwhile, are increasingly inclined to address the issue, and some legislation

While 35 countr ies world-wide have developed or are in the process of developing their nat ional susta inable consumption and product ion programs, quest ions remain as to what effect ive imple-mentat ion looks l ike; none of these countr ies has seen a decrease in i ts resource use or environmental de- gradat ion associated with consumption.

deloit tere vie w.com Deloitte Review

49A RoAdmAp foR SuStAinAble ConSump tion

has directed public investments toward projects to measure or enhance sustainability.

These current trends toward sustainability may improve sustainability at the

margins, but they are still rooted in a model of consumption that is itself often

viewed as unsustainable. A Deloitte* study found that consumer behavior is still

principally dictated by price, quality and convenience, rather than by origin of

products and sustainability content.3 Sustainable consumption in developed econ-

omies remains niche. Many of the actions undertaken by businesses have positive,

clear bottom line implications in the near to mid-term – reducing energy use and

its cost, reducing water use and its cost, and reducing the use of carbon. But while

these actions have benefits to individual businesses, the greater prize—sustainabil-

ity along and across value chains—remains elusive.

Within the existing paradigm, incentives for business investment are insuf-

ficient, and collaboration across value chains is generally lacking. Moreover, public

policy frameworks are not adequately coordinated at the global level. While sus-

tainability is increasingly being linked to existing public policy frameworks on cli-

mate change and biodiversity, there is no specific global regulation of sustainabil-

ity. Nor is there global policy consensus on the framework and approach needed,

* As used in this article, “Deloitte” means Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.

Linear value chain Closed loop value chain

Figure 1. Simplified schematics of linear and closed loop value chain models

Manufacturingwaste

Materialssourcing

Distributionlogistics

Consumptionand use

Manufacturing

Sales and retail

Raw materials

Disposal

Logisticswaste

Packagingwaste

Consumption/use waste

Productwaste

Manufacturingprocess reuse

Waste fromconsumption

Lim

ited

rec

yclin

g

Product andby-product reuse

Logistics wasteand auxiliary

products reuse

Manufacturing

Distributionlogistics

Consumptionand use

Product recycling and materialsr Recovery

Salesand retail

Materialssourcing

Deloitte Review deloit tereview.com

50 A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

and anti-collusion legislation discourages some of the collaboration that will be

essential to industrywide change. So far, while all regions have identified priories

and programs, progress has been varied. While 35 countries worldwide have devel-

oped or are in the process of developing their national sustainable consumption and

production programs, questions remain as to what effective implementation looks

like; none of these countries has seen a decrease in its resource use or environmental

degradation associated with consumption.4

This patchwork progress is unlikely to enable sustainability on a broad front.

What is required to attain that goal is not incremental adjustment, but real trans-

formation. Changes in lifestyles and consumption habits will be required of con-

sumers generally, not just an expansion of the number of “green” consumers. Busi-

nesses will need to define new business models focused on value creation rather

than material throughput; they will need to work toward closed loop systems,

whereby all material not safely consumed in the use of a product is designed to

be a valuable input into the same or other processes. The process would be greatly

facilitated if, at the same time, governments were to institute enabling policies

and regulations that price resources at their true cost and measure sustainable pros-

perity at its true worth for future generations. The old paradigm for the global

economy – focused on throughput of resources, consumption of products, limited

measures of prosperity and under-pricing of externalities – will most likely need to

be discarded; a “new normal” defined; and a path set out to achieve it.

Every company is at a dif-ferent stage in address ing susta inabi l i ty – some are beginning to integrate the pr inc ip les of susta inabi l -i ty into their strategy, oth-ers are pi lot ing new busi-ness models , and some have hardly started. Wherever your organizat ion is in i ts journey, you wi l l f ind ideas here to consider as you move forward.

deloit tere vie w.com Deloitte Review

51A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

what the journey looks like

Getting to the summit of sustainable consumption will not happen all at

once. The following four steps on the road to sustainability highlight the

obstacles that must be overcome and the opportunities available for businesses,

leaders and citizens to progress from the incremental to the transformational. Use-

fully, they also suggest that this is a journey that can be structured and tackled

in manageable steps – providing a framework for businesses to shape their own

transformation agenda.

Viewed separately, some parts of the process may seem familiar, or simply good

business sense, and the process overall may look like traditional change manage-

ment. In part that’s true. However, this approach embraces many different pro-

cesses and stakeholder groups to embed sustainability in core business strategy. It

recognizes that every company is at a different stage in addressing sustainability –

some are beginning to integrate the principles of sustainability into their strategy,

others are piloting new business models, and some have hardly started. Wherever

your organization is in its journey, you will find ideas here to consider as you

move forward.

1. The first step is to firm up the foundation, as the current innovative busi-

ness practices of today become standard business practice and sustainable

practices are integrated into the business. This is “relative sustainability”,

where steps being made are important but still incremental to the status quo.

2. The second step is rebuildingbusiness, in which sustainability is inte-

grated throughout the business and new business models are piloted and

demonstrated as being viable.

3. The third step, newvaluechains, is the beginning of a major shift to new

business models, in which sustainability is integrated across value chains

and entire business ecosystems are moving towards zero net waste.

4. The final step leads to balancedsystems, in which innovation drives sus-

tainable value chains and value is redefined for all stakeholders. This results

Foundation Rebuilding Business New Value Chains Balanced Systems

Figure 2. Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption

Deloitte Review deloit tereview.com

52 A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

in a self-sustaining system with closed loops, zero carbon and zero waste

both along and across value chains, in which a sustainable society and sus-

tainable lifestyles are realized.

The World Economic Forum’s Driving Sustainable Consumption program is

helping businesses shape their programs to embed this journey in their business

strategy, innovation focus and investment plans.

insight to action

Sustainable consumption will be achieved only through the efforts of many

companies working with their suppliers, collaborating across value chains, and

engaging with their customers. To help make the preceding four steps more tangi-

ble, CEOs at the 2010 annual meeting in Davos identified several areas of potential

collaboration to address questions such as:

• What are the most important enabling actions that private sector collabora-

tion should start on now?

• What existing initiatives, platforms or processes can be used?

• Who else might be needed to catalyze international and cross-industry

action?

• What roles do we need national and international governmental bodies to

play in enabling change?

They identified three areas for early focus:

• Consumer engagement: how can business generate a consumer movement

for sustainable consumption?

• Life cycle metrics: assess existing metrics and tools for measurement of sus-

tainable consumption.

• Exchanging innovation: open innovation and its benefits.

These areas imply the need for closer collaboration between organizations in-

cluding global brand companies, retailers, media and communications companies,

NGOs, and academic institutions. They believe each area presents immediate and

significant opportunities for collaboration across the value chain, and they have in-

cluded deliverables designed to help the industries involved get to the next stage.5

deloit tere vie w.com Deloitte Review

53A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

At the foundation level

consumer engagement: how can business generate a con-sumer movement for sustainable consumption?

Drawing on the conference discussion, we would further

suggest that through meaningful engagement, economic incentive and co-cre-

ation, companies can positively engage consumers with the benefits of sustainable

consumption. Not only can industry help guide such behaviors, but by being part

of the process of change, a company is more likely to make itself and its brands rel-

evant and resonant with consumers and thereby positively differentiate itself in the

marketplace. While sustainability is often regarded as a “nice-to-have” function

separate from core business processes—much as online business once was periph-

eral—in the future sustainability may be even more transformational.

Positioning sustainability as a core business strategy and key platform for con-

sumer engagement requires both breaking functional silos and establishing a dia-

logue with external stakeholders. Developing a community of chief marketing of-

ficers, business leaders, sustainability leaders and communication experts as a next

step can help bridge these divisions and begin to clarify how to most effectively

communicate with consumers.

Often consumer instinct is to not trust businesses when it comes to “walking

the talk” on sustainability. Where, then, are the opportunities to engage consum-

ers? One answer is right in front of executives: their employees. Because employees

Foundation

Often consumer inst inct is to not trust businesses when it comes to “walking the talk” on sustainabi l i ty. Where, then, are the opportunit ies to engage consumers? One answer is r ight in front of executives: their employees.Because employees and their famil ies are consumers them-selves . . . they are, after al l , a stepping stone to the rest of the consumer universe.

Deloitte Review deloit tereview.com

54 A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

and their families are consumers themselves, engaging them on sustainability may

help drive change within business and also have a direct impact on society. They

are, after all, a stepping stone to the rest of the consumer universe.

Building trust also means giving consumers the tools they need to understand

sustainable behavior – and providing them from a neutral platform. Many con-

sumers wish to behave more responsibly but are unsure how to do so. They are

often overwhelmed by data, and there is a need to simplify information and inspire

consumers through a design-focused view.6 To address that, a group of the CEOs

has proposed to develop a portal to provide more information on carbon, water and

waste to help consumers make educated choices about products and services. The

goal of the project is to inform consumers about carbon content, water use and

other sustainability issues in ways that encourage behavior change by engaging,

inspiring and mobilizing consumers. The product is expected to:

• Be a portal, not a label, accessed via smart phones and the web.

• Be open-source and not constrained to particular data providers.

• Show the “green price” or true cost of a product including environmental

externalities.

• Enable consumers to achieve cost savings, better value and reduced footprint.

• Focus on developed markets with advanced IT infrastructure and high

environmental footprint.

At the rebuilding business level

life cycle metrics: assess existing metrics and tools for measurement of sustainable consumption

Having a clear, consistent method or set of methods to

measure sustainable consumption is critical to establishing a common way of un-

derstanding both forward-looking activities and “rear-view mirror” accounting.

However, while many groups - both governmental and non-governmental - have

developed tools and metrics for measurement, no uniform approach currently

exists to carbon labeling of products or reporting, let alone a way of measuring

the environmental life cycle impact along the entire value chain. Such a measure-

ment would allow the relative sustainability of different products and services

to be meaningfully compared, potentially guiding consumer behavior, fostering

collaborative business innovation, and providing a basis for appropriate govern-

ment regulation.

Rebuilding Business

deloit tere vie w.com Deloitte Review

55A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

The CEO stakeholders for this work stream agreed that practical actions should

focus on:

• Convening stakeholders: This involves bringing together important stake-

holders such as retailers, manufacturers, curators of common interests and

policymakers; all have different motivations regarding life cycle assess-

ment, but all share an interest in simplified information. Convening to

create efficiencies in the use of information would enable a shift to life cycle

thinking for entire business models rather than just life cycle measurement

of products.

• Clarifying and simplifying available data: This involves defining a com-

mon vision for the information available and identifying common hotspots.

Some 30 to 50 standards would be inventoried and assessed as to how they

would be applied for specific businesses and “business ecosystems” along

the value chain. It would include simplifying information sets for more ap-

plicability and practicality, but without losing impact of the full life cycle

assessment.

• Sharing examples of the benefits of life cycle thinking: This involves ex-

amining how companies are successfully using life cycle assessments for

multiple, positive purposes in a cost-effective manner and drawing con-

clusions about how convergence, simplification and engagement with key

stakeholders, both businesses and consumers, can add value. With regard

to innovation, this means focusing on the importance of the choices at the

beginning of the innovation process, both within a company and up the

supply chain.

At the new value chains level

exchanging innovation: open innovation and its benefits

The concept of open innovation can accelerate the shift to

sustainability and create efficiencies at multiple levels to help

companies work together toward the same goal and share experiences, tools and

methodologies. A working example of this already exists as the GreenXchange, a

consortium of companies, including Nike and Best Buy, that enables companies to

share intellectual property for green product design.7

Businesses can be blocked from collaborating in strategic areas for a number

of reasons, including lack of collaboration experience, protection of intellectual

property, or regulation. The main impediment to open innovation, however, is

trust. Organizations must be convinced that the opportunity far outweighs the

New Value Chains

Deloitte Review deloit tereview.com

56 A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

risk, which presents challenges both inside and outside the organization.

Inside companies, this boils down to incentives; companies and employees

dealing with intellectual property and innovation processes must value sharing

(for both giver and receiver). However, company cultures have by and large re-

warded private innovation and the legal protection of it. Externally, there can be

a geographical dimension that is encountered in emerging markets, in particular

where trust is generally very low. In these instances, sharing is perceived as a threat

to competitive advantage. Often, such cultural hurdles are reproduced inside large

multinationals.

The CEOs proposed the following for overcoming such cultural barriers:

• Involvetherightpeople: Bring in high-level representatives in the com-

pany to address the issue, particularly those who deal with innovation –

whether they have “innovation” in their job title or deal with it more im-

plicitly, as do many who have business development roles. These are the

people who can pinpoint who is typically reluctant to share, and why, and

make recommendations.

• Develop case studies: This is a powerful tool to show how cultures can

change. By looking at and learning from the current success of others,

companies will understand what’s relevant to them and then look to rep-

licate the process. These studies should address such practical questions

as how projects get stuck and explore what has worked in the past and,

more importantly, what is working in the present to reveal where and how

businesses have set up successful models and provided inspiration for the

development of future strategies.

Envisioning thE “nEw normal”

The CEOs defined the new normal for the global economy as one in which

consumption no longer has destructive environmental and social impacts

and is driven by a combination of innovation, evolving consumer values, and more

accurate real product costs. In the end, they define it as a world defined not so

much by scarcity and sacrifice, but by innovation and a new balance.

This would be an economy in which:

• Consumersarethedrivingforce: Through more meaningful engagement

and co-creation, consumers reap the benefits of sustainable consumption for

themselves, their families and their communities. They act upon meaning-

ful information about products in the marketplace – information that has

been improved with better metrics and more standardized communication

deloit tere vie w.com Deloitte Review

57

platforms. Consumers view a product as a means to a solution or enhanced

experience rather than seeing a product as an end in itself.

• Consumption is about loops, not lines: Through better design and life-

cycle thinking, consumption and production become closed loops, produc-

ing no outputs as waste throughout their life cycle. As such, the concept

of waste disappears, as all by-products retain an intrinsic value to feed into

other systems. Even food spoilage and waste are minimized and turned into

biofuels, compost or animal feed.

• Collaboration is a key: Companies view the areas in which they collaborate

to be as important as the areas in which they compete. This collaboration

happens both along and across the value chain through management, re-

duction and elimination of impacts that transcend the boundaries of direct

control of any single company. Product waste and duplication is improved

through interoperability of products.

• Core business practices are sustainable: Company competitiveness and

profitability are inextricably linked with their achievement of sustainability

objectives. The depth of this relationship goes to the core values ascribed

to products and services, materialized through life cycle design and inno-

vation. Relationships with suppliers and buyers are based on greater trust

through which long-term contracts and relationships are emphasized, pro-

viding greater traceability of both products and their impacts.

A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

Businesses can be blocked from col laborating in stra-tegic areas for a number of reasons, including lack of col laboration experience, protection of intel lectual property, or regulation. The main impediment to open in-novation, however, is trust. Organizations must be con-vinced that the opportunity far outweighs the r isk . . .

Deloitte Review deloit tereview.com

58

• Public policy frameworks support sustainable consumption: Govern-

ments pursue policies to enhance the wellbeing of citizens and the environ-

ment as much as they do traditional economic growth. Natural resources,

such as water or carbon, are priced according to their value within the struc-

ture of the economy and environment as a whole, while externalities that

are currently unpriced or underpriced, such as landfill waste or toxins, are

appropriately accounted for through market mechanisms.

GettinG there - step by step

The efforts of CEOs involved in the World Economic Forum’s Driving Sus-

tainable Consumption initiative demonstrate that the business community

need not wait to make sustainability a key business imperative and a source of

innovation and value creation. We believe the ideas presented here, though only

steps, should be strongly considered by businesses in their efforts to more rapidly

ascend the learning curve and lay the foundation for more transformational chang-

es. All of this will require leadership and commitment from CEOs and engage-

ment throughout their organizations. New forms of collaboration and alliances

and partnerships will be required to bring new value to the consumer and can help

create competitive advantages for the organizations that lead the charge.

LawrenceHutter is Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s global Consumer Business & Transportation lead.

Peter Capozucca is a principal and Sustainability practice leader, Consumer Products, with Deloitte Consulting LLP .

SaritaNayyar is senior director, head of Consumer Industries for the World Economic Forum.

Deloitte LLP (UK) and Deloitte Consulting LLP served as project advisors to the 2010 World Eco-nomic Forum’s Driving Sustainable Consumption initiative.

A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion

Endnotes

1. World Economic Forum and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Sustainability for tomorrow’s consumer: the business case for sustain-ability, January 2009

2. World Economic Forum and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Redesigning business value: a roadmap for sustainable consumption, January 2010

3. Deloitte LLP and The Coca Cola Retailing Research Council, Europe, Exploring the third dimension: relevant and timely information to empower shopper choice, 2009.

4. World Economic Forum and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Redesigning business value: a roadmap for sustainable consumption, January 2010

5. All information on these workstreams is derived from World Economic Forum, Driving sustainable consumption scoping documents, April 6-13, 2010.

6. Deloitte LLP and The Coca Cola Retailing Research Council, Europe, Exploring the third dimension: relevant and timely information to empower shopper choice, 2009.

7. http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/12734

59

deloit tere vie w.com Deloitte Review

A roAdmAp for SuStAinAble conSump tion