Designing Products as if the Earth Really Mattered
By Edwin Datschefski
Products are the source of all environmental problems. It may seem
surprising, but most environmental problems are caused by unintentional
side-effects of the manufacture, use and disposal of products.
An individual product may look harmless enough, but the
environmental damage it causes happens elsewhere, out of sight and
mind, “hidden” from the consumer and often from the designer as well.
Major issues such as pollution, deforestation, species loss and
global warming are all by-products of the activities that provide
consumers with food, transport, shelter, clothing and the endless array
of consumer goods on the market today. I call this the “Hidden
Ugliness” of products.
Many environmental impacts are literally invisible. Vapors and
gases float around unseen. Pesticides and other pollutants can be found
in perfectly clean-looking water, radiation from nuclear or electrical
sources can’t be seen or sensed without special equipment.
More than 30 tons of waste are produced for every ton of product
that reaches the consumer. And then, 98 percent of those products are
thrown away within six months. When you include these hidden impacts of
manufacturing, we each consume our own body weight in materials every
two days. If there is no plan or system for product take-backs, full
re-use and cyclicity, then every product sold represents a toxic
release.
A computer is about one-quarter plastic. The candy-colored
translucent plastic called polycarbonate is the same stuff that CDs are
made from. It is made from phosgene (which was used as a poison gas in
the First World War) and Bisphenol A (an endocrine disruptor). The gold
in the circuit boards may have come from Romania, where a gold mining
accident caused one of the worst river pollution accidents in Europe.
The life span of a computer is only about three to five years. Every
year about 30 million computers are dumped, incinerated, shipped as
waste exports or put into storage in people’s attics.
All over the world, designers, manufacturers and consumers are
starting to go beyond the way products look and perform, to consider
what goes on when products are made and what happens when they are
eventually disposed of. An award-winning chair may look beautiful, but
can it really represent the pinnacle of mankind’s genius if it is made
using polluting methods or by exploiting workers?
Sustainability is inevitable. It will be a trillion-dollar
business in the next five years. BP Amoco, Shell, DaimlerChrysler,
Cargill Dow Polymers and Xerox have all initiated billion-dollar
projects involving solar panels, fuel cells, bioplastics and
remanufacturing.
Design is the key intervention point for making radical
improvements in the environmental performance of products.
Environmental thinking is an abundant source for innovation. Product
developers are running out of ideas. Almost all new product areas are
refinements of existing ones - the smaller laptop computer, the sleeker
car, the wider-screen TV. When the enormous might of the new digital
economy can only offer fridges that alert you to being out of milk, you
know that manufacturers are looking for direction. Sustainability can
give that new direction.
We have to create products that have “total beauty.” These
products, also known as “sustainable products,” are those that are the
best for people, profits and the planet.
When you’ve been looking at sustainable products for a while, you
notice the same solutions come up time and again. Based on a review of
500 products, I found that 99 percent of all environmental innovations
use one or more of these five principles:
We
often hear that the world is running out of resources. But there is
still the same amount of atoms around. We have simply converted atoms
into molecules that are of no use to us. With continuous cycling of
both organic and inorganic materials, we will never run out of the
resources we need.
Excerpted from The Total Beauty of Sustainable Products by Edwin Datschefski, (c) RotoVision SA 2001 [RotoVision, Rue Du Bugnon 7, 1299 Crans-Pres-Celigny, Switzerland, sales@rotovision.com, www.rotovision.com].
The publishers call this book “a unique resource for the… urgent
job of redesigning every product on the planet to be 100 percent
sustainable.” A good half of the book’s pages are devoted to 100
products that can help you live a Sustainable Day - from the morning
cup of organic shade-grown coffee to the electric car than carries you
home from work.
The book also includes a chapter on “How to Assess the Beauty of Products” and a guide to environmentally safe materials.
Building as if Forests Mattered.
From the introduction to Building with Vision.
By Sim Van der Ryn
The following passages are excerpted from Building with Vision: Optimizing and Finding Alternatives to Wood - the second volume of The Wood Reduction Trilogy from Watershed Media [556 Matheson St., Healdsburg, CA 95448, (707) 895-3490, http://www.watershedmedia.org. Cost: $22].
Wood, in the form of dimensional lumber, is simply a wonderful
material. Easy to work with, warm to the eyes and hand, natural,
reasonably durable, wood is the material that defines the trade of
carpentry and is the standard material for houses and light buildings
in North America.
There are many economic and durable home shell construction
systems that are preferable to wood. I was born in Holland: a country
with almost no forests and lots of clay. There, as in most of Europe,
masonry is the material of choice for light construction and is the
building industry standard.
Ancient old-growth forests are the keystone species of unique and
awe-inspiring ecosystems. Cutting and using old-growth woods - our
forest relatives - is the moral equivalent of murdering our living
grandparents.
Any building project carries with it an ethical as well as an
aesthetic contract with society - as it requires resources first to be
built, maintained, restored and eventually disposed of.
Of the approximately 1.5 million new homes built each year in the
US, 9 percent are framed in wood. At a conservative estimate of 400
studs per house, upwards of half-a-billion studs are required annually
for residential construction - not to mention sheathing, flooring,
roofing, trim and cabinetry.
According to the Center for Resourceful Building Technology,
enough studs are wasted on 20 typical job sites to frame an additional
house. Green building activist David Eisenberg argues that wood use
should be reconsidered altogether. After all, he notes, wood “rots,
burns, and is susceptible to bacterial and fungal growth.”
In North America, Europeans began burning and sawing their way
through the continent’s 850 million acres of ancient forests almost as
soon as they arrived. Ben Franklin wrote that by 1774, “wood, our
common fuel which within these 300 years might be had at any man’s
door, must now be fetched near [160 kilometers] to some towns, and
makes a considerable article in the expense of some families.”
In 1840, when a Shaker woman devised the circular saw blade, this
innovation eventually launched a revolution in stud- and stick-frame
construction, which today accounts for at least 90 percent of
residential buildings in the US. The amount of primary forest worldwide
is now reported to be just 16 percent of its pre-industrial amount and
dwindling by the day.
An acre of forest - up to 44 trees - goes into the 12,500 board
feet that make up the average 2,000-square-foot home in the US. With
approximately 1.5 million homes being built every year in the US, this
adds up to enormous pressure on the forests.
With only 4 percent of US old-growth forests remaining and wood
consumption still rising, the forest products industry is resorting to
the use of smaller, younger trees. Because of over-harvesting, many
builders are choosing to revive and update traditional systems - rammed
earth, adobe and cob - rather than relying on intensive layering of
processed industrial materials. Some industrially manufactured systems
that have emerged over the past two decades - steel framing, insulated
concrete forms - can significantly reduce or eliminate wood from the
building frame.
A full range of alternatives is available to the Green builder.
Some of these materials include: strawboard, fiber-cement, sandwich
construction with pre-insulated panels, bamboo, Rastra adobe
(incorporating polystyrene packaging beads), paper adobe, wood waste
masonry, rubber slate, biocomposites (from crop wastes and recycled
plastic), papercrete (made from recycled newsprint) and farm board
(fashioned from row-crop wastes).
Building with Vision contains 132 detailed pages on Green
Building tools and strategies, with scores of photos and hundreds of
essential links to Green Building practitioners, manufacturers, books
and websites.
True to its calling, this book contains its own eco-audit,
admitting to the consumption of 35,400 pounds of paper. But, since the
paper was 100 percent recycled stock from New Leaf paper [215 Leidesdorf St., San Francisco, CA, (888) 989-LEAF, www.newleafpaper.com]
the production of the book saved the equivalent of 62 trees, 5,598
pounds of solid waste, 6,159 gallons of water, 8,034 kilowatt hours of
electricity, 10,178 pounds of greenhouse gases and 15 cubic yards of
landfill.
Sim Van der Ryn, a former California State Architect under Gov. Jerry
Brown, is the founder of Van der Ryn Architects and the Ecological
Design Institute.
Basic Tenets of Resource-Efficient Building
Build small.
Pick a resource-efficient location.
Design simply and elegantly.
Design for flexibility.
Build for disassembly.
Build a durable structure.
Plan to minimize waste.
Collaborate with the rest of your team.
The 380-square-foot Household
by Dean A. DiSandro
Would you believe we can create housing for two adults and one child at
unsubsidized rents as low as $206 per month per home? And, for no more
than $575 per month (including taxes and insurance) the tenants could
become mortgage-free owners within only 10 years.
Design, engineering and construction are the easy part. The hard
part is our culture. One-third to one-half of all US “housing” space is
now dedicated to storage. Storage of furnishings (cooking, dining,
bedding, working, cleaning), clothing, recreational items and “stuff.”
I live in an “affordable housing” dwelling of my own creation. An
area just 20-feet-deep by 19-feet-wide includes a full kitchen, a full
toilet with bathtub/shower combo, a multimedia entertainment center,
ample closet and cupboard space, dual office desks with computer,
printer and the like, music recording equipment, breakfast nook and
even a gathering room where we have hosted dinner parties for eight.
As a point of reference, 390 square feet is about the same size as two SUVs parked tightly by a Newport Beach valet.
The place is a snap to clean up and to keep clean. Our utility
bills were tiny. Everything was easy to get to. Costs were so low my
savings account swelled.
Because mundane household chores didn’t occupy my life, I found I
had time for 5- to 10 -mile bike rides, including trips to the market,
movies, restaurants and clubs. The use of my car declined to the point
where I often had trouble keeping my car battery charged.
I also had time to tend a garden that included fruit trees, herbs,
vegetables and row crops. I had time to compose and practice music, to
write, to think, even to sleep. I learned that living small translated
into better living.
A typical housing tract of 50 1,500 square-foot homes - each
occupying 5,000 square-foot lots set along 50-foot-wide streets (plus
five additional feet on each side for sidewalks) - can cover 10 acres
of land with asphalt, housing and cement surfaces.
Instead, 50 of our 400 square-foot homes (each graced with a 320
square-foot private garden and arranged in checkerboard fashion along
20-foot-wide pedestrian paths) uses less than one acre of land, leaving
nine acres of open space for larger-scale agriculture, recreation and
tranquility. These villages would feature auto-accessible streets only
at the perimeter.
The numbers are do-able, even for single parents and workers
earning the current minimum wage. Using an equity-building structure,
the pride of private ownership would ensure proper care and maintenance
by residents.
This style of living encourages tight-knit communities, personal
food-gardening, lower consumption and less accumulation of stuff.
Because this type of housing takes profit out of developers’
pockets, promoting such housing would require significant political
will along with some necessary cultural adjustments. But we can do it.
We can create dignified and affordable housing to accommodate all.
Excerpted from Hope Dance Magazine [PO Box 15609, San Luis Obispo, CA 93406, (888) 206-7070, www.hopedance.org].
For the full text of this article, along with floor plans, cost figures
and financial calculations for the mini-homes, check out www.alternation.com/alternazine.htm.
Edited reprint. Not available for distribution.
Building Codes and Sustainability
by David Eisenberg
Building codes are supposed to protect the health and safety of people
from the built environment. If building codes are actually jeopardizing
the health and safety of everyone on the planet, resulting in the
destruction of the ecosystems that sustain us, we are obligated to
re-invent the codes.
Though the consequences are enormous, building codes ignore where
resources come from, how efficiently they’re used, or whether they can
be reused at the end of the useful life of a structure.
Building accounts for one-fourth of the world’s wood harvest,
two-fifths of its material and energy usage, and one-sixth of its fresh
water usage.
Modern building codes were initially developed by insurance
interests and have been influenced heavily by the industries that
produce the materials and building systems that are regulated by the
codes.
In many climates, the indigenous buildings are far more
comfortable and have far fewer negative impacts and costs than the
modern buildings that have replaced them.
The Development Center for Appropriate Technology [DCAT, PO Box 27513, Tucson, AZ 85726-7513, www.azstarnet.com/~dcat]
is heading a coalition to focus attention on the issue of building
codes and sustainability. The Civil Engineering Research Foundation, an
affiliate of the American Society of Civil Engineers, has incorporated
sustainable development principles into the full spectrum of civil
engineering activities.
David Eisenberg is the co-director of DCAT. Excerpted from The Last Straw [http://www.strawhomes.com].
Freelance writer contribution. Copyright of author.
Great Green Reads
Journal staff contribution. Can be reprinted for non-profit purposes. Please credit and notify Earth Island Journal.
Resources for Building Better Homes and a Better World
New Village Journal [2000 Center St., Suite 120, Berkeley, CA 94704, (510) 845-0685, www.newvillage.net]
was created by Architects, Designers and Planners for Social
Responsibility to showcase examples of innovative community-based
solutions to the housing crisis.
Builders without Borders. An international network of ecological builders working to create affordable housing around the world. [119 Main Street, Kingston, NM 88042, (505) 895-5400, www.BuilderswithoutBorders.org]
Underground Houses & Buildings. A book by architect Malcolm Wells [673 Satucket Rd., Brewster, MA 02831] includes plans for a 320-square-foot underground house and a Bipad Solar Earth Shelter for two.
The First International Green Building Conference and Expo will be held in Austin, Texas on November 13-15. The US Green Building Council [www.usgbc.org, (607) 277-6240]
will host more than 2,000 architects, engineers, developers, builders,
contractors, financiers and government officials who will convene to
promote the “rapidly expanding green building industry.”
A Greener Map of the World (40"x 27,” $15.95) displays surface
vegetation, wetlands, permafrost, deforestation, population densities,
indigenous nations and disputed borders. From the Exploration Company [4203 W. Aries Dr., Phoenix, AZ 85053, (602) 547-8612, http://www.theexplorationcompany.com].
Journal staff contribution. Can be reprinted for non-profit purposes. Please credit and notify Earth Island Journal.
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