In the beginning, tribes of people would supply themselves by following their food. Either fully or partially nomadic, they still went to the supplies, hunting and gathering and forming tools as they went along. Then they started to organise food through farming and animal husbandry, and over time established craftsmen to produce tools and goods, and ultimately organised into civilisations. Civilisations that learnt to shape nature to their needs.
The basic platform
The basic platform was pretty straightforward: take – make – waste, and replicated in every part of the chain from raw materials to use and final disposal. Much of what we know about ancient human habitations and ways of life we’ve learnt from their waste – where it is, what it’s made up of (e.g. bones, weapons, broken tools, pottery, etc.). As we manufactured we took the basic platform, and replicated it in each of multiple processes: let’s take the example of a pretty simple sandal. Rubber sole, leather straps, and thread. The rubber was tapped from trees, purified and dried, then formed or trimmed to make the soles. Trim scrap was – well – scrapped. Same with the leather.
The platform goes tippy…
But what worked well for a small population using basic materials, started to fail us as we developed more sophisticated materials more resistant to nature. And that brings risks to companies – risks that there are insufficient resources to “take”, that the processes for “making” are too costly or just threatened, and that “waste” is becoming unfeasibly expensive. Read on to read the three steps that will ensure you are a winner in this new world.
So what happened to the waste?
The pretty neat thing was that the waste was more often than not immediately used as food by insects and molds, or dogs or pigs or… No matter what ended up consuming it, the scrap became part of another process, and so waste wasn’t effectively waste. It was, as William McDonough is fond of saying, food.
We shall did overcome!
So the same things that made our products eco-groovy, waste = food, made them degrade fast. After all, the same insects/molds/dogs that were getting rid of the waste, were just as interested in the product. Our stuff was all food to them.
So we invented lye and vulcanisation and other processes that transformed humble ingredients into high tech, almost impervious-to-nature, materials. And still our systems were based on take-make-waste. But now, when we wasted, nature was having trouble digesting the by-products. And instead of becoming food, they accumulated like litter, and we developed industries to “dispose” of them. Which has largely meant sweeping them up and taking them “away”.
What’s wrong with dispose and away?
The Online Etymology Dictionary defines the origins of dispose as order:
mid-14c., from O.Fr. disposer (infl. by poser “to place”), from O.Fr. despondre, from L. disponere “put in order, arrange,” from dis- “apart” + ponere “to put, place”
And here’s a picture of a disposal site: 
In fairness, this is clearly a disposal site in a poorly regulated (or poorly enforced) area (in this case Haiti). So let me insert a picture of a sanitary landfill in the United States (Pennsylvania) from this year:
In either case, while there may be some form of order established – there is indeed a concentration of rubbish, distinct from the non-rubbish areas – the materials and dirt are so mingled that materials are hardly salvageable. As a consequence we have actually condemned them to being unuseful and therefore pure waste.
Is pollution just good stuff in the wrong place?
Physicists and chemists would say so. Value comes from order. So pure tends to have higher value than impure, and much more than contaminated. Gold is an obvious example. But purity can come from “designed-for-purpose” – for example metal alloys, or chemicals, or plastics. What happens when the fine distinctions that enable a material to be used in a particularly efficient way are contaminated – is tat more of the material needs to be used, and the properties it had been chosen for are sullied. Think of colour as a property, and consider the outcome when a black sock makes it’s way into a load of white laundry…
The shortages of “away”?
The fees for collecting and disposing of waste have been increasing at such a rate that in London, for example, they now account for 1/2 the city’s budget. These trends are due to accelerate due to public unwillingness to support new disposal sites (including waste-to-energy plants); competition for scarce space; and increasing waste. Population and demographics have a large role to play in this – in the past 50 years the population of the globe has more than doubled (from 3 to 6.8 billion); wealth and consumption have increased substantially, and the increase in smaller households and out-of-home consumption has further increased waste.
A different form of cost is imposed by extended producer responsibility requirements (EPR) – currently covering items as diverse as packaging materials, tires, white goods, hazardous and special wastes, and appliances in (among other countries) the EU, much of Canada, Turkey, Japan and parts of the US. The cost of recovering and disposal is placed usually on the brand owner who in turn seeks to distribute it among suppliers until eventually it makes its way into the cost of a good. Ultimately EPR regulation is seeking to ensure that products with least waste-impact (through highest and most economic levels of recovery and recycling) are rewarded by the market.
The even greater shortages of “take”
At the same time, we are facing pressures and even shortages of materials: not just the usual suspects (oil, water, fish…) but also many rare ones on which the industries considered particularly forward facing, are pinning their hopes: neodymium, terbium and dysprosium (key components in generators for wind turbines or electric cars); lanthanum – key to electric car batteries. Not only are these materials in short supply, but China which has a very long term view, has secured many of the supplies, thus making it the future monopolist for materials.
Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed. — Reuters, 31/8/09
A worsening ratio of people to arable land will bring about greater dependence on chemical fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals and on plant breeding for higher yields. In regard to dependence on chemical pesticides, the study looks for an increase in pesticide-resistant insects, based on California’s experience where, of 25 species each causing crop losses in excess of $1 million per year, 17 are now resistant to one or more types of pesticides. — Global 2000 report
And of course localised energy shortages and associated cost increases.
3 key steps to being able to continue “make”
So the competitive products – and companies – are going to be those who:
- Produce most efficiently: lowest energy, mostly renewable, and locally determined. For example, Dean dairies invested in a methane digester thus avoiding the cost of waste disposal and energy purchases, while creating enough energy that they can feed it to the utility and make money. Dean now has income where their competitors have costs – which means they can play with pricing, invest in greater modernisation/efficiencies, market themselves as green, … They’ve bought freedom, choice and a halo.
- Those that can reclaim and reuse their products at the disposal stage. For example, a battery manufacturer (or mobile phone, or iPod or…) depends on materials that are in limited supply, hazardous in their manufacture and hazardous in disposal. Risk, risk risk. Were they to lease, rather than sell, their electronics, they could recycle more efficiently, reclaim their precious metals, and – get the halo. In fact, as first mover, they could not only be reducing the toxicity of their products – they could be detoxing the operation – a powerful first mover advantage.
- Use renewable and renewed materials: either renewed by nature (e.g. trees), or by humans (recycled content). Coke has invested over a hundred million dollars in recycling plants that guarantee it a supply of recycled PET – PET whose life cycle impacts are as good as those of nature-based materials such as paper cartons. And, they are launching a plant-based polymer that can be recycled along with PET – so that their product is fundamentally green: renewable, renewed, recycled and reused by them.
Securing a profitable platform
Interface, the largest floor covering company in the world, dedicated themselves to becoming fully sustainable 15 years ago. Today they have changed their operations dramatically – zero waste facilities, high levels of renewable energy, much greater energy efficiency. Most interestingly, they have taken different approaches to desing and manufacturing, based on their observations of how nature works, and launched three bestselling lines of products as a consequence – products that are better for the environment, easier to lay and replace, more readily recycled, and cheaper to produce. “We were operating on the wrong platform” says their founder and Chairman Ray Anderson. They’ve changed that – and grown dramatically in the process.
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