What Matters Most

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What Matters Most   Nathan Shedroff has a great smile.   It gives the impression he solves problems with a good sense of humor.

Nathan says, “It’s the only way to approach life.”

In his newest book, Design is the Problem, he explains, “Design and designers have helped create a world where people are compelled to buy things that they don’t necessarily need or buy new versions and throw out their old versions when their old versions aren’t particularly bad.

“We contribute to consumer society that is beyond consumer, it is about over-consumption.”

This is why design is the problem.  Shedroff continues by explaining the idea of retail therapy.  Retail therapy is the idea that “purchasing things, whether we need them or not, is going to make us feel better about ourselves, which is completely fallacious because it’s temporary, it’s unmeaningful and it’s unsustainable.”

Shedroff prefers to use the word “sustainable” when defining good design rather than “green” because sustainability better expresses what we’re trying to achieve.

 ”It’s not a perfect word, either.  There’s alot of controversy around the word ’sustainability.’  But the two most important things to understand about sustainability are:   it’s not just about the environment and natural resources, although that’s a big part of it.  It’s also about human resources or social issues as well as financial sustainability and financial resources.

“The other problem with the word ‘green’ is that it carries with it a lot of historical and cultural baggage.  It turns a lot of people off.  So, when people hear the word ‘green,’ many people think hippies and birkenstocks and the environmentalism movement from the 1970’s and, while the principles behind sustainability completely is compatible with a lot of what was being said back then, it’s still very different.

“And so, if you’re saying ‘green,’ for instance, for the first part your ignoring the social and financial implications and, for the second part, it’s not this ‘green’ that we were talking about in the 70’s, which is a turn-off for a lot of people.

“So, it’s not just a smart place to go if you want to open the tent for as many people as possible.”

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Restore

For the design profession, Nathan introduces four different strategies for implementing a sustainable design:  reduce, reuse, recycle and restore.

“Design strategies under reduce are all about getting the most out of the least amount of material.  So, how can we design and ship and construct products that don’t have excess materials, that don’t have toxic materials, or at least have fewer toxic materials and maybe made from renewable energy?

“All of these seem a little foreign to us today but if you went back to my great grandparent’s farm in western Kansas, everyone on that farm would understand immediately you need to make the most use of the materials you’re given and you need to be smart about how you use energy.  You need to be efficient.  So, everything under reduce is about how can you make most value with less material, less energy, less transportation, et cetera.

“Under the strategies for reuse, there are specific ways of designing things so they can be reused rather than just destroyed or landfilled.  The product can have life after the first intended use, which means all the embodied energy that went into constructing that thing doesn’t get wasted and destroyed.  It can be used for something else.

“And then, under recycle, there’s specific design strategies that engineers, designers and architects as well as other business people can use to make sure that when that product is finally not useful anymore, it can be broken down and recycled efficiently and easily if you take some certain steps in the development of that product to begin with.

“Lastly, once you’ve gotten really, really good at these other strategies, it’s not enough to just reduce the impact on society, on the environment, on the financial system of the things that you make, when you get really good at this, you can actually restore natural and human capital, and for that matter financial capital, and it’s a new way of looking and working. 

“So, rather than just being less negative, you can actually be more positive.”

Life Cycle Analysis

What may be called the whole story of sustainability encompasses people, resources and money.  We have a way looking at sustainability that analyzes the entire life cycle of our experience with the product or service.

“There’s an easy and a more in-depth explanation of life cycle analysis.

“The easy side is just that we all need to realize that when we go to the store and buy something a good 50-75% of the impact of that product we find in the store, during it’s life cycle, has already occurred.  And, it’s occurred in the manufacturing and distribution of that thing. 

“All product categories differ slightly so, for instance, clothes have a different impact in the use phase than they do in the manufacturing phase and certainly a different impact in the disposal phase.  And, every product and service goes through a period of manufacturing, which includes sourcing raw materials and creating sub-assemblies and final manufacturing and shipping between all these different entities, finally shipping to a customer at a store or at their home.  That whole phase is responsible for a great deal of resource and energy use.

“Then, when we have the product or service–we use it–there’s a use phase that often requires more energy and material.  For instance, your dishwasher requires you to put water in it, plug it into the electrical system to run it, and to use soap in it, so it’s still using goods but no where near as much material and energy that went into creating the dishwasher itself.

“And, when you’re done with the dishwasher, there’s a disposal phase.  Potentially, if it’s recyclable that dishwasher has to be broken apart and pieces that are valuable can be sent to different recycling streams or it gets thrown into a landfill or burned, which has an impact.  It has an impact on the environment in terms of the atmosphere.  It has an impact on land use.  A dishwasher is probably fairly benign but, if you’re talking about a television, you’re talking about lots of heavy metals that could then leach into the water supply and create a toxic problem in soil.

“And so, life cycle analysis just says if we want to make better decisions about this television or that television.  Or, this car versus that bicycle, we need to consider the entire life cycle of these products and really figure out what’s going on.

“And then, the complex side of life cycle analysis is that there are actual engineering tools that measure the impact and the amount of materials that go in at every step of the way and that’s really for designers and engineers to deal with. 

“So, when buying a product, you shouldn’t have to deal with that level of detail but they do have to understand that stuff comes from somewhere and after they’re done using it, it goes somewhere.  And those ’somewheres’ have impact.

“The controversy of the Hummer versus the Prius, most people would look at both of those cars and say, ‘Clearly, the Hummer is worse for the environment by a substantial amount than the Prius.’

“There’s only been one life cycle analysis that I’m aware of that’s been public, looking at the full impact of these cars.  In that first analysis, I think it was in 2004, the Hummer actually came out with a better impact than the Prius.

“And, of course, Prius owners and Toyota and lots of people were up in arms.  The interesting thing isn’t which one is better than the other.  The interesting thing is learning why it’s so complex.  Last year when they updated the same assessment, the new numbers showed that the Prius was slightly better than the Hummer.

“Part of the problem is that even experts can’t agree because this is such complex work.   So, sometimes our first assumptions that things are totally obvious aren’t necessarily so because so much of it is hidden from us. 

“All of the manufacturing costs and impacts are hidden from consumers.  We don’t get to go through the factories.  We don’t go to the mines where the minerals are mined.  Most of this is invisible to us, which is what makes it so difficult”

Savor the Design

Nathan also believes that design solutions should be savored.

“There’s a whole movement that originated in Italy called the ‘Slow Food’ movement.  It has since been translated into a lot of other areas as well.

“It started with the idea that fast food isn’t nutritious.  And fast food isn’t particularly enjoyable.  It’s just consistent and fast.  It’s not even particularly nourishing.

“Food is a communal activity.  It should be an enjoyable activity.  It should be nutritious.  It should be respectful of the way the food itself was grown. 

“Designers, architects, engineers and builders have the opportunity to do something similar with the things they create.  So, an example of this might be a set of china or silverware that has been handed down through generations in families.  Or, for instance, your Toyota pickup truck that you’ve had for over thirty years now and your relationship to it and the fact that it’s still running, you’re essentially savoring the ownership of that Toyota pickup truck.  And, it’s a very different way to view products and services and our relationship to them than fads and trends are built around fashion for its own sake where ‘Oh, that’s so yesterday.  Or, that’s so two years ago.  Or, pink is the new black.  No, orange is the new black.  No, black is the new black.’  It’s a completely different mindset to not worry about what the new black is and to savor the things that are well-made and enhance our lives, and designers and engineers and architects can specifically contribute to building those savorable things.”

There’s a wonderful line from an old Frank Zappa song where he said, “…[who cares if] you’re so poor that you can’t afford to buy a new pair of mod a-go-go stretch elastic pants.”

Shedroff agrees.  “And, two months from now, you’ll probably think, ‘Why would I have wanted to?’

“There’s a lot of talk about the recession these days and whether it’s going to change our consumption patterns.  And, you know I think it has a potential to, which I think it would be a good thing but I don’t think it’s anything for sure.  There’s a lot of discussion about what would a post-consumer world  look like?  What would the world look like both from a society standpoint and an environmental standpoint and a market standpoint if people consumed less or if they consumed more rationally and they just didn’t buy stuff to have fifty pairs of shoes, one for every emotion they happen to have or forty watches or three cell phones when they can only use one at a time.  What would that world look like?

“I think that’s probably the most interesting question to ask as we get close to the end of this decade.  I don’t think anyone has any answers yet but I have a feeling that that world might be a little bit more rational and meaningful and savorable than a world where we just constantly cycling through stuff for its own sake.”