How to design for Zero Waste solutions to problems.
Any design for ZW necessarily falls back on basic principles. I think this sums them up, but you
may want to add more or comment on these. In thinking about the impact of these principles, you can
see that moving to a Zero Waste society requires strong social engineering It is not a trivial,
completely transparent add-on that affects nothing significant, such as "a little more recycling"
or "shop for green". Along these lines,
see this NY Times article about green shopping
PRINCIPLES
This is the one principle which cuts across all the others. Design for an entire lifecycle
or ecology or an entire industry or an entire commerce or society. Do not design
piecemeal, just to improve one product, replace one material or solve one limited local problem but
look at the entire picture, including all the implications of your changes far from where they are
being implemented. Ask where all input products are being manufactured, how wasteful they are, how
those manufacturing processes can be changed in turn and what effect your change has on the
reutilization of your products.
-
An example: the banning of plastic bags. Do not think in terms of bans but do think in
terms of an alternative way to accomplish the same thing (except better). The focus must be on
the ALTERNATIVE, not on the ban. Banning things is a lazy way to greenwash your efforts,
compared to the difficulty of designing an alternative. Do not accept a biodegradable
alternative. Biodegradable plastic is no better than conventional plastic. It does not embody
any inherent design for reuse - in fact - it implies the difficult, expensive and labor
intensive creation of a highly functional molecule followed by its quick destruction.
-
Push the design upstream to design for reuse, not for discard. Correct design starts when a
product is first contemplated. Just as costs, markets and materials are elementary design
considerations, so must perpetual reutilization be. Ending up with degraded or mixed garbage after
use is never a given, only a design failure. Planning for post use diversion from garbage is never
acceptable.
-
Even when high functional reuse is no longer possible, and an article must be reduced to its
component materials for their reuse, employ higher level design to make that operation more
effective. Prime examples are metals and plastics because either of them may consist of
thousands of possible alloys. Keeping track of their exact composition is essential to
their reuse.
-
Design to capture the highest function, not the lowest. Do not design for materials capture but
for the repair and reuse of every article's highest value. For example removing a large formed
plastic part from an automobile and grinding it up into chips is not a Zero Waste operation unless
there is no known way to reuse the entire formed part. It is recycling of the lowest value, because
all of the resources that were expended to form the part are arbitrarily discarded.
-
Materials that are formed by careful and expensive molecular design (such as plastics or
alloys) are high function items. Any method which destroys molecular organization is a
destruction method, even if it masquerades as material recycling. Compostability is never a
reuse method for highly organized molecules. Biodegradable plastics are primarily a clever
substitution of destruction (greenwashing) under the guise of reuse thru composting.
-
Composting is a method for recapturing natural nutrient values from very complex natural
products. It has no role in treating anything else. Composting is not a special add-on
concept but is the normal Zero Waste response to the need for designing closed agricultural
cycles.
-
Do not focus on consumer articles only but include industrial and large scale consumer items in
their highest manifestations. Do not demolish buildings, cooling systems, processing plants,
conveyor systems, display systems, forklifts, trucks, buses etc. but preserve them as complete
systems and reinstall them elsewhere as needed.
-
Build in financing of later reuse at the point of sale, not at the end of a first life cycle.
Repair, reuse etc. is not an add-on service and cannot be charged that way. It is a commitment that
a civilized society makes towards its design for living, and must be allowed for financially and
fully at the earliest possible time.
-
Separate all articles by logical category, avoiding all mixing. The
garbage mentality claims that all discards are equal, all candidates for dumping,
therefore mixing them causes no harm. The Zero Waste mentality claims that all articles are
different, requiring different attention to reuse them. Mixing degrades them. This applies strongly
to chemicals, but also to scraps, consumer excesses and all industrial excesses. Especially
egregious is the permanent joining of incompatible materials which cannot be reused as a unit.
-
Some examples: The use of glues to cement plastic to metal or to wood as a cosmetic or protective cover or veneer. The use of mortar (cement) to build brick structures (is there a better way to join bricks together?). The use of metallic plating on other metals (e.g. gold on copper for circuit boards). As always, these may be critical structures for which no obvious alternative is easily found.
-
No article for reuse may pass thru any intermediate stage in which no one takes responsibility.
This stage will cause irremediable degradation. As soon as an article has no owner, no one
responsible, the garbage mentality takes over. This means that articles cannot be 'thrown' into a
dumpster for 'someone else' to take care of.
Who is in charge here? No one!
-
Emphasize that every owner of an article retains responsibility for the next reuse of that
article until the next owner has assumed responsibility, including the obligation to preserve
information. Allow no zone of irresponsibility, such as a garbage can or transfer station,
unless someone is in charge committed to reuse and conservation.
- Information
about all articles is the rock solid basis of reuse. The casual, frantic identification of
discarded, abandoned articles (as happens in thrift shops) is hardly more than garbage management.
Information about every article must be captured and preserved at all times thru labels, notations,
rfid's, bar codes, Internet sites, specification sheets and every other possible means.
How to design for Zero Waste solutions to problems.
| Any design for ZW necessarily falls back on basic principles. I think this sums them up, but you may want to add more or comment on these. In thinking about the impact of these principles, you can see that moving to a Zero Waste society requires strong social engineering It is not a trivial, completely transparent add-on that affects nothing significant, such as "a little more recycling" or "shop for green". Along these lines, see this NY Times article about green shopping |
PRINCIPLES
This is the one principle which cuts across all the others. Design for an entire lifecycle
or ecology or an entire industry or an entire commerce or society. Do not design
piecemeal, just to improve one product, replace one material or solve one limited local problem but
look at the entire picture, including all the implications of your changes far from where they are
being implemented. Ask where all input products are being manufactured, how wasteful they are, how
those manufacturing processes can be changed in turn and what effect your change has on the
reutilization of your products.
-
An example: the banning of plastic bags. Do not think in terms of bans but do think in
terms of an alternative way to accomplish the same thing (except better). The focus must be on
the ALTERNATIVE, not on the ban. Banning things is a lazy way to greenwash your efforts,
compared to the difficulty of designing an alternative. Do not accept a biodegradable
alternative. Biodegradable plastic is no better than conventional plastic. It does not embody
any inherent design for reuse - in fact - it implies the difficult, expensive and labor
intensive creation of a highly functional molecule followed by its quick destruction.
-
Push the design upstream to design for reuse, not for discard. Correct design starts when a
product is first contemplated. Just as costs, markets and materials are elementary design
considerations, so must perpetual reutilization be. Ending up with degraded or mixed garbage after
use is never a given, only a design failure. Planning for post use diversion from garbage is never
acceptable.
-
Even when high functional reuse is no longer possible, and an article must be reduced to its
component materials for their reuse, employ higher level design to make that operation more
effective. Prime examples are metals and plastics because either of them may consist of
thousands of possible alloys. Keeping track of their exact composition is essential to
their reuse.
-
Design to capture the highest function, not the lowest. Do not design for materials capture but
for the repair and reuse of every article's highest value. For example removing a large formed
plastic part from an automobile and grinding it up into chips is not a Zero Waste operation unless
there is no known way to reuse the entire formed part. It is recycling of the lowest value, because
all of the resources that were expended to form the part are arbitrarily discarded.
-
Materials that are formed by careful and expensive molecular design (such as plastics or
alloys) are high function items. Any method which destroys molecular organization is a
destruction method, even if it masquerades as material recycling. Compostability is never a
reuse method for highly organized molecules. Biodegradable plastics are primarily a clever
substitution of destruction (greenwashing) under the guise of reuse thru composting.
-
Composting is a method for recapturing natural nutrient values from very complex natural
products. It has no role in treating anything else. Composting is not a special add-on
concept but is the normal Zero Waste response to the need for designing closed agricultural
cycles.
-
Do not focus on consumer articles only but include industrial and large scale consumer items in
their highest manifestations. Do not demolish buildings, cooling systems, processing plants,
conveyor systems, display systems, forklifts, trucks, buses etc. but preserve them as complete
systems and reinstall them elsewhere as needed.
-
Build in financing of later reuse at the point of sale, not at the end of a first life cycle.
Repair, reuse etc. is not an add-on service and cannot be charged that way. It is a commitment that
a civilized society makes towards its design for living, and must be allowed for financially and
fully at the earliest possible time.
-
Separate all articles by logical category, avoiding all mixing. The
garbage mentality claims that all discards are equal, all candidates for dumping,
therefore mixing them causes no harm. The Zero Waste mentality claims that all articles are
different, requiring different attention to reuse them. Mixing degrades them. This applies strongly
to chemicals, but also to scraps, consumer excesses and all industrial excesses. Especially
egregious is the permanent joining of incompatible materials which cannot be reused as a unit.
-
Some examples: The use of glues to cement plastic to metal or to wood as a cosmetic or protective cover or veneer. The use of mortar (cement) to build brick structures (is there a better way to join bricks together?). The use of metallic plating on other metals (e.g. gold on copper for circuit boards). As always, these may be critical structures for which no obvious alternative is easily found.
-
No article for reuse may pass thru any intermediate stage in which no one takes responsibility.
This stage will cause irremediable degradation. As soon as an article has no owner, no one
responsible, the garbage mentality takes over. This means that articles cannot be 'thrown' into a
dumpster for 'someone else' to take care of.
Who is in charge here? No one!
-
Emphasize that every owner of an article retains responsibility for the next reuse of that
article until the next owner has assumed responsibility, including the obligation to preserve
information. Allow no zone of irresponsibility, such as a garbage can or transfer station,
unless someone is in charge committed to reuse and conservation.
- Information
about all articles is the rock solid basis of reuse. The casual, frantic identification of
discarded, abandoned articles (as happens in thrift shops) is hardly more than garbage management.
Information about every article must be captured and preserved at all times thru labels, notations,
rfid's, bar codes, Internet sites, specification sheets and every other possible means.
This is the one principle which cuts across all the others. Design for an entire lifecycle
or ecology or an entire industry or an entire commerce or society. Do not design
piecemeal, just to improve one product, replace one material or solve one limited local problem but
look at the entire picture, including all the implications of your changes far from where they are
being implemented. Ask where all input products are being manufactured, how wasteful they are, how
those manufacturing processes can be changed in turn and what effect your change has on the
reutilization of your products.
-
An example: the banning of plastic bags. Do not think in terms of bans but do think in
terms of an alternative way to accomplish the same thing (except better). The focus must be on
the ALTERNATIVE, not on the ban. Banning things is a lazy way to greenwash your efforts,
compared to the difficulty of designing an alternative. Do not accept a biodegradable
alternative. Biodegradable plastic is no better than conventional plastic. It does not embody
any inherent design for reuse - in fact - it implies the difficult, expensive and labor
intensive creation of a highly functional molecule followed by its quick destruction.
-
Push the design upstream to design for reuse, not for discard. Correct design starts when a
product is first contemplated. Just as costs, markets and materials are elementary design
considerations, so must perpetual reutilization be. Ending up with degraded or mixed garbage after
use is never a given, only a design failure. Planning for post use diversion from garbage is never
acceptable.
-
Even when high functional reuse is no longer possible, and an article must be reduced to its
component materials for their reuse, employ higher level design to make that operation more
effective. Prime examples are metals and plastics because either of them may consist of
thousands of possible alloys. Keeping track of their exact composition is essential to
their reuse.
-
Design to capture the highest function, not the lowest. Do not design for materials capture but
for the repair and reuse of every article's highest value. For example removing a large formed
plastic part from an automobile and grinding it up into chips is not a Zero Waste operation unless
there is no known way to reuse the entire formed part. It is recycling of the lowest value, because
all of the resources that were expended to form the part are arbitrarily discarded.
-
Materials that are formed by careful and expensive molecular design (such as plastics or
alloys) are high function items. Any method which destroys molecular organization is a
destruction method, even if it masquerades as material recycling. Compostability is never a
reuse method for highly organized molecules. Biodegradable plastics are primarily a clever
substitution of destruction (greenwashing) under the guise of reuse thru composting.
-
Composting is a method for recapturing natural nutrient values from very complex natural
products. It has no role in treating anything else. Composting is not a special add-on
concept but is the normal Zero Waste response to the need for designing closed agricultural
cycles.
-
Do not focus on consumer articles only but include industrial and large scale consumer items in
their highest manifestations. Do not demolish buildings, cooling systems, processing plants,
conveyor systems, display systems, forklifts, trucks, buses etc. but preserve them as complete
systems and reinstall them elsewhere as needed.
-
Build in financing of later reuse at the point of sale, not at the end of a first life cycle.
Repair, reuse etc. is not an add-on service and cannot be charged that way. It is a commitment that
a civilized society makes towards its design for living, and must be allowed for financially and
fully at the earliest possible time.
-
Separate all articles by logical category, avoiding all mixing. The
garbage mentality claims that all discards are equal, all candidates for dumping,
therefore mixing them causes no harm. The Zero Waste mentality claims that all articles are
different, requiring different attention to reuse them. Mixing degrades them. This applies strongly
to chemicals, but also to scraps, consumer excesses and all industrial excesses. Especially
egregious is the permanent joining of incompatible materials which cannot be reused as a unit.
-
Some examples: The use of glues to cement plastic to metal or to wood as a cosmetic or protective cover or veneer. The use of mortar (cement) to build brick structures (is there a better way to join bricks together?). The use of metallic plating on other metals (e.g. gold on copper for circuit boards). As always, these may be critical structures for which no obvious alternative is easily found.
-
No article for reuse may pass thru any intermediate stage in which no one takes responsibility.
This stage will cause irremediable degradation. As soon as an article has no owner, no one
responsible, the garbage mentality takes over. This means that articles cannot be 'thrown' into a
dumpster for 'someone else' to take care of.
Who is in charge here? No one!
-
Emphasize that every owner of an article retains responsibility for the next reuse of that
article until the next owner has assumed responsibility, including the obligation to preserve
information. Allow no zone of irresponsibility, such as a garbage can or transfer station,
unless someone is in charge committed to reuse and conservation.
- Information
about all articles is the rock solid basis of reuse. The casual, frantic identification of
discarded, abandoned articles (as happens in thrift shops) is hardly more than garbage management.
Information about every article must be captured and preserved at all times thru labels, notations,
rfid's, bar codes, Internet sites, specification sheets and every other possible means.
This is the one principle which cuts across all the others. Design for an entire lifecycle or ecology or an entire industry or an entire commerce or society. Do not design piecemeal, just to improve one product, replace one material or solve one limited local problem but look at the entire picture, including all the implications of your changes far from where they are being implemented. Ask where all input products are being manufactured, how wasteful they are, how those manufacturing processes can be changed in turn and what effect your change has on the reutilization of your products.
- An example: the banning of plastic bags. Do not think in terms of bans but do think in terms of an alternative way to accomplish the same thing (except better). The focus must be on the ALTERNATIVE, not on the ban. Banning things is a lazy way to greenwash your efforts, compared to the difficulty of designing an alternative. Do not accept a biodegradable alternative. Biodegradable plastic is no better than conventional plastic. It does not embody any inherent design for reuse - in fact - it implies the difficult, expensive and labor intensive creation of a highly functional molecule followed by its quick destruction.
- Even when high functional reuse is no longer possible, and an article must be reduced to its component materials for their reuse, employ higher level design to make that operation more effective. Prime examples are metals and plastics because either of them may consist of thousands of possible alloys. Keeping track of their exact composition is essential to their reuse.
- Materials that are formed by careful and expensive molecular design (such as plastics or alloys) are high function items. Any method which destroys molecular organization is a destruction method, even if it masquerades as material recycling. Compostability is never a reuse method for highly organized molecules. Biodegradable plastics are primarily a clever substitution of destruction (greenwashing) under the guise of reuse thru composting.
- Composting is a method for recapturing natural nutrient values from very complex natural products. It has no role in treating anything else. Composting is not a special add-on concept but is the normal Zero Waste response to the need for designing closed agricultural cycles.
- Some examples: The use of glues to cement plastic to metal or to wood as a cosmetic or protective cover or veneer. The use of mortar (cement) to build brick structures (is there a better way to join bricks together?). The use of metallic plating on other metals (e.g. gold on copper for circuit boards). As always, these may be critical structures for which no obvious alternative is easily found.
Who is in charge here? No one!
- Emphasize that every owner of an article retains responsibility for the next reuse of that article until the next owner has assumed responsibility, including the obligation to preserve information. Allow no zone of irresponsibility, such as a garbage can or transfer station, unless someone is in charge committed to reuse and conservation.