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“...We have seen time and again among people who have embraced systems thinking and collaborating across boundaries- an opening of the will. This is what happens when people, individually and collectively, truly become open to their sense of purpose or destiny. These, again, are unusual words to use in conjunction with developing practical approaches to very real problems such as health food systems and robust farming communities. Yet they are...often exactly what is missing.� -Peter Senge, The Necessary Revolution
Theories and Methods in Sustainability | Spring 2013 | Professor Scott Boylston
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Table of Contents 4. 5. 6. 19. 27. 35. 39. 45. 46. 48. 50. 54. 55.
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Table of Contents Introduction The effects of consumption on our environment Consumption does not make us happy So what do designers have to do with it? Capable citizens vs. disabled consumers Finding Happiness on the Job Conclusion Sustainability Timeline Sustainability Instigators Sustainability Organizations and Educators Sustainability Glossary Resources
Introduction The global transition to a sustainable way of life will necessarily involve the participation of every sphere of human culture. These include the spheres of politics, science, business and consumption. It is this last sphere that this book addresses. Altering the pervasive paradigm in Western culture that happiness is based on the consumption of material goods is one of the highest leverage points for influencing change.
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The Effects of Consumption on our Environment
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radiolab.org
“One hundred years into the Industrial Revolution, we are only now opening our eyes and realizing that our artificially constructed world is not isolated from the real one. It is enmeshed in a larger natural world that cradles and nourishes us, making all of our activities possible.” -Jane Benyus
Since the Industrial Revolution the human population has been putting nature in her place, so to speak. We put a flag in her and called her conquered, her seemingly limitless resources available for our unencumbered growth. As we saw ourselves removed from the savageness of nature, we felt free to exploit her without sadness or guilt. But, as our numbers were limited, the wounds of our actions had sufficient time to heal. After the Industrial Revolution, however, our numbers ballooned and our methods for subduing “the wild” had grown teeth. We gobbled up resources, grew more, burned fossil
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fuels in great amounts for the first time and grew even more. Yet at some point in the past fifty years or so, the Earth’s carrying capacity reached its limit. As Donella Meadows describes in Thinking in Systems, “Any physical, growing system is going to run into some kind of constraint, sooner or later. That constraint will take the form of a balancing feedback loop that in some ways shifts the dominance of the reinforcing loop driving the growth behavior, either by strengthening the outflow or by weakening the inflow...We know those balancing loops are there, even if they are not yet dominating the system’s behavior, because no real physical system can grow forever.” In this case, numerous balancing feedback loops to further growth are presenting themselves with increasing intensity. The Earth’s ecosystem is responding to the human population’s squandering of
“Many present efforts to guard and maintain human progress, to meet human needs, and to realize human ambitions are simply unsustainable- in both the rich and poor nations. They draw too heavily, too quickly, on already overdrawn environmental resource accounts to be affordable far into the future without bankrupting those accounts. They may show profit on the balance sheets of our generation, but our children will inherit the losses.” -Brundtland Report
Natural Capital, which can be described as “the sum total of the ecological systems that support life, different from human-made capital in that natural capital cannot be produced by human activity” (Meadows). The weakening of these life supporting systems are causing the increased frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, desertification, acidification, deforestation, and global warming. However, in most parts of the “developed” world, you wouldn’t necessarily notice these devastating effects. Indeed, “it is the poor who bear the greatest burdens from environmental degradation” (Meadows) As Fritjof Capra describes in The Hidden Connections, “careful analysis of the dynamics underlying recent natural disasters also shows that environmental and social stresses are tightly interconnected in all of them. Poverty, scarcity of resources, and expanding populations combine to create vi-
To begin to understand how any system operates, you must first understand the dynamics, or behaviors of it’s stocks and flows. Stocks- “A stock is the foundation of any system. Stocks are the elements of a system that you can see, feel, count, or measure at any given time. A system stock is just what it sounds like: a store, a quantity, an accumulation of material or information” Flows- “filling and draining, births and deaths, purchasing and sales, growth and decay, deposits and withdrawals” Balancing feedback loops- goal-seeking or stability-seeking. “Each tries to keep a stock at a given value or within a range of values”. Reinforcing feedback loops- “enhances whatever direction of change is imposed on it.”
Inflow
Stock
Outlow
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http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0360544209003934
http://www.climate-change-knowledge.org/global_warming.html
Thinking in Systems, by Meadows
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=43417#.UZ_TD0CsiSo
http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/38-of-worlds-land-in-danger-of-turninginto-desert.html
"Are we or are we not systematically reducing life and the capacity to re-create order on Earth? This is the level at which our discourse should be taking place, for it is there that a framework for both understanding and action can be formulated.” -Natural Capitalism
cious cycles of degradation and breakdown in both ecosystems and local communities.” As prevailing capitalist markets control the flow of money and resources, populations in impoverished countries turn to their local resources, such as oil, food production or even cheap labor, to dig them out of an ever increasing debt. This puts enormous strain on natural capital resources such as trees, for example. Instead of nurturing the growth of forests so they can continue to provide the non replace-
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able services of erosion control, biodiversity and the very air we depend on for survival, impoverished communities cut them down to sell as lumber in an attempt to raise their families and countries quality of life. As stated in the Brundtland Report, from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, “A world in which poverty is endemic will always be prone to ecological and other catastrophes. The world needs time to catch up to our consumption.”
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http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/looking-back-on-the-limits-of-growth125269840/?onsite_source=relatedarticles%3Fno-ist
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This paradigm of exploiting natural capital for material gain can be referred to as the expansion model of the world. It is the view that “the world consists of markets in which products function first and foremost as tokens of economic exchange. They attract capital which is either recycled back into more production or becomes part of the accumulation of private and corporate wealth.” (Victor Margolin, Expansion or Sustainability: Two Models of Development)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9410
http://www.iseesystems.com/Online_Training/course/module6/6-13-1-0-successloop.htm
Increasing the rate of environmental degradation, proponents, or those who receive the lion’s share of economic profit, of global capitalism seek to “eliminate environmental regulations under the guise of free trade wherever they can, lest the regulations interfere with profits.” (Capra) Which means that the system is rigged. Those who have control, use it for their own benefit. This results in one of Donella Meadows systems traps- Success to the successful. So, the economic and social winners of the most affluent countries in the world are still chugging along, content with business as usual.
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/brandline/the-upgrading-consumer/ article2916938.ece
“The crisis in this idea, which we can call product-based wellbeing, starts when it clearly appears that this promise of individual freedom and democracy of consumption not only has not been kept, but it cannot be kept now or in the future because product-based well-being, extended on a worldwide scale, is proving to be an intrinsically unsustainable idea.”- Manzini
This paradigm includes the belief that material wealth represents ultimate success. Without it, happiness will always be just out of reach. It is this one insidiously powerful thought that frames the way we in North America, Europe and increasingly in China, behave in our daily lives and it is the one that is wreaking so much havoc on our planet.
And it is this pervasive paradigm that must change. As stated in Agenda 21, a product of the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil 1992, consideration should be “given to the present concepts of economic growth and the need for new concepts of wealth and prosperity which allow higher standards of living through changed lifestyles and are less dependent on the Earth’s finite resources and more in harmony with the Earth’s carrying capacity.”
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http://www.2020climategroup.org.uk/resources/rio20-conference/20-yearroundtrip-to-rio/
“Agenda 21 addresses the pressing problems of today and also aims at preparing the world for the challenges of the next century. It reflects a global consensus and political commitment at the highest level on development and environmental cooperation.” - Agenda 21
But the tide is turning, if slowly, in this direction. Since the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a book that exposed the unplanned for toxic effects of chemicals such as DDT, more and more individuals, organizations and governments have been working towards the implementation of this type of sustainable lifestyle. The Rio Summit that produced Agenda 21 helped to foster this growing “culture of sustainability.”
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As expected, this new culture has a new paradigm, as well, referred to as the sustainability model of the world. The sustainability model is based on the idea that “the world is a system of ecological checks and balances that consists of finite resources. If the elements of this system are damaged or thrown out of balance or if essential resources are depleted, the system will suffer severe damage and possibly collapse.” (Margolin)
"Although consumption patterns are very high in certain parts of the world, the basic consumer needs of a large section of humanity are not being met...Changing consumption patterns will require a multipronged strategy focusing on demand, meeting the basic needs of the poor, and reducing wastage and the use of finite resources in the production process."
-Agenda 21
So, if “ sustainable global development requires that those who are more affluent adopt life-styles within the planet’s ecological means” (Brundtland Report), than “the only way to maximize natural capital’s productivity in the near term is by changing consumption and production patterns.” (Meadows) The most direct way to accomplish this would be to question whether the consumptionbased economic system is truly making us happy.
A country wealthy in natural capital, Bhutan’s national policies draw heavily on Buddhist principles that “seek to cultivate a sense of spiritual fulfillment by avoiding dissatisfaction(which emanates in part from unmet spiritual needs),from enriching cultural values, nurturing a healthy and productive natural environment, and enabling freedom of choice.” Instead of attempting to turn these highly qualitative entities into quantitative entities, the country instead seeks to create the conditions necessary for happiness and leave the rest up to the individual. They avoid the environmental devastation of other less developed countries by exporting value-added products instead of raw materials. Furniture is exported, for example, instead of lumber.
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/ local-news_from_all_over/
http://blogs.ft.com/the-world/tag/rio20/
The Gross National Happiness of Bhutan
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"Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity- our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality." -Meadows
The Genuine Progress Indicator is a metric adopted by the U.S. in the early 90’s as a counterpoint to the GDP, Gross Domestic Product, in assessing the health of our nation. Like the GDP, the GPI is based on the quantitative metric of money spent yet distinguishes between money spent in “positive” ways vs. “negative” ways. For example, the effects of Hurricane Katrina caused the GDP to go up. Lots of money was spent in the clean up, rebuilding, etc. The GPI, on the other hand, will start with that GDP number and then subtract money spent cleaning up, rebuilding, loss of life, ect. to more accurately reflect the nature of our circumstances.
http://rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm
Genuine Progress Indictor
After all, happiness, or well-being even, is the overwhelmingly popular end goal for any given human-being. Though it’s undeniably worthwhile to reach groups, at the end of the day, the global population consists of individuals who are often times fighting for survival and, especially in the “Land of the Free” are continually in the pursuit of happiness.
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- Charlotte Bronte
http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?pid=S0042-96862010000600005&script=sci_ arttext&tlng=en
“Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”
I believe that most of us in the West have a sort of intrinsic knowledge that material possessions cannot quench our truest needs yet have not found an alternative with the strength to battle the incessant floral deliveries of brand courtship. Even our late president, Robert F. Kennedy recognized that “the GDP measures everything that which makes life
worthwhile. He noted that it fails to measure community excellence, the joy of children’s play or the integrity of public discourse, all the while deriving income from prisons, destruction of ancient trees and nuclear warheads.” (Mark Anielski, Alternatives Journal)
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Consumption Does Not Make Us Happy
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“The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” - Einstein
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4712419/Frantic-fellas-will-outnumberwomen-trying-to-buy-11th-hour-presents-in-High-Street-on-Christmas-Eve.html
A Note on Language The power of language on the shaping of reality and behavior can’t be overstated. How might behavior change if we substituted the following words and phrases? Currently Used
As stated by Margolin, “the expansion model is dominated by a belief in the power of technological innovation to enhance human experience, a relation predicated on the claim that the satisfaction material goods can provide is without limits. Furthermore, materialism has become so integral to notions of happiness that product development is now almost inextricably bound to the striving for human betterment.”
Substitute
Disposable
Landfillable
Housewife
Life Enabler
Consumer
Quality Degrader
Pollution
Violence to the human body
“The “inner world” of our reflective consciousness emerged in evolution together with language and social reality. This means that human consciousness is not only a biological, but also a social, phenomenon.” - Capra 20
http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/2001/easterlin2001a.pdf
How are we to combat this on the rational level? means that people can have more goods, the favorRichard Easterlin, in his research paper Income and able effect of this on welfare is erased by the fact that Happiness: Towards a Unified Theory found that “as people want more as they progress through the life a general matter, subjective well-being varies directly cycle.” In other words, the more you have, the more with income and inversely with material aspirayou want. As an individual’s income grows over a tions...Income growth does not, however, cause lifetime so does his or her aspirations and expectawell-being to rise, either for higher or lower income tions. What made a person feel lucky at 27, a new used car for example, would, at 57 persons, because it generates equivalent growth This in content downloaded from 69.41.96.102 on Sat, 11 May 2013 17:04:57 PM likely make the All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions material aspirations, and the negative effect of the same person feel like a failure, at least in terms of the latter on subjective well-being undercuts the posiexpansion model. tive effect of the former. Even though rising income
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“People nowadays know the price of everything and the value of nothing”
Ezio Manzini, in Design, Ethics and Sustainability; Guidelines for a transition phase, writes that “what is required is a drastic change re-orientation of the idea of wellbeing...we need to re-discover the pleasure of moving on foot, of eating local fruit, of feeling the cycle of the seasons, of caring for things and places, of chatting with neighbors, of taking an active part in the life of the neighborhood, of gazing at the sunset, and so on.” Anyone who has taken a walk on the beach or hiked in a forest can argue with the quiet that seems to settle in one mind while in
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the presence of nature. It is not such a hard concept to absorb considering that a systemic understanding of life “is based on the assumption that there is a fundamental unity to life, that different living systems exhibit similar patterns or organization. This assumption is supported by the observation that evolution has proceeded for billions of years by using the same patterns again and again.”(Capra) Human beings are no exception.
-Oscar Wilde
http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?pid=S0042-96862010000600005&script=sci_ arttext&tlng=en
In addition to our shared ancestry with all of Earth’s life forms, human beings are nothing if not social creatures. From the time we are born, reliant on older members of our community for our survival, we crave connection with others. A study by the UK-based New Economics Foundation found that “rather than being driven by how much money one makes, happiness is determined by how many friends and meaningful relationships a person has. Indeed, only 10% of one’s happiness, according to
their research, is connected with monetary earnings, material possessions and years of post-secondary education.” (Mark Anielski, “ Are We Happy Yet?”) Similarly, the research by Derek Philips published in the American Journal of Sociology “revealed that, as hypothesized, self-reports of happiness were highly related to social participation; the greater the extent of participation, the greater the degree of happiness reported.”
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If we are to move forward as a culture, as a global movement even, than it is clear that we need to realign our priorities with our values. The suboptimization of the system, wherein a “subsystem’s goals dominate at the expense of the total system’s goals”, (Meadows) has become the driving force of the global economy. To repossess our quality of life would be to write a new definition of happiness fully in line with available resources. (Agenda 21)
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http://www.accel-team.com/techniques/goal_congruence.html
http://www.earthbeatradio.org/blog/2006/09/12/the-world-banks-latest-identity-changeclimate-change-financier/
“A change in purpose changes a system profoundly, even if every element and interconnection remains the same” - Donella Meadows
This would constitute a break from Meadow’s system trap of seeking the wrong goal. To redefine our notions of achieving happiness is such a powerful lever to push because it would force us to question all of our behaviors. “When people begin to measure what makes life worthwhile, conversations and decisions change. The way we govern our households is no longer the same and the manner in which city councils manage municipal affairs alters course.” (Anielski)
Started in 1997 by Geri Weis-Corbley, the Good News Network (www.goodnewsnetwork.org/) is a “clearinghouse for the gathering and dissemination of positive compelling news stories from around the globe.” This resource provides a necessary balancing feedback loop to the constant barrage of negative media. By opening up this information flow, individuals see examples with which to raise the bar for their own behaviors and expectations.
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What Do Designers Have to Do With It?
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http://willmurphy.net/page/2
“Design must disengage itself from consumer culture as the primary shaper of its identity and find a terrain where it can where it can begin to rethink its role in the world. The result of this activity, if successful, will be a new power for the designer to participate in projects for - Victor Margolin the welfare of humankind both inside and outside the market economy.”
Buchanan, in 1992, (Wicked Problems in Design Thinking) widened the scope of relevant work for designers to include social problems. Designers, for the most part have historically been involved in the first two orders of design (see sidebar). These ideas weren’t completely new, however. In 1946, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy had lectured on these broader arenas for the designer, stressing the importance of relationships and what is created in the space between people. An individual’s success does not occur in a vacuum but is dependent on multiple parties.
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Design disciplines have maintained these tight borders, though, until recently. With the influence of “technology, management strategies, social forces and new intellectual currents” boundaries between industries are becoming flimsy and porous. (Margolin) Designers are increasingly moving from 2nd order design to 4th order design (social design, a conversation), always keeping skill sets developed in the other orders as useful tools.
http://foodforgenerations.com/community-gardens/
"The distinguished designer George Nelson has correctly pointed out that it is pretentious for design to take itself too seriously. However, if designers do not take themselves seriously enough, even the limited influence that they do have will be wasted. " -Buchanan
Though designers are able to optimize product design, doing so constitutes a fairly weak leverage point, according to Meadows. It is good, of course, to reduce the amount of plastic in a mass-produced vegetable bag, for example, but it is much more powerful to convince a person to carry a reusable bag or, better yet, grow veggies in a community garden and harvest before dinner. “ If designers are to participate in sorting out these problems and inventing productive courses of action, they will have to move
from second domain design, where product design has been located since the nineteenth century, to fourth domain design where, in Buchanan’s words, they will be “ more and more concerned with exploring the role of design in sustaining, developing, and integrating human beings into broader ecological and cultural environments, shaping these environments when desirable and possible or adapting them when necessary.” (Margolin)
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facebook.com/carollora
http://arcadenw.org/events/the-love-song-of-r-buckminster-fuller
“The necessary shift of purpose for designers is a more complex process than envisioned by Victor Papanek or called for by R. Buckminster Fuller, with his unequivocal faith in advanced technology. It will entail looking at economic and social development from a global perspective and addressing the gross inequities of consumption between people in the industrialized countries and those in the developing world.� -Margolin
Design began as a way to form products to sell and this has continued into modern times. Victor Papanek and Buckminster Fuller were two who saw the flaws in this system. Papanek could see how it had already begun to endanger human life and the ability of our planet to thrive. In his 1972 book, Design for the Real World, he proposed low-tech solutions and universal design (as it would later be called). Papanek developed a cult following but made little headway into transforming the industrial design agenda. In the 1920’s Buckminster Fuller attempted
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a similar transition, except in the building industry. He was a proponent of affordable, modular homes well before the publication of Dwell magazine. Like Papanek, most of his ideas failed to catch on with the exception of the geodesic dome. While their designs were based on different disciplines, they shared quality of approach. They were both systems thinkers who looked beyond their industries to design for the consequences of their actions.(Margolin)
Leverage Points in a System Ordered from least to most effective
12. Numbers- Constants and parameters such as subsidies, http://dachisgroup.com/2011/11/everything-is-a-service/
taxes and standards
11. Buffers- The sizes of stabilizing stocks relative to their flows
10. Stock-and Flow structures- Physical systems and their nodes of intersection
09. Delays- The lengths of time relative to the rates of system changes
08. Balancing feedback loops- The strength of the feedbacks relative to the impacts they are trying to correct 07. Reinforcing feedback loops- The strength of the
gain of driving loops
06. Information Flows- The structure of who does and does not have access to information
05. Rules- Incentives, punishments, constraints 04. Self-Organization- The power to add, change, or evolve system structure
03. Goals- The purpose or function of the system 02. Paradigms- The mind-set out of which the system- its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters- arises
01. Transcending paradigms
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Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems
Since designer’s choices are infinite, they need to work within the boundaries of ethics, particularly, of consequences. One of these choices would be to move away from the design of products to the design of services. As we have seen, in popular culture our well-being has been based on the acquisition of products created by Industrial designers. This would be acceptable if discussing necessary objects for a minimum quality of life, things like warm clothing and access to healthcare products and services. But designers must also create a new idea of well-being which is necessary for a sustainable world. According to Ezio Manzini, designers must choose this path towards “a radical change” by following 3 sets of criteria: “consistency with the fundamental principles, low energy and material intensity and high regenerative potential.”
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread. php?264581-need-help-on-my-vacuum-cleaner-(design)!!
http://www.blogofbecky.com/2013/03/i-dont-do-it-on-purpose.html
“Conceiving and proposing products, services and lifestyles, designers play an important role and consequently have an equally important responsibility in generating social expectations in terms of wellbeing.” - Ezio Manzini
So, at this point in time, many designers are still of the industrial variety, shackled to the desires of consumers, the offspring of the profession. They have all fallen into the role of the incapable, beholden to the reinforcing feedback loop of object-desire-objectdesire, ad naseum. It’s time for designers to take on sustainability with the same vigor as other professions. There should be no lack of creativity. Perhaps what is lacking is the ability to collaborate with other
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professionals to see past their (non-biodegradable?) blinders. “It appears the necessity has arisen for design to redefine its purposes and devise a new organizational structure for itself.” Kenji Ekuan (1997). Information flows have opened up to show us the degrading effects of consumerism and it can no longer be ignored.
http://www.pcrm.org/search/?cid=2817
http://www.biois.com/en/menu-en/news/publications-news/ resource-efficiency-keys.html
“Our products should support the individual in the effort to become an active participant in culture, searching for locally significant coherence and connection. Products should be personal pathways in the otherwise confusing ecology of culture.” -Buchanan
The global models of expansion and sustainable are at odds and a solution has not yet been developed for reconciliation. This could be the designers moment to shine as they have creativity, concrete skills and agile minds. It’s important to create some tangible results based on new ways of seeing the world. Agenda 21 suggests the following areas of improvement: Efficiency of resources, disseminate existing sustainable technologies, and the R&D of more, teaching people best practices, creating the ability to measure these things and labeling them appropriately, leading by example, and pricing realistically.
Jane Benyus, in her book Biomimicry, states, “Designers, together with marketing experts, can help make green de rigueur by first making it look more fun....we have a new chance to make envy green- to make environmentally friendly products so fashionable that everyone will want a green product. In this way, the design of sustainable products may actually precede the sustainability revolution and help bring it into being.”
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Capable Citizens vs. Disabled Consumers
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“True authority consists in empowering others to act.” - Capra
The Collective Action Toolkit
http://www.frogdesign.com/collective-action-toolkit
Frog Design’s Collective Action Toolkit, or CAT, is a collection of activities, written in everyday language, that is designed to be used in groups to facilitate the emergence of solutions. In the winter of 2012, Grad students from SCAD facilitated it’s use in High School classrooms around Savannah, GA. A true fourth order design product, the toolkit prompted conversations among the students that led to tangible, positive changes in each school and empowered the students to continue to see themselves and each other as valuable individuals with the power to transform their communities.
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So, if the time has come for designers to converge upon fourth order design and we know that material wealth is most limited in creating true well-being, then where should our focus lay? It should be in designing ways to cultivate relationships and enable citizens, as opposed to consumers, to create solutions to their own problems. Designers “should not (try to) impose their ideas of what they think should be done, but they should actively and positively participate in the social processes where these new and promising ideas are emerging.” (Manzini)
"We can't impose our will on a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone." -Meadows
In what Manzini refers to as “creative communities” this is already happening. He defines these groups as “people who cooperatively invent, enhance and manage innovative solutions for new ways of living.”Engaging “governments, consumers and producers, especially women” (Agenda 21), designers have the opportunity to design solutions that enable people to create their own realities instead of cultivating a population reliant on the powers that be.
While women have been getting together for generations to share knowledge of sewing and knitting craft in a social setting, the term “Stitch ‘n’ Bitch” wasn’t coined probably until World War II. It is now the name of a global organization which is free and open to the public and “is just a group of knitters and crocheters who get together on a regular basis to stitch and, well, you know.” (stitchnbitch.org) Not only are members developing useful skills in these groups, which lessens their reliance on store bought goods, but they become teachers, develop creativity, and, most importantly, build relationships with other women in their communities.
http://www.luvfromamy.com/2012/07/stitch-n-bitchchurch-retro-cafe-club.html
http://connect.westheights.org/2012/06/22/wanted-volunteers-for-unique-opportunitya-barn-raising/
Stitch ‘n’ Bitch
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Finding Happiness on the Job
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http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1722&page=12
“..very little attention is given to the human aspects of an organization. People are treated as replaceable parts.” -Brian Nattrass, and Mary Altomare, The Natural Step
As organizations and corporations bloat in an attempt to swallow up competition something very valuable is often lost- humanity. Though a corporation might offer great health insurance and a 401(k), workers will rarely work up to their full potential if they feel marginalized and detached from co-workers. wildfire Buchanan writes, in Branzi’s Dilemma that , “the growing dissatisfaction with the results of process reengineering--simple downsizing of organizations, without a redistribution of the creative
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energy and purpose of workers--may be traced to its separation from the cultural values of organizations and its emphasis on information technologies, detached from collective human agency. “ Additionally, the homogenization of an organization’s workforce through top-down enforcement of culture, reduces the ability for self-organization, diversity and therefore resilience.
“More recently, personal finance advisors have helped their clients to balance quality of life issues over optimization of financial returns. In other words, many people are content to earn a little less if it makes them happier to support organizations, companies, products, and goals that are important to them rather than contributing to the very things that upset them in the world.” -Nathan Shendroff, Design is the Problem
Benyus notes that these are necessary entities for the success of ecological systems and many believe they are also necessary for businesses. Capra writes, “Self-organization produces heterogeneity and unpredictability. It is likely to come up with whole new structures, whole new ways of doing things. It requires freedom and experimentation, and a certain amount of disorder. These conditions that encourage self-organization often can be scary for individuals and threatening to power structures.” But they produce the right breeding ground for innovation.
When asked about the best way to manage people, the owner of a successful advertising agency in Chicago, replied that he always gave his employees “room to fail” so they were motivated not by fear but by possibility. This is also a philosophy held by one of the largest companies in the world, Google. Google allows their employees one day per week, or 20% of payable hours, to work on personal passion projects. The company believes that everyone benefits when workers bring 100% of themselves to work, including personal motivations, silliness and open minds. Examples of projects that have come out of 20% projects are gmail, Google Earth and Google News.
http://www.pixfunpix.com/2011/05/google-officein-wroclaw-poland.html#.UaOcKUCsiSo
https://aibob.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/visit-to-googleplex-google-office/
Google- 20% Projects
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calpro-online.org
“However, the designed structure always intersects with the organization’s living individuals and communities, for whom change cannot be designed.” “It is common to hear that people in organizations resist change. In reality, people do not resist change; they resist having change imposed on them.” -Capra
Capra writes, “Although knowledge is always created by individuals, it can be brought to light and expanded by the organization through social interactions in which tacit knowledge is transformed into explicit knowledge. Thus, while knowledge creation is an individual process, its amplification and expansion are social processes that take place between
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individuals.” This is the goal of a community of practice. A community of practice is “characterized by three features: mutual engagement of its members, a joint enterprise, and, over time, a shared repertoire of routines, tacit rules of conduct and knowledge.” (Wenger)
"Simplicity and elegant frugality are natural partners. Using less material means there is less to go wrong, less work involved, less cost and better performance. All are products of the same design mentality. All reflect what poet Wendell Berry calls "solving for pattern" finding solutions that improve not just the part that seem to be the problem but all parts of the system that contain it." -Meadows
Four System Conditions for Sustainability 1. Substances from the earth's crust--fossil fuels and mined minerals--must not systematically increase in nature. 2. Substances produced by society must not systematically increase in nature. 3. The physical basis for the productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically deteriorated. 4. Human society must be fair and efficient in meeting basic human needs.
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The Natural Step for Business
Lean production, or lean manufacturing, is a philosophy devised by the Toyota Production System. Its goal is to eliminate any energy, material or time that does not serve the purpose of adding value for the customer. D. Meadows describes further benefits of the system"Lean production makes people happier, and not only because workers like to see waste eliminated. The University of Chicago psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi has found that people all over the world feel best when their activity involves a clear objective, intense concentration, no distractions, immediate feedback on their progress and a sense of challenge. Skiing in control, or high-standard rock climbing or kayaking, or hunting something that can eat you, or writing or reading a good book are obvious examples. By creating, as Womack and Jones put it, "a highly satisfying psychological condition of flow," these tasks become the end in themselves, not a means of accomplishing something else. In contrast, traditional batch-and-queue production work fails every one of these criteria, which is why so few people enjoy it. But organizations where value flows continuously also create "the conditions for psychological flow. Every employee has immediate knowledge of whether the job has been done right and can see the status of the entire system."
http://www.sustainablesonoma.org/keyconcepts/naturalstep.html
Lean Production
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“It is time for us as a culture to walk in the forest again.” -Benyus
Seeing ourselves are separate from the Earth and each other is a self-constructed illusion. The reality is that we are all connected. And as we cling, full of tenacity and misdirected hope, to the belief that our actions have no consequences, our home, that we share with millions of other complex life forms, is losing resilience. The culture of sustainability is growing however but there remains “a wonton disregard for ecological citizenship.”( Margolin) The
balancing loop of the sustainability model may not yet be the dominant one but designers can help the transition to a resilient world with the engagement of their will and creativity. “Living successfully in a world of systems requires more of us than our ability to calculate. It requires our full humanity- our rationality, our ability to sort out truth from falsehood, our intuition, our compassion, our vision, and our morality.” Meadows
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www.earthday.net
Behrens published by the Club of Rome
www.clubofrome.org
1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is adopted
1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion
1984 Drought in Ethiopia causes between 250,000 to 1 million deaths
1982 Brittle Power by Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins
1982 World Resources Institute founded to conduct and publish global resource assessments
1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania
1977 UN conference on desertification is held
1974 The World Watch Institute founded to raise awareness of global environmental issues www.wri.org
1973 Endangered Species Act is passed
1973 OPEC Oil Crisis
1972 Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgon Randers and William
www.unep.org
1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment and UNEP are held in Stockholm
1972 Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek is published
1970 First Earth Day is held across the United States
1970 Clean Air Act is passed in the U.S.
1969 National Environmental Policy Act is passed in the U.S.
1969 Cuyahoga River catches on fire due to high levels of pollution
1962 The Silent Spring by Rachel Carson is published
Sustainability Timeline
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www.ipcc.ch
Agenda 21
www.wto.org
www.sustainability-index.com
2012 Rio +20
Gathering
www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/
2011 World population reaches 7 billion
2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil explosion leaks 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico
2009 G20 Pittsburgh Summit focusing on poverty, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies and sustainable consumption www.cfr.org/world/
2007 Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth wins an Oscar
2005 Hurricane Katrina hits U.S. Southeastern states
2005 Kyoto Protocol binds countries towards goals for greenhouse gas emission reductions
2002 Global Reporting Initiative launched to provide transparency in business practices www.globalreporting.org
2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg www.worldsummit2002.org
2001 Terrorist attack on the World Trade Center 9/11
1999 Dow Jones Sustainability index is launched
1999 Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawkins and Amory Lovins published
1995 World Trade Organization is established
1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro is held which produces an international action plan,
1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill dumps 11 million gallons into Alaskan waters
1988 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is established
1987 Our Common Future; The Brundtland Report is published
Sustainability Instigators
1934-2011
Anderson, Ray
Interface founder; known in environmental circles for his advanced and progressive stance on industrial ecology and sustainability
1914-2009
Bourlaug, Norman
American agronomist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution"; was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 in recognition of his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply.
1953- present; Teaching
Brander, James
Canadian Economist
1958- present;Teaching
Braungart, Michael
Chemist, Co-Auther of C2C; German chemist who advocates that humans can make a positive instead of a negative environmental impact by redesigning industrial production and therefor that dissipation is not waste
1907-1964
Carson, Rachel
Authored Silent Spring. Was Editor-in-Chief of all publications for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
1946-present; Working
Hawken, Paul
An environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author. His practice has included starting and running ecological businesses, writing and teaching about the impact of commerce on living systems, and consulting with governments and corporations on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. In 2008, he co-founded Biomimicry Technologies with Janine Benyuss
1895 – 1983
Fuller, Buckminster
Developed many ideas, designs and inventions, particularly regarding practical, inexpensive shelter and transportation.
Teaching
Fry, Tony
A design theorist and philosopher who writes on the relationship between design, unsustainability, and politics.PhD in Cultural Studies in Design from the University of Birmingham. currently Professor and Convenor, Master of Design
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Futures Program, Griffith University, Queensland Collage of Art Lerch, Daniel
A Master of Urban Studies from Portland State University in Oregon, and has worked with urban sustainability and planning issues for over fifteen years in the public, private and non-profit sectors.Author of Post Carbon Cities (2007), the first major local government guidebook on the end of cheap oil.
Teaching
Manzini, Ezio
An Italian design strategist, one of the world’s leading experts on sustainable design, author of numerous design books, professor of Industrial Design at Milan Polytechnic, and founder of the DESIS (Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability) network of university-based design labs.
Working
Margolin, Victor
First person in the United States with a PhD in design history. Co-founder and editor of Design Issues. Professor at UIC.
1947- Present; Teaching
McDonough, William
1946-Present; Teaching
Senge, Peter
Globally recognized leader in sustainable development. Trained as an architect an American scientist and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known as author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization
1931-Present; Retired
Singer, Peter
An Australian moral philosopher. He is currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics atPrinceton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specialises in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, preference utilitarian perspective. He is a major proponent of biocentrism.
1931- Present
Tutu, Desmond
South African social rights activist and retired Anglican bishop who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid
www.wikipedia.com
Working
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Sustainability Organizations and Educators
Ask Nature
asknature.org
Inspiration source for the biomimicry community.
Biomimicry 3.8 Institute
www.biomimicry.net
A not-for-profit focused on academic and public education with the mission to naturalize biomimicry in the culture by promoting the transfer of ideas, designs, and strategies from biology to sustainable human design.
Biomimicry Education Network
http://ben.biomimicry.net
A global community of teachers who are integrating biomimicry into K-12 classrooms, university courses, and informal learning environments of all kinds.
Center for Resource Solutions
www.resource-solutions.org/
Creates policy and market solutions to advance sustainable energy.
Club of Rome
www.clubofrome.org
Informal association of independent leading personalities from politics, business and science.
Commission on Sustainable Development
sustainabledevelopment. un.org/csd.html
Functional commission of the UN Economic and Social Council, implementing a recommendation in Chapt. 38 of Agenda 21.
CUMULUS
www.cumulusassociation. org/
The only global association to serve art and design education and research. It is a forum for partnership and transfer of knowledge and best practices.
Dartmouth College big green bus
www.thebiggreenbus.org/
Tours the country hosting fun and interactive events that bring together individuals and groups with varying backgrounds to envision a sustainable future.
Design Futures Council
www.di.net
an interdisciplinary network of design, product, and construction leaders exploring global trends, challenges, and opportuni-
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ties to advance innovation and shape the future of the industry and environment www.desis-network.org/
A network of design labs, based in design schools and designoriented universities, actively involved in promoting and supporting sustainable change.
Donella Meadows Institute
www.donellameadows.org/
Initiatives addressing economic, environmental, and social challenges from a number of angles and at many levels. Encourages the adoption of sustainable strategies by providing the tools and resources needed for informed decision making, mapping systems and leverage points for change, training leaders in positions of influence, and partnering with businesses and community organizations.
Global Reporting Initiative
www.globalreporting.org
Non-profit organization that provides all companies and organizations with a comprehensive sustainability reporting framework that is widely used around the world.
International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID)
www.icsid.org
Non-profit organization that protects and promotes the interests of the profession of industrial design.
International Panel for Climate Change
www.ipcc.org
Leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts.
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www.wikipedia.com
DESIS Network; Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability
Sustainability Organizations and Educators Continued
International Society of Industrial Ecology
www.is4ie.org/
Promote the use of industrial ecology in research, education, policy, community development, and industrial practices
Open Source Ecology
www.opensourceecology.org
A network of farmers, engineers, and supporters that for the last two years has been creating the Global Village Construction Set, an open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, DIY fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a sustainable civilization with modern comforts
Post Carbon Institute
www.postcarbon.org/
Provides individuals, communities, businesses, and governments with the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated economic, energy, environmental, and equity crises that define the 21st century.
Rocky Mountain Institute
www.rmi.org/
Non-adversarial and trans-ideological, emphasizing integrative design, advanced technologies, and mindful markets. Strategic focus, executed through specific initiatives designed to take work rapidly to scale, is to map and drive the transition from coal and oil to efficiency and renewables.
The Sustainability Consortium
http://www.sustainabilityconsortium.org/
An organization of diverse global participants that work collaboratively to build a scientific foundation that drives innovation to improve consumer product sustainability.
United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
unep.org
Mission: to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
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www.wiser.org/
Describes pathways of change in books and research reports, and creates tools for connecting the individuals, information, and organizations that create change.
World Resources Institute
www.wri.org/
WRI focuses on the intersection of the environment and socioeconomic development. Going beyond research to put ideas into action, working globally with governments, business, and civil society to build transformative solutions that protect the earth and improve people’s lives.
The World Watch Institute
www.worldwatch.org/
Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives (ZERI)
Mission-Through research and outreach that inspire action, the Worldwatch Institute works to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world that meets human needs. The Institute’s top mission objectives are universal access to renewable energy and nutritious food, expansion of environmentally sound jobs and development, transformation of cultures from consumerism to sustainability, and an early end to population growth through healthy and intentional childbearing.
www.zeri.org
Global network of creative minds, seeking solutions to the ever increasing problems of the world. By Gunter Pauli under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Heitor Gurgulino de Souza
www.wikipedia.com
WiserEarth, formerly Natural Capital Institute
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Sustainability Glossary Adaptation Apartied
People without will suffer much more than those with
Anabolism
Processes produce growth and differentiation of cells and increase in body size
The purchasing of products that do not harm or exploit the workers that help produce a product and to minimise the impact on the environment.
Anthropogenic Effects caused by humans; effects that relate to the influence of human beings on nature
Life Cycle Assessment a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from-cradle-to-grave
Autopoeisis
A closed system capable of creating itself
Monstrous Hybrid
Bifurcation
Instability that leads to a branching off
Biocentrism
a political or ethical stance which asserts the value of non-human life in nature
a product, component, or material that combines both technical and organic nutrients in a way that can’ be easily separated, thereby rendering it unable to be recycled or reused be either system.
Renewable Energy Certificate
Represents the property rights to the environmental, social, and other nonpower qualities of renewable electricity generation. can be sold separately from the physical electricity associated it
Renewable Portfolio Standard
A regulation that requires the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal.
Structural Coupling
History of recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems. This means that systems reciprocally change and are changed by their interactions.
Boundary
Boundary an organization accounts for its environmental, social and/or economic effects which the company has direct influence and can exercise control.
Carbon Footprint
An estimate of how much carbon dioxide is produced to support your lifestyle.
Catabolism
Degradative metabolism involving the release of energy and resulting in the breakdown of complex materials (as proteins or lipids) within the organism
Dissipative Structure
Ethical Consumerism
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Open system that maintains itself in a state far from equilibrium, yet is nevertheless stable
Resources Agenda 21, 1992, United Nations Conference on Environment & Development
Design Studies, chapter, 2002, University of Chicago Press (Expansion or Sustainability: Two Models of Development)
Anielski, Mark. “Are We Happy Yet?,” Alternatives Journal, 2009
Nattrass, Brian and Altomare, Mary. The Natural Step for Business. Canada: New Society Publishers, 1999
Benyus, Janine. Biomimicry; Innovation Inspired by Nature. New York, New York: Harper Collins, 1997 Buchanan, Richard. “Branzi’s dilemma: design in contemporary culture.” Design Issues 14, no. 1 (Spring98 1998): 3-20. Capra, Fritjof. The Hidden Connections. New York, New York: Anchor Books, 2002 Goldsby-Smith, Tony. Fourth Order Design: A Practical Perspective, Design Issues, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1996) Pg 5-25 Easterlin, Richard. “Income and Happiness: Towards a Unified Theory,” The Economic Journal, Vol. 111, No. 473 (July 2001), pp.465-484 Hawkin, Paul; Lovins, Amory; Lovins, L. Hunter. Natural Capitalism. London: Back Bay Books, 1999 Meadows, Donella. Thinking in Systems. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2008. Manzini, Ezio, Design, Ethics and Sustainability, chapter in CUMULUS Working Papers, 2006, NANTES, publication series G, University of Art and Design Helsinki
Our Common Future, The Brundtland Report, 1987, the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) Phillips, Derek. “Social Participation and Happiness,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 72, No. 5 (Mar. 1967), pp. 479-488) Senge, Peter. The Necessary Revolution. New York, New York: Broadway, 2008 Shendroff, Nathan. Design is the Problem. Brooklyn, New York: Rosenfeld, 2009 Wenger, Entienne. Cultivating Communities of Practice. 2002 Zurick, David. “Gross National Happiness and Environmental Status in Bhutan,” Geological Review, Vol. 96, No. 4 (Oct. 2006), pp.657-681
Note: All untagged photos were taken by Alexandra Rose
Margolin, Victor, “Design for a Sustainable World”, Design Issues, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Summer, 1998) pp.83-92 Margolin, Victor, The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and
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