Chapter Four
Waste Equals Food:
- The Earth's major nutrients - carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, nitrogen - are cycled and recycled. Waste
equals food.
- Industry altered the natural equilibrium of materials
on the planet. Humans took substances from
the Earth's crust and concentrated, altered, and
synthesized them into vast quantities of material
that cannot safely be returned to the soil -
material flows can now be divided into two
categories: biological mass and technical,
(industrial) mass - biological and technical
nutrients. Biological nutrients are useful to
the biosphere, while technical nutrients are
useful for the "technoshpere."
From Cradle-to-Cradle to Cradle-to-Grave:
A Brief History of Nutrient Flows
- Nomadic cultures left their biological wastes behind to
to replenish the soil. They truly had an "away."
Agricultural communities, as they became increasingly
adept at food production, saw swelling populations,
and began to take nutrients from the soil and to eat up
resources (such as trees) without replacing them at an
equal rate. They also began to devise ways to get rid
of their wastes.
- William Cronon: In "Nature's Metropolis", he
observes that the rural areas around Chicago were
organized over time to provide services for the
city. "The central story of the nineteenth-century
West is that of an expanding metropolitan economy
creating ever more elaborate and intimate linkages
between city and country." As cities swelled and
grew they placed increasing pressure on the
environment around them.
- Certain cultures have understood the value of nutrient
flows: Egypt and the Nile River with its rhythmic
cycles of overflow and silt deposits. The Chinese
perfected a system that prevents pathogens from
contaminating the food chain, and fertilized rice
patties with biological wastes, including sewage.
Unfortunately, today, the Chinese and the Egyptians
have turned to systems based on the Western
model and are growing more dependent on
imported foods.
- In preindustrial culture, people consumed and
discarded things, but they were largely
biodegradable. Metals were melted down and
reused. Industrialization and the proliferation
of cheap materials that it created (with
exceptions during times of scarcity, the Great
Depression, WWII) created an ethic where
throwaway products are the norm - leading
eventually to the phenomenon of engineered
obsolescence.
Monstrous Hybrids
- Beyond the issue of space taken up by landfills,
is the issue of the lost nutrients, both technical
and biological that are lost forever - the
conventional leather shoe: vegetable tanning
has been replaced with chromium tanning,
which is faster and cheaper. Chromium is rare
and valuable for industries. Combined with
rubber shoe soles containing lead and plastics,
the product cannot be safely consumed or
reused and ends up in a landfill.
A Confusion of Flows
- In the late nineteenth century, a connection was
made between sanitation and public health.
Sewers ran to rivers, which were soon
overwhelmed. Eventually, sewage treatment
plants were built to treat effluents and sized to
accommodate waterborne sewage combined with
added storm water during major rains. Sewage
treatment was a process of microbial and bacterial
digestion. Sewage volume continued to increase,
however, and the solution grew to include harsh
chemical treatments like chlorination. This
corresponded with multiple household chemicals
being poured down drains - recent studies have
found hormones, endocrine disrupters, and other
dangerous compounds in bodies of water that
receive "treated" sewage effluents. Sewage sludge
is even too contaminated to be used for fertilizer -
what if we moved back upstream and considered
all of the things contained in sewage to be
nutrient flows? Phosphate (used as a fertilizer
occurs naturally in sewage sludge and other organic
wastes but is currently mined out of rocks at
great environmental cost.
From Cradle to Grave to Cradle to Cradle
- A products "life cycle" - we project our vitality -
and our mortality - onto our products. Our sense
of identity has become dependent on the sense
of ourselves as powerful, unique individuals
consuming and discarding products which we
alone owned and used.
A World of Two Metabolisms
- Overarching design framework within which we
exist has two essential elements: mass (the Earth)
and energy (the sun). It is a closed loop system.
Whatever we make does not go "away."
- Form follows evolution, not just function - two
discrete metabolisms on the planet - the biological
metabolism (biosphere) and the technical metabolism
(technosphere). Products can be composed either of
materials that biodegrade and become food for
biological cycles, or of technical materials that stay
in closed-loop technical cycles.
The Biological Metabolism
- A biological nutrient is a material or product that
is designed to return to the biological cycle - it is
consumed by microorganisms in the soil and by
other animals. Packaging, which makes up about
50 percent of the municipal solid waste stream
can be designed as biological nutrients.
- DesignTex, a division of Steelcase asked MBDC
to create a compostable upholstery fabric and
suggested cotton fiber combined with PET
(polyethylene terephthalate) from recycled
soda bottles. PET, however, is covered with
synthetic dyes and chemicals and contains
questionable substances. Upholstery abrades,
so not only would the product fill the air with
potentially harmful chemicals, it cannot be
safely disposed of at the end of its life.
- The MBDC team came up with a mixture of safe,
pesticide-free plant and animal fibers for the fabric:
wool, which provides insulation in summer and winter,
and ramie, which wicks away moisture - the goal
became to go beyond designing a fabric that would
do no harm and to design a fabric that would be
nutritious. Sixty chemical companies declined the
invitation to join the project, unwilling to expose
their chemistry to the level of scrutiny required.
Finally, one European company agreed to join.
The Technical Metabolism
- A technical nutrient is a material or product that is
designed to go back into the technical cycle, into
the industrial metabolism from which it came -
Example: the average television is made of
4,360 chemicals, some are toxic but others are
valuable nutrients for industry.
- Industrial mass can be specifically designed to
retain its high quality for multiple uses - how to
make this practical and achievable - a new
concept: a product of service. Customers would
effectively purchase the service of such a product
for a defined user period - say, ten thousand hours
of television viewing, rather than the television
itself. The customers would receive the services for
as long as they need them and could upgrade as
often as desired.
- "Rent-a-solvent": To provide a degreasing service
using high quality solvents available to customers
without selling the solvent itself; the provider
would recapture emissions and separate the solvent
from the grease so that it would be available for
continuous reuse.
- This scenario has tremendous implications for
industry's material wealth: The carpet industry
(when a customer wants to replace the carpeting,
the manufacturer simply removes the top, snaps
down a fresh one in the desired color, and takes the
old one back as food for further carpeting), the
automobile industry, etc. Industry need not
design what it makes to be durable beyond a certain
amount of time any more than nature does -
Threefold benefit: produce no useless and
potentially dangerous waste, save manufacturers
billions of dollars in materials over time, diminish
extraction of raw materials (such as petrochemicals)
and the manufacture of potentially disruptive
materials (such as PVC).
When Worlds Collide
- Running shoes: impact of the shoes releases tiny
particles containing chemicals that may be
teratogens, carcinogens, or other substances that
can reduce fertility and inhibit the oxidizing
properties of cells. Running shoes can be
redesigned so that their soles are biological nutrients.
- Some materials do not fit either the organic or
the technical metabolism because they contain
materials that are hazardous - "unmarketables"
that require creative measures: storage in
"parking lots", (safe repositories funded by the
producer of the material) until they can be
detoxified and returned as valuable molecules.
Nuclear waste is clearly an unmarketable,
PVC, PET, etc. Companies might undertake a
"waste phaseout" in which unmarketables -
- problematic wastes and nutrients - are
removed from the current waste stream.
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