Page 23 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

2 Cha pte r O n e

sea level is rising, fresh water is growing scarce, we are run ning
out of arable land, our forests are disappearing, and bio diversity is
threatened due to changes in natural habitats. Mean while, global
population continues to increase; more countries are developing

into re source hogs, while over three billion people still live in abject
poverty on less than $2.50 per day, many deprived of even basic san-
itation and fresh water.
Humans are nothing if not ingenious problem-solvers. Can
we cleverly escape, like Indiana Jones, from this predicament in
which we find ourselves? We are faced with the most daunting
set of problems in our recorded history. Once we squarely con -
front these problems, we have two paths to choose—hopeless or
hopeful:

1. The hopeless path is to resign ourselves—accept that the
world will soon run out of resources; that there will be an
inevitable collapse of civilization; and that our best alterna-
tive is to hunker down, break our dependencies, become self-
sufficient, live off the land, and pray that we are not destroyed
in a global conflict or natural catastrophe.
2. The hopeful path is to reinvent our way of life—not to retreat
but to join forces in an unprecedented sustainability cam-
paign. We are past the point where better housekeeping will
solve the problem. We need to completely redesign indus trial
products, processes, and supply chains to dramatically lower
their resource intensity, while assuring that developing na -
tions do not replicate the old designs.
Pursuing the hopeful path will require extraordinary collabora-
tion. While breakthrough innovation can be accomplished by the pri-
vate sector, governments and private citizens also have an important
role to play. First, we need a governance framework for sustainability
that provides the right incentives while minimizing the barriers to
change. Second, we need to redesign the publicly managed physical
infrastructure systems that support economic activity—transpor-
tation, energy, water, and waste management. Finally we need to
accomplish a massive behavior change in order to shift toward sus-
tainable consumption patterns.
This journey will be an enormous challenge—a moonshot for the
twenty-first century. We have already waited too long, and we need
to act with a sense of urgency. Achieving sustainability will draw
upon the best thinking in every discipline—management and engi-
neering, science and policy. This book does not provide a complete
blueprint for the journey to sustainability, but it does provide some
important tools for slowing and perhaps even reversing environmen-
tal degradation through innovative product and process design.