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Sustainable Industrial Design and Waste Management
18
of raw material, water and energy using the 7Rs Golden Rule (El-Haggar,
2004b) is a must for sustainable development.
Braungart and McDonough (2002) proposed a shift from a cradle-to-
grave approach where waste products are disposed of in a landfill to a cradle-
to-cradle approach where waste can be used for the production of other
products. They recommended the “eco-effective” recycling approach to enable
material reuse with high quality. They added that combining different mate-
rials in one product prevents the products from being fully recycled. Accord-
ingly, product designers need to plan for the reuse of their products in order
to prevent waste generation. This shift in products’ design approach will
require an added responsibility of the producer – EPR as discussed above.
The cradle-to-cradle concept promotes sustainable development. It is a
system of thinking based on the belief that human endeavors can emulate
nature’s elegant system of safe and regenerative productivity, by transform-
ing industries to sustainable enterprises and eliminating the concept of waste.
Natural ecosystems are based on principles, which can be adopted by
humans in industry. For example, no waste generation; in natural ecosys-
tems an organism’s waste is consumed by others. This can be applied in
industry such that one industry’s wastes are another’s raw material –
“industrial ecology” will be discussed in Chapter 3. This is the fundamental
concept of eco-industrial parks, where industries are grouped together to
have a continuous flow of material and no waste generation as in the case of
an eco-industrial park in Kalundborg, Denmark, which will be discussed in
detail in Chapter 3.
Adopting cradle-to-cradle principles creates a cyclical flow of materials,
as opposed to the one-way cradle-to-grave concept. The materials consumed
in industry resemble the nutrients that flow cyclically in natural ecosystems
and can circulate in one of two metabolisms, biological or technical.
According to the cradle-to-cradle concept, products are designed to be
made of materials that can be safely manufactured, used, recovered, and
reused while still maintaining their high value throughout their life cycle.
This way valuable used material can be continuously cycled in closed loops
and transformed for reuse as other products. By applying the principle of
cradle-to-cradle design and transforming industrial systems to a closed loop
system of material flow, not only will this design save the environment
from waste generation and negative impacts, but industries can even benefit
from the continuous availability of products made of high value material
even after the useful stage of the product’s life.

Questions

1. Discuss the differences between treatment and sustainable treatment.
2. Discuss the differences between the traditional waste management
hierarchy and the sustainable waste management hierarchy.