This is the final installment in a seven-part series on what author Gregory
Unruh calls the ‘Biosphere
Rules.’ Read
parts one, two, three, four,
five
and
six.
Managers frequently say, “Sustainability is a journey” — often implying that it
is an ideal that companies strive for but never actually reach. That is an
unhelpful and deceptive metaphor. Sustainability is a clear destination. We know
exactly what our sustainable economy is going to look like — our cities and
industries are going to resemble nature.
The biosphere is built on a parsimonious materials
palette,
a handful of elemental materials used to create the marvelous biodiversity we
see around us. Nature’s power
source
is solar, captured and stored chemically in living things themselves. The
materials are enduring, residing temporarily in any given organism before being
released into nature’s shared materials pool to be value
cycled
into the next, more evolved, organism. Organisms are expressions of a common
underlying production
platform
that the biosphere leverages for massive scale, scope and information economies,
allowing species to take advantage of every habitable niche on the globe.
Organism design and ecosystem function are biologically captured in genetic
information technology that is shared widely across the planet, allowing
individual organisms to operate in an integrated way that sustains the whole.
In the future, we can envision a time where every material thing in our world is
made out of a handful of materials, carefully selected to be safe and healthy
for living things and infinitely recyclable. Everything from coffee cup to
countertop could be broken down on the spot and used as raw materials for a new
shawl or lampshade. Instead of looking to the iron mines of Minnesota or the
well heads of Iraq for our raw materials, we would instead look to the
skyscrapers of Manhattan or even our living rooms. As you read this, look
around at what is in the room you are sitting in. Can you imagine that the bulk
of it is made from a handful of carefully selected materials?
In this world, product designers and engineers would be trained to think
differently. Instead of asking, “What novel materials can I use to build this
product?”, brilliant designers will ask, “How can I use my pallet of proven
circular materials to design a solution that delivers my client’s desired
service?” And, of course, they will come up with original, dazzling solutions.
In this world, manufacturing depends not on the intense industrial heats and
pressures that mimic geologic
processes,
but on manufacturing methods that can be powered by intelligently delivered
renewable energy.
The beginnings of this world already exist. Additive manufacturing
technologies — which build products from the bottom up, like nature — have the
potential to incorporate all of the biosphere rules, setting the foundation for
a viable circular economy. 3D printing’s additive manufacturing approach means
that a single plastic polymer can be used to create a nearly infinite number of
forms, fulfilling the principle of materials parsimony. Next, the recent
development of solar-powered 3D
printing
fulfills the power autonomy principle, allowing printers to work entirely on
local renewable energy. And the final piece has also been demonstrated: An
integrated recycling process that can take an old object, grind it down, and
reuse it as raw material for the next printing run.
Imagine that you have your own 3D printer in your garage, or perhaps you use a
printing merchant at your local shopping center. Most of the products in your
home — tableware, furniture, finishings, doors, and so on — are printed
products. When you tire of your side table, you pop it in your car and go to
your printing merchant, who promptly throws it into a solar-powered hopper to
grind it down into new raw material. Then, you select the new table design you
want from the merchant’s terminal and press “print.” When you come back from
your grocery shopping, your brand-new table is ready and waiting for you.
While not all products can currently be produced by the technology, it is easy
to imagine a large percentage of our goods being 3D printed, absorbing a big
chunk of production into a circular economy.
As novelist William Gibson said, “The future is already here — it’s just not
evenly distributed yet.”
Dr. Gregory C. Unruh is the Sustainability Editor for the MIT Sloan Management
Review and author of the new book, The Biosphere Rules: Nature’s Five
Circularity Secrets for Sustainable Profits*. For a limited time, Sustainable
Brands subscribers can download a complimentary digital copy of the book*
here.
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Sustainability Editor
MIT Sloan
Dr. Gregory C. Unruh is the Arison Professor of Values Leadership at George Mason University in the Washington DC Metro area, and the Sustainability Editor for the MIT Sloan Management Review.
Published Dec 3, 2019 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET