130 years ago if you were looking to get
around in New York there was this
fast-forward about 25 years and
everything had changed about 40 years
ago if you were looking if you were
looking to take a picture
there was this fast-forward just the 20
years and everything had changed about a
dozen years ago if you were looking to
light a space well there were these
fast-forward to today and we have these
three examples of disruption really
quick disruption well a couple of
hundred years a couple of hundred
thousand years ago if you were life in
the universe there was this fast-forward
to today the blink of an eye in the
geologic time line and there’s this and
everything is changing today there are
more of us than ever before and that’s a
good thing and we’re consuming more than
ever before and suddenly we’re finding
ourselves face-to-face with some pretty
significant disruption perhaps the
biggest disruption of all a lot of
disruption but among among them perhaps
the biggest climate change and not far
behind its lesser-known cousin resource
depletion we think about water perhaps
that’s a renewable resource but also
non-renewable resources for example when
it opened near Bathurst in the 1960s
Brunswick mine was one of the biggest
zinc deposits in the world but in 2013
it closed the deposit was depleted the
mine is empty so we’re facing some
pretty significant disruption in terms
of climate change and in terms of
resource depletion the two
I’d like to focus on today and well what
are we going to do how are we going to
fix those
I’d argue with a little disruption of
our own of two paradigms of our world
one design the way we make things and
two economics the way we value and buy
and sell things so let’s start with
design and for that I’d like to
introduce you to this book cradle to
cradle it’s not a new book it was
written in 2002 but I read it a number
of years ago and it was for me one of
these lightbulb moments in a personal
experience because cradle to cradle is
all about well as the byline says
remaking the way we make things because
you see the way we make things in our
world right now
well it’s cradle to grave because when
we want something we go to a cradle and
in our world the cradle would be a well
a mine maybe an ocean maybe a forest for
the resources we need then we make the
product and we use it and when we’re
done we pitch it we throw it away
typically cradle to grave but there’s an
inherent assumption there then that
there will always be more resources in
the cradle and along the way too that
means that we don’t design for
sustainability
instead we design for things like
convenience and functionality and low
cost but that means then we create
products which by design aren’t very
sustainable aren’t very recyclable and
in cradle to cradle the authors refer to
the term monstrous hybrids for products
that are a mishmash of materials that
make them by design virtually impossible
to separate out in their into their
constituent ingredients and recycle and
the most egregious example surely would
be electronics they talk about
dissembling a television into its
constituent components do you know how
many ingredients through our
in an old television 4360 and when you
hear that then you understand why
recycling electronics is so difficult
and why we have these horror stories of
attempted recycling of limited resources
usually in faraway places now it’s
getting better it’s true because more
electronics companies are designing
better but still we have big e waste
problems but beyond that cradle to grave
thinking is kind of permeated much more
of our design than just electronics it’s
in our everyday world as well because
cardboard is recyclable plastic is
recyclable but as soon as you combine
them not very easily recyclable
unless separated I guess it’s come to
the point where we need to see the
baguette to believe that it’s really in
the bag but unfortunately along the way
we transform formed recyclable paper
into another mini monstrous hybrid and
then we have this the quintessential
Canadian monstrous hybrid million served
today yet again a cardboard cup lined
with plastic which by design is
impossible to recycle and all of this
design of course creates a mountain of
waste which is a human creation because
when you think about it in nature there
is no such thing as waste waste as a
human creation because Nature has a
perfect system of recycling I know this
because I grew up on a farm and out in
the pasture if you saw one of these guys
and you watched long enough invariably
you’d see the appearance of some of this
then if you waited long enough well then
you’d notice that that slowly
disappeared and in its place a nice new
patch of green grass and if you were
really patient and waited still longer
you’d find a cow would come along and
eat it nature is recycling it’s perfect
now I’m simplifying of course but in
nature there
is no waste to which one might say yeah
but in our world we recycle too don’t we
well kind of because if you look at a
product like this for example you say
well when I returned that it gets
recycled right a couple of little
catches one first of all only about 30%
of our water bottles are returned but of
those 30% that are returned they don’t
get recycled into bottles they get
recycled into inferior products things
like carpet which makes a ten-year stop
on our floors on its way to the dump or
get recycled into things like polyester
some of which probably does belong in a
landfill but you see it’s not true
recycling in fact it’s downcycling into
inferior products and unfortunately in
our world virtually all of what we call
recycling it’s actually downcycling with
few exceptions and perhaps the most
egregious example would be what we call
number 7 plastics because there are a
mishmash of plastic resins that don’t
fit the first six classes and as a
result they are in of themselves such a
mix that in the most cases when they’re
collected they get slid into a landfill
after all anyways so back to cradle to
cradle the authors argue in an era of
diminishing resources surely we can’t
keep doing this
we need to eliminate the concept of
waste how by changing designs so that
we’re not designing cradle to grave
we’re designing cradle to cradle by
designing products so that they can be
disassembled into their ingredients and
reuse again whether technical
ingredients like iron or zinc or copper
or natural ingredients that can be
composted eliminate the concept of waste
so how are we going to do this all right
suggests maybe with a second disruption
and that is disruption of our economic
system currently based on supply and
demand
who’s got the resource
who needs them who’s got the money how
can we move them where is the cheapest
to manufacture and that’s all great
except economics as we know practice it
I’d suggest has at least two fatal flaws
first this concept of externalities and
there’s a textbook definition right
there
but essentially an externality is
something that’s available in such
limitless quantities that we perceive it
to be infinite and therefore we don’t
need to put a price on it because it’s
always there and when it comes to
externalities the biggest externality of
all in economics it’s our global
environment back in 2014 some authors
did a study attempting to quantify the
value of all of the free ecological
goods and services we get from this
world around us everything from the
water purification services of wetlands
to the free pollination services of
insects to the air purification services
of forests or just plain the value of
having a stable climate in which we can
live and exist and thrive their result
the result of the car the value of all
of our ecological goods and services is
twice the value of our global GDP
everything that we consider our global
economy twice the value and yet in our
current system of economics that means
that stuff is considered free and it’s
not valued at all into the price of
products so if we have two products on a
store shelf one that has a really dirty
environmental footprint the other and it
but it’s really cheap and the one right
beside it that is very sustainable but
might be just a touch more expensive
well unfortunately under our certain
under our current system we’ll always
pick the cheap one we’ll always pick the
dirty one externalities a weakness of
economics and here I’d suggest is the
second the notion the myth of perpetual
growth in a finite world anyone who
believes exponential growth can go on
forever in a finite world
is either a bad man or an economist now
I couldn’t say that very nicely but
Kenneth Boulding you can because he’s an
economist well say no more
isn’t there something inherently wrong
about assuming we can continue
exponential growth in a finite world I
mean how many people do you think we
could pack into this room before we say
no more
well confession time to you a number of
years ago when these things first became
clear to me I thought the answer is
education because once everyone knows
what the fix is and the right thing to
do is everyone will do it because we’ve
all got a moral compass yeah I hear the
snickering out there a little naive
maybe well I have since discovered that
we all have another compass and in fact
this one is really strong the needle on
this one does not move it’s our money
compass because we don’t brag about
buying expensive we brag about buying
cheap and we always choose cheap and for
that reason it seems to me that a big
fix for a lot of this is price signals
putting price penalties on behaviors
that we don’t want and incentives
towards behaviors that we do want and
the biggest one of all of course is a
price signal a price on carbon because
if for example the emissions from our
burning of oil and coal and natural gas
are driving climate change this great
disrupter doesn’t it make sense to put a
price signal on them and along the way
when we do that we make those
consumption of those products less
desirable and we’ll also be inherently
incenting the energy sources we need to
replace those dirty sources but we can’t
stop just there either because really
when it comes to price signals we need
to permeate all the way through our
current economic system because remember
the two products with full cost
counting of all of the impacts of the
environment embedded into the product
you know what happens here this and
suddenly we buy cheap we transform the
market and you know what happens to
expensive products they disappear that’s
the future I think we need so now you’re
sitting there thinking okay so what can
I do about this any engineers out there
because if there are why not help us
eliminate the concept of waste by
designing products oriented towards
cradle to cradle not cradle to grave any
economists out there or aspiring
economists why not help us figure out
where we can put price signals so that
we transform our world from one based on
consumption to one based on
sustainability any consumers out there
why not
educate ourselves on the right thing to
do and then just start making conscious
positive choices maybe starting by
swearing off of disposable coffee cups
and carrying around the mug maybe by
swearing off of single-use water bottles
and carrying our own water bottle any
voters out there why not contact your
leaders to tell them that this is really
important stuff and pledge your support
when the time comes for them to make the
difficult decisions that will need to be
made in order to turn things around
Albert Einstein said we can’t solve
problems by using the same kind of
thinking we used when we created them my
own interpretation of that is maybe we
we need to rethink everything we hold to
be true
disruptive yeah
but maybe that’s what it will take to disrupt the greatest disruption of all
around in New York there was this
fast-forward about 25 years and
everything had changed about 40 years
ago if you were looking if you were
looking to take a picture
there was this fast-forward just the 20
years and everything had changed about a
dozen years ago if you were looking to
light a space well there were these
fast-forward to today and we have these
three examples of disruption really
quick disruption well a couple of
hundred years a couple of hundred
thousand years ago if you were life in
the universe there was this fast-forward
to today the blink of an eye in the
geologic time line and there’s this and
everything is changing today there are
more of us than ever before and that’s a
good thing and we’re consuming more than
ever before and suddenly we’re finding
ourselves face-to-face with some pretty
significant disruption perhaps the
biggest disruption of all a lot of
disruption but among among them perhaps
the biggest climate change and not far
behind its lesser-known cousin resource
depletion we think about water perhaps
that’s a renewable resource but also
non-renewable resources for example when
it opened near Bathurst in the 1960s
Brunswick mine was one of the biggest
zinc deposits in the world but in 2013
it closed the deposit was depleted the
mine is empty so we’re facing some
pretty significant disruption in terms
of climate change and in terms of
resource depletion the two
I’d like to focus on today and well what
are we going to do how are we going to
fix those
I’d argue with a little disruption of
our own of two paradigms of our world
one design the way we make things and
two economics the way we value and buy
and sell things so let’s start with
design and for that I’d like to
introduce you to this book cradle to
cradle it’s not a new book it was
written in 2002 but I read it a number
of years ago and it was for me one of
these lightbulb moments in a personal
experience because cradle to cradle is
all about well as the byline says
remaking the way we make things because
you see the way we make things in our
world right now
well it’s cradle to grave because when
we want something we go to a cradle and
in our world the cradle would be a well
a mine maybe an ocean maybe a forest for
the resources we need then we make the
product and we use it and when we’re
done we pitch it we throw it away
typically cradle to grave but there’s an
inherent assumption there then that
there will always be more resources in
the cradle and along the way too that
means that we don’t design for
sustainability
instead we design for things like
convenience and functionality and low
cost but that means then we create
products which by design aren’t very
sustainable aren’t very recyclable and
in cradle to cradle the authors refer to
the term monstrous hybrids for products
that are a mishmash of materials that
make them by design virtually impossible
to separate out in their into their
constituent ingredients and recycle and
the most egregious example surely would
be electronics they talk about
dissembling a television into its
constituent components do you know how
many ingredients through our
in an old television 4360 and when you
hear that then you understand why
recycling electronics is so difficult
and why we have these horror stories of
attempted recycling of limited resources
usually in faraway places now it’s
getting better it’s true because more
electronics companies are designing
better but still we have big e waste
problems but beyond that cradle to grave
thinking is kind of permeated much more
of our design than just electronics it’s
in our everyday world as well because
cardboard is recyclable plastic is
recyclable but as soon as you combine
them not very easily recyclable
unless separated I guess it’s come to
the point where we need to see the
baguette to believe that it’s really in
the bag but unfortunately along the way
we transform formed recyclable paper
into another mini monstrous hybrid and
then we have this the quintessential
Canadian monstrous hybrid million served
today yet again a cardboard cup lined
with plastic which by design is
impossible to recycle and all of this
design of course creates a mountain of
waste which is a human creation because
when you think about it in nature there
is no such thing as waste waste as a
human creation because Nature has a
perfect system of recycling I know this
because I grew up on a farm and out in
the pasture if you saw one of these guys
and you watched long enough invariably
you’d see the appearance of some of this
then if you waited long enough well then
you’d notice that that slowly
disappeared and in its place a nice new
patch of green grass and if you were
really patient and waited still longer
you’d find a cow would come along and
eat it nature is recycling it’s perfect
now I’m simplifying of course but in
nature there
is no waste to which one might say yeah
but in our world we recycle too don’t we
well kind of because if you look at a
product like this for example you say
well when I returned that it gets
recycled right a couple of little
catches one first of all only about 30%
of our water bottles are returned but of
those 30% that are returned they don’t
get recycled into bottles they get
recycled into inferior products things
like carpet which makes a ten-year stop
on our floors on its way to the dump or
get recycled into things like polyester
some of which probably does belong in a
landfill but you see it’s not true
recycling in fact it’s downcycling into
inferior products and unfortunately in
our world virtually all of what we call
recycling it’s actually downcycling with
few exceptions and perhaps the most
egregious example would be what we call
number 7 plastics because there are a
mishmash of plastic resins that don’t
fit the first six classes and as a
result they are in of themselves such a
mix that in the most cases when they’re
collected they get slid into a landfill
after all anyways so back to cradle to
cradle the authors argue in an era of
diminishing resources surely we can’t
keep doing this
we need to eliminate the concept of
waste how by changing designs so that
we’re not designing cradle to grave
we’re designing cradle to cradle by
designing products so that they can be
disassembled into their ingredients and
reuse again whether technical
ingredients like iron or zinc or copper
or natural ingredients that can be
composted eliminate the concept of waste
so how are we going to do this all right
suggests maybe with a second disruption
and that is disruption of our economic
system currently based on supply and
demand
who’s got the resource
who needs them who’s got the money how
can we move them where is the cheapest
to manufacture and that’s all great
except economics as we know practice it
I’d suggest has at least two fatal flaws
first this concept of externalities and
there’s a textbook definition right
there
but essentially an externality is
something that’s available in such
limitless quantities that we perceive it
to be infinite and therefore we don’t
need to put a price on it because it’s
always there and when it comes to
externalities the biggest externality of
all in economics it’s our global
environment back in 2014 some authors
did a study attempting to quantify the
value of all of the free ecological
goods and services we get from this
world around us everything from the
water purification services of wetlands
to the free pollination services of
insects to the air purification services
of forests or just plain the value of
having a stable climate in which we can
live and exist and thrive their result
the result of the car the value of all
of our ecological goods and services is
twice the value of our global GDP
everything that we consider our global
economy twice the value and yet in our
current system of economics that means
that stuff is considered free and it’s
not valued at all into the price of
products so if we have two products on a
store shelf one that has a really dirty
environmental footprint the other and it
but it’s really cheap and the one right
beside it that is very sustainable but
might be just a touch more expensive
well unfortunately under our certain
under our current system we’ll always
pick the cheap one we’ll always pick the
dirty one externalities a weakness of
economics and here I’d suggest is the
second the notion the myth of perpetual
growth in a finite world anyone who
believes exponential growth can go on
forever in a finite world
is either a bad man or an economist now
I couldn’t say that very nicely but
Kenneth Boulding you can because he’s an
economist well say no more
isn’t there something inherently wrong
about assuming we can continue
exponential growth in a finite world I
mean how many people do you think we
could pack into this room before we say
no more
well confession time to you a number of
years ago when these things first became
clear to me I thought the answer is
education because once everyone knows
what the fix is and the right thing to
do is everyone will do it because we’ve
all got a moral compass yeah I hear the
snickering out there a little naive
maybe well I have since discovered that
we all have another compass and in fact
this one is really strong the needle on
this one does not move it’s our money
compass because we don’t brag about
buying expensive we brag about buying
cheap and we always choose cheap and for
that reason it seems to me that a big
fix for a lot of this is price signals
putting price penalties on behaviors
that we don’t want and incentives
towards behaviors that we do want and
the biggest one of all of course is a
price signal a price on carbon because
if for example the emissions from our
burning of oil and coal and natural gas
are driving climate change this great
disrupter doesn’t it make sense to put a
price signal on them and along the way
when we do that we make those
consumption of those products less
desirable and we’ll also be inherently
incenting the energy sources we need to
replace those dirty sources but we can’t
stop just there either because really
when it comes to price signals we need
to permeate all the way through our
current economic system because remember
the two products with full cost
counting of all of the impacts of the
environment embedded into the product
you know what happens here this and
suddenly we buy cheap we transform the
market and you know what happens to
expensive products they disappear that’s
the future I think we need so now you’re
sitting there thinking okay so what can
I do about this any engineers out there
because if there are why not help us
eliminate the concept of waste by
designing products oriented towards
cradle to cradle not cradle to grave any
economists out there or aspiring
economists why not help us figure out
where we can put price signals so that
we transform our world from one based on
consumption to one based on
sustainability any consumers out there
why not
educate ourselves on the right thing to
do and then just start making conscious
positive choices maybe starting by
swearing off of disposable coffee cups
and carrying around the mug maybe by
swearing off of single-use water bottles
and carrying our own water bottle any
voters out there why not contact your
leaders to tell them that this is really
important stuff and pledge your support
when the time comes for them to make the
difficult decisions that will need to be
made in order to turn things around
Albert Einstein said we can’t solve
problems by using the same kind of
thinking we used when we created them my
own interpretation of that is maybe we
we need to rethink everything we hold to
be true
disruptive yeah
but maybe that’s what it will take to disrupt the greatest disruption of all
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