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  It is important to acknowledge the potential absurdity of the approach and the less visible problems it may conceal. The detergent may be “free of” phosphates, but have they been replaced by something worse? The solvents that bind conventional printing inks are derived from problematic petrochemicals, but switching to a water base to make them “solvent free” may simply make it easier for the heavy metals that are still in the inks to enter the ecosystem. Bear in mind that positively selecting the ingredients of which a product is made, and how they are combined, is the goal.

  Several years ago, we were asked to develop a chlorine-free container for a food company. When we thought about the project seriously, it became a bit of a sick joke, because we realized that simply being free of one thing did not necessarily make a product healthy and safe. As we have pointed out, the decision to make paper products that are chlorine-free means using virgin pulp rather than recycled paper, and even then, some naturally occurring chlorine will creep in. Moreover, the package contained other problematic substances—it had a polyurethane coating, for example, and there were heavy metals in the inks used to print on it—but these substances were not on anyone’s well-publicized environmental hit list and so had yet to be perceived by the general public as dangerous. (We imagined the manufacturer could increase sales and save money and effort by simply announcing that the packaging was “plutonium free”!) Ironically, the manufacturer finally got its chlorine-free packaging only to discover chlorine-related dioxin in the food product itself.

  Nevertheless, there are some substances that are known to be bioaccumulative and to cause such obvious harm that getting free of them is almost always a productive step. These are what we call X substances, and they include such materials as PVC, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Considering that the mercury in thermometers sold to hospitals and consumers in the United States each year is estimated to total 4.3 tons, and it takes only one gram to contaminate the fish in a twenty-acre lake, designing a mercury-free thermometer is a good thing. A well-publicized campaign is under way to eliminate mercury-based thermometers, but in fact that use accounts for only about 1 percent of the mercury used in the United States. By far the greatest amount is used for industrial switches of various kinds. A few auto manufacturers have phased out the use of mercury switches in cars—Volvo, which has been addressing these issues for years, also has a plan for phasing out PVC—but most have not. An industries-wide phaseout of mercury for this use is, from our perspective, crucial.

  The decision to create products that are free of obviously harmful substances forms the rudiments of what we call a “design filter”: a filter that is in the designer’s head instead of on the ends of pipes. At this stage, the filter is fairly crude—equivalent to the decision not to include any items that might make your guests sick, or that they are known to be allergic to, when planning the menu for your dinner party. But it is a start.

  Step 2. Follow informed personal preferences.

  In the early 1980s, when Bill was designing the first of the so-called green offices for the Environmental Defense Fund’s national headquarters, he sent questionnaires to manufacturers whose products he was considering using, asking them to explain exactly what the products contained. The questionnaires came back saying, in essence, “It’s proprietary. It’s legal. Go away.” In the absence of data from the manufacturers themselves, Bill and his colleagues had to make choices based on their limited amount of information. For instance, they chose to tack down carpeting rather than to glue it, to avoid subjecting people to the various adhesives’ unknown ingredients and effects. They would have preferred to use low-emission or no-emission adhesives that would allow the carpeting to be recycled, but those appeared not to exist. Likewise, they chose water-based paint. Their decision to use full-spectrum lighting meant importing bulbs from Germany, and while they preferred the quality of light (and knew it would make the workers feel good), they did not know much about the chemicals in the bulbs or the circumstances of their manufacture. For these and other design decisions, the team made choices based on the best information available to them, and on their aesthetic judgment. It would not do to select unattractive things just because they had more environmental authority—an ugly facility was not what they were hired to build.

  When Bill began dealing with these issues as an architect in the 1970s and 1980s, he believed his job was to find the right things to put together, and he thought those things were already somewhere in the world. The problem was simply to find what and where they were. But it didn’t take him long to discover that few truly eco-effective components for architecture and design existed, and he began to see that he could help to make them. By the time we met, Michael’s thinking had evolved in a similar direction, and the future course of our work together was clear.

  The truth is, we are standing in the middle of an enormous marketplace filled with ingredients that are largely undefined: we know little about what they are made of, and how. And based on what we do know, for the most part the news is not good; most of the products we have analyzed do not meet truly eco-effective design criteria. Yet decisions have to be made today, forcing upon the designer the difficult question of which materials are sound enough to use. People are coming for dinner in a few hours, and they expect to—need to—eat. Despite the astonishing paucity of healthy, nutritious ingredients, and the mystery surrounding, say, genetically modified crops (to carry the metaphor further), we cannot put off cooking until perfection has been achieved.

  You might decide, as a personal preference, to be a vegetarian (“free of” meat), or not to consume meat from animals that have been fed hormones (another “free of” strategy). But what about the ingredients you do use? Being a vegetarian does not tell you exactly how the produce you are using has been grown or handled. You might prefer organically grown spinach to conventionally grown spinach, but without knowing more about the processor’s packaging and transportation methods, you can’t be certain that it is safer or better for the environment unless you grow it yourself. But we must begin somewhere, and odds are that as an initial step, considering these issues and expressing your preferences in the choices you make will result in greater eco-effectiveness than had you not considered them at all.

  Many real-life decisions come down to comparing two things that are both less than ideal, as in the case of chlorine-free paper versus recycled paper. You may find yourself choosing between a petrochemical-based fabric and an “all natural” cotton that was produced with the help of large amounts of petrochemically generated nitrogen fertilizers and strip-mined radioactive phosphates, not to mention insecticides and herbicides. And beyond what you know lurk other troubling questions of social equity and broader ecological ramifications. When the choice is consistently between the frying pan and the fire, the chooser is apt to feel helpless and frustrated, which is why a more profound approach to redesign is critical. But in the meantime, there are ways to do the best with what we have, to make better choices.

  Prefer ecological intelligence. Be as sure as you can that a product or substance does not contain or support substances and practices that are blatantly harmful to human and environmental health. When working on a building, for example, our architects might say that they prefer to use sustainably harvested wood. Without doing extensive research into individual sources that claim to supply such wood, they might decide to use a wood that comes with the Forest Stewardship Council seal of approval. We have not seen the particular forest where they are harvesting, and we don’t know how deep their commitment to sustainability goes, but we have decided to go with the product based on what we know now, and the results will probably be better than had we not thought about the issue at all. And as Michael points out, a product that is, say, “free of PVC” or that in a general sense appears to have been made with care and consciousness points to a maker that has these issues as a mission.

  In our work with an automobile maker, we’ve identified existing materials that are known to
have some important positive qualities and are known not to have some common drawbacks: rubbers and new polymers and foam metals, “safer” metals such as magnesium, coatings and paints that won’t put dioxin into the air. In general, we prefer products that can be taken back to the manufacturer and disassembled for reuse in technical production or, at the very least, returned to the industrial metabolism at a lower level—that is, “downcycled.” We tend to opt for chemical products with fewer additives, especially stabilizers, antioxidants, antibacterial substances, and other “cleaning” solutions that are added to everything from cosmetics to paints to create the illusion of clean and healthy products. In truth, only a surgeon needs such protection; otherwise, these ingredients are only training microorganisms to become stronger while they exert unknown effects on ecological and human health. In general, because so few things seem to have been designed for indoor use, we try to choose ingredients that will minimize the risk of making people ill—that off-gas less, for example.

  Prefer respect. The issue of respect is at the heart of eco-effective design, and although it is a difficult quality to quantify, it is manifested on a number of different levels, some of which may be readily apparent to the designer in search of material: respect for those who make the product, for the communities near where it is made, for those who handle and transport it, and ultimately for the customer.

  This last is a complicated matter, because people’s reasons for making choices in the marketplace—even so-called environmental choices—are not rational, and can easily be manipulated. Michael knows this firsthand, from a study he performed for Wella Industries, an international hair-care and cosmetic-products manufacturer that was trying to determine how people might be encouraged—through marketing and packaging—to choose environmentally friendly packaging for body lotions. A small but significant number of consumers chose to buy the lotion in a highly unattractive “eco” package shelved next to the identical product in its regular package, but the number who chose the “eco” package skyrocketed when it was placed next to an over-the-top “luxury” package for the very same product. People like the idea of buying something that makes them feel special and smart, and they recoil from products that make them feel crass and unintelligent. These complex motivations give manufacturers power to use for good and for ill. We are wise to beware of our own motivations when choosing materials, and we also can look for materials whose “advertising” matches their insides, again as indicative of a broader commitment to the issues that concern us.

  Prefer delight, celebration, and fun. Another element we can attempt to assess—and perhaps the most readily apparent—is pleasure or delight. It’s very important for ecologically intelligent products to be at the forefront of human expression. They can express the best of design creativity, adding pleasure and delight to life. Certainly they can accomplish more than simply making the customer feel guilty or bad in some way while immediate decisions are being made.

  Step 3. Creating a “passive positive” list.

  This is the point at which design begins to become truly eco-effective. Going beyond existing, readily available information as to the contents of a given product, we conduct a detailed inventory of the entire palette of materials used in a given product, and the substances it may give off in the course of its manufacture and use. What, if any, are their problematic or potentially problematic characteristics? Are they toxic? Carcinogenic? How is the product used, and what is its end state? What are the effects and possible effects on the local and global communities?

  Once screened, substances are placed on the following lists in a kind of technical triage that assigns greater and less urgency to problematic substances:

  The X list. As mentioned earlier, X-list substances include the most problematic ones—those that are teratogenic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, or otherwise harmful in direct and obvious ways to human and ecological health. It also includes substances strongly suspected to be harmful in these ways, even if they have not absolutely been proved to be. Certainly it should include the materials placed on the list of suspected carcinogens and other problematic substances (asbestos, benzene, vinyl chloride, antimony trioxide, chromium, and so forth) assembled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and Germany’s Maximum Workplace Concentration (MAK) list. Substances placed on the X list are considered highest priorities for a complete phaseout and, if necessary and possible, replacement.

  The gray list. The gray list contains problematic substances that are not quite so urgently in need of phaseout. The list also includes problematic substances that are essential for manufacture, and for which we currently have no viable substitutes. Cadmium, for example, is highly toxic, but for the time being, it continues to be used in the production of photovoltaic solar collectors. If these are made and marketed as products of service, with the manufacturer retaining ownership of the cadmium molecules as a technical nutrient, we might even consider this an appropriate, safe use of the material—at least until we can rethink the design of solar collectors in a more profound way. On the other hand, cadmium in the context of household batteries—which may end up in a garbage dump or, worse, airborne by a “waste-to-energy” incinerator—is a more urgently problematic use.

  The P list. This is our “positive list,” sometimes referred to as our “preferred list.” It includes substances actively defined as healthy and safe for use. In general, we consider:

  acute oral or inhalative toxicity

  chronic toxicity

  whether the substance is a strong sensitizer

  whether the substance is a known or suspected carcinogen, mutagen, teratogen, or endocrine disruptor

  whether the substance is known or suspected to be bioaccumulative

  toxicity to water organisms (fish, daphnia, algae, bacteria) or soil organisms

  biodegradability

  potential for ozone-layer depletion

  whether all by-products meet the same criteria

  For the moment, passive redesign of the product stays within its current framework of production; we are simply analyzing our ingredients and making substitutions where possible, aiming to select as many ingredients in the product as possible from the P list. We are rethinking what the product is made of, not what it fundamentally is—or how it is marketed and used. If you were planning dinner, you might be planning to not only use organically raised, hormone-free beef, but—having found spinach at a local farmer’s market—to use the greens as well, and to eliminate the nuts you had planned to put in the cake because you’ve been alerted that one of your guests is allergic to them. But the menu would stay essentially the same.

  For example, a manufacturer of polyester fabric, having discovered that the blue dye it is using is mutagenic and carcinogenic, might choose another, safer blue dye. We improve the existing product in increments, changing what we can without fundamentally reconceiving the product. In looking at a car, we might help (as we have) a manufacturer switch to upholstery and carpeting that are antimony-free, but we are not yet rethinking the fundamental design of the car. We might substitute a yellow paint without chromium for a yellow with chromium. We might omit a number of problematic, suspect, or simply unknown substances if we can make the product without them. We look as widely and deeply as we can at what is. Sometimes questionable substances in a product are not actually coming from the ingredients in the product but from something in or around the machinery used to make it, such as a machine lubricant, for which a less problematic substitute may be readily found.

  Nevertheless, this step entails growing pains. Not yet having tackled a wholesale redesign of the product, the company has to match the quality of the old product while beginning to alter the ingredients list—the customer wants a blue just like the old blue. Just confronting the complexity of a given product can be daunting—imagine discovering (as we did) that a simple, everyday product used widely in manufacturing has 138 known or suspected hazardous ingredients. Yet this stage is the begin
ning of real change, and the inventory process can galvanize creativity. It may stimulate the development of a new product line that will avoid the problems associated with the old product. As such, it represents a paradigm shift and leads directly to . . .

  Step 4. Activate the positive list.

  Here’s where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and start figuring out how to be good. Now you set out with eco-effective principles, so that the product is designed from beginning to end to become food for either biological or technical metabolisms. In culinary terms, you’re no longer substituting ingredients—you’ve thrown the recipe out the window and are starting from scratch, with a basketful of tasty, nutritious ingredients that you’d love to cook with, and that give you all sorts of mouthwatering ideas.

  If we are working with an automobile manufacturer, at this point we have learned all that we can about the car as it is. We know what it has been made of, and how the materials were put together. Now we are choosing new materials for it with a thought to how they can enter biological and technical cycles safely and prosperously. We might be choosing materials for the brake pads and rubber for the tires that can abrade safely and become true products of consumption. We might be upholstering the seats in “edible” fabric. We might be using biodegradable paints that can be scraped off on substrates of steel, or polymers that don’t require tinting at all. We might be designing the car for disassembly, so that the steel, plastic, and other technical nutrients can once again be available to industry. We might be encoding information about all of the ingredients in the materials themselves, in a kind of “upcycling passport” that can be read by scanners and used productively by future generations. (This concept could be applied to many sectors of design and manufacturing. A new building could be given an upcycling passport that identifies all the substances used in its construction and indicates which are viable for future nutrient use and in which cycle.)