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The
Next Industrial Revolution is Found in
Cradle to Cradle Building and Office Products
By Fred Klammt
If you ever did a life cycle (LC) analysis then you are familiar
with the Cradle to Grave concept: from start-up to disposal. Cradle
to Cradle on the other hand completes this LC loop: it requires
a product or service to continue having a beneficial use at the
end of its life cycle instead of being discarded. All elements of
our biosphere operate on a Cradle to Cradle basis: a tree topples
in a storm to rot on the ground providing valuable nutrients for
various fungi and animals; animals provide valuable nutrients at
the end of their lives to allow another generation to prosper. Cradle
to Cradle is part of a larger concept known as Biomimicry. Many
people call Cradle to Cradle ‘The Next Industrial Revolution’.
There are many concepts within Cradle to Cradle. Some label it
as being eco-effective vs. eco-efficient: doing the right things
vs. doing things right. Intelligent Materials Pooling (IMP) is at
the heart of this redesign process. Without going into the details,
IMP requires either a biological or technical nutrient cycle. The
tedious chemical analyses done within each IMP step involves the
trial and error of scientific processes that could end up as a dead
end. However, each dead end provides useful information for the
next iteration. Two companies are leading these efforts: EPEA (www.epea.com)
and MBDC (www.mbdc.com) founded
by Dr. Michael Braungart and William McDonough to put Cradle to
Cradle principles into business practice.
So how does Cradle to Cradle apply to the building industry? Luckily,
R+D scientists have been and continue to work on redesigning many
products and services that incorporate these concepts.
Here is a sampling of three Cradle to Cradle building products:
Carpet: Always producing the next generation
Interface and Shaw Companies have revolutionized the carpet tile
industry over the last decade by re-engineering their manufacturing
processes. By redesigning a non-toxic chemical content of the carpet
tiles (without PVC, etc.) and leveraging this with a new production
process that actually ends up with cleaner output than input water;
not only have their products been redesigned, their installation
and usage have been converted to lifetime+ service contracts. This
simply means that a re-carpet project uses the existing carpet tiles
as the raw materials that produce the next generation of new carpet
tiles.
For example, Shaw Fibers uses a type of nylon—Nylon 6—that
can be broken down and formed into nylon that performs as well as
the original, over and over again. These carpet tiles are equal
to or better than PVC in all performance categories: 40 percent
lighter weight than PVC, generating lower transportation costs and
greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s an illustration of this closed
loop cycle:
Check out their Web sites (www.interfaceinc.com;
www.ecoworx.com)
for further details.
Sod roofs make a comeback
Emulating nature by creating green fields on the rooftops of expansive
flat commercial and industrial buildings provides many benefits.
While only the top layer is truly Cradle to Cradle (the roofing
membrane is not); it provides a duplicate of the site’s original
topography, albeit a bit higher! A sod roof layer sheds rainwater
effectively, provides a lifelong natural ultraviolet degradation
barrier, reduces energy costs and thermal shocks, and provides numerous
habitats and environmental benefits.
A good example of a commercial building sod roof is Ford’s
Rogue River facility. This 10-acre site has the world’s largest
sod roof: 454,000 sq.ft.
For more information on Ford’s Rogue Plant click on this Web
site: http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/projects/ford-dtp/default.asp?projID=ford-dtp
Furniture designed for disassembly
Based on the technical nutrient cycle within IMP, office chairs
have been redesigned to be totally disassembled and reused for easy
repair or as source material for next year’s model. The problem
with many furniture components are the metal composites that cannot
be reused without degradation. For example, steel is highly reusable
and recyclable. However, much of the recycled steel (e.g. crushed
cars) contains impurities which degrade its integrity and require
additional resources to “re-strengthen”.
Several leading office chair manufacturers have at least one Cradle
to Cradle chair. Steelcase, Inc. also has adopted many of the Cradle
to Cradle concepts within its organization. As the parent company
of Designtex; co-developers of the first commercial cradle-to-cradle
upholstery textile, Steelcase, Inc. has worked with Cradle to Cradle
concepts for over a decade. More recently, Steelcase has begun to
apply C2C principles in its core business area: the design and manufacture
of office furnishings. One of its Cradle to Cradle products is the
‘Think™’ chair. This chair can be disassembled
in five minutes using ordinary hand tools. It easily can be repaired
and reconditioned and 99 percent of its materials are separated
for recycling. Herman Miller’s Mirra Chair is illustrated
here:
Instead of using cradle to grave life cycle and building concepts,
there are plenty of Cradle to Cradle products and services on the
market and in development. Consider learning how to adopt your own
internal Cradle to Cradle building operations processes and change
your procurement process to specify these products.
Fred Klammt is principal of Aptek Associates, specializing
in adapting appropriate and leading-edge processes and technologies
for the built environment. Over the past 30 years, Klammt has worked
on corporate real estate and facility management projects for over
40 Fortune 100 companies including Cisco, Northrop Grumman, HP,
Southern Cal Edison, USC, Paramount Studios. He was one of California’s
first Certified Energy Auditors in 1978, and is a Baldrige-Certified
Quality Auditor for the State of California and Senate Productivity
Awards. Klammt can be reached via his Web site under development
that will be dedicated to wind and solar initiatives at www.winsol.org
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