Resume: Martin Fluri presented the principles of the Cradle 2 Cradle design process and explained how it is design and redesign process that never stops. You can all the time improve a product in terms of sustainability and efficiency and preservation. Two areas of present focus is an effort to build according to the C2C principles, and an analysis of how to produce large container ships according to the C2C principles.
Dare to Dream! Martin Fluri is Director of Cradle to Cradle, C2C Denmark. C2C started out as an environmental design philosophy – and it is continuing developing as such – and today it is also becoming an attractive business model for foresighted companies. “We have now gone into a new geological era called Antropocene – the area of the humans and luckily we dare to dream again” Martin Fluri said and continued “Today the future is designed via methods that don’t work anymore. You can say that we operate according to a “Cradle to Grave” design paradigm.
Examples:
- We are running out of a number of materials
- We will have peak copper much sooner that peak oil.
- Indoor air is full of chemicals
- +40% of our children have allergies
- Clothes and furniture are filled with chemicals
Is the purpose of being here to do less bad? Eco-efficiency equals rearranging the deck chairs on Titanic … Instead we have to start using C2C design principles. That means to learn from the way nature works. Nature doesn’t create waste. The principles are: 1. Waste equals food, 2. Use current solar income, and 3. Active support to diversity.
Let’s design things that can be thrown into the compost. Concrete products:
- Redesigning fabric so it is 100% recyclable
- Design an office chair so it can be taken apart in many parts and each part can be reused in another product
- Cars, buildings, etc.
We are creating a hand book for building according to C2C in cooperation with Realdania. Maersk are building some of the largest ships worldwide and Maersk is creating the ship according to the C2C method. It is a constant process. See film on YouTube. (google C2C + Maersk). It is a one minute impressive film.
C2C use a traffic light method where we measure each part according to 18 parameters and identify if it is green, yellow or red and then find alternative solutions where it is yellow or red. We then put a product in first, second or third generation based on how sustainable the final product is.”
My comment: I think ALL public money should be spent according to these principles from January 1st 2013.
Download pdf of the presentation.