We’ve known for a long time what the answer to Sustainability is
© Alexey Tolmachov, istockphoto.com
About this time of year, 27 years ago, I was prepping for my first ever interview for a job in Sustainability. I thought it was a long shot: a research associate on the Design for a Clean Environment project at the Engineering Design Centre at Newcastle University. I was an engineer (tick!), but my environmental experience was limited to a three month ecology expedition in Ecuador, four months leading practical conservation tasks and a bit of flirting with campaign groups.
I did some swotting. I had experience in the ISO9000 quality standard (even tho’ it bored me) and found there was a newly released environmental equivalent, ISO14001. And I stumbled on the concept of ‘clean technology’ which was then emerging blinking into the public realm – avoid pollution before it occurs, rather than trying to clean it up afterwards. Aha, I realised – this is what the job is all about, designing out problems before they occur.
Fortunately this was all the knowledge I needed to bluff my way through the interview – it helped that they were desperate for an engineer on the project as the other research assistant came from a science background. I got the job and spent the next two years on a learning curve which launched the rest of my career. I was in clover.
It sometimes astounds me that that basic principle – redesign systems to stop pollution at source – still seems the exception rather than the rule. End of pipe thinking is everywhere. The people who think carbon, capture and storage, or, heaven forfend, direct air capture, will save us are either fooling themselves or trying to fool us. Our wastewater system mixes organic (and useful) human sewage with a whole variety of inorganic industrial pollutants and God knows what from road run off – before trying to separate them out again. We bond materials together in disposable consumer products and then scratch our heads trying to work out how to separate them for recycling. It’s madness when you think about it.
Unsustainability is a design failure. It’s about time we understood we need to redesign the economy.