Chapters 5-8

Cradle-to-cradle

"We need to move those filters from the ends of our pipes and smokestacks and put them into our brains, to redesign our products and our processes intelligently. is a biomimetic approach to the design of products and systems that models human industry on nature's processes viewing materials as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms

Life Cycle Assessment

A method used to evaluate the environmental impact of a product through its life cycle encompassing extraction and processing of the raw materials, manufacturing, distribution, use, recycling, and final disposal. Such things will illuminate the environmental impact of a product from its birth as a raw material to its end-of-life disposal or recycling A good one will generate high lighting specific products, proceses, chemicals and designs that merit a much closer look

QUEST

A companywide waste control program

Power Purchasing Agreement

A contract that allows you to buy green power without having to buy solar panels.

Natural step

Also known as system conditions Helps us to reduce Economic dependence on virgin raw materials and fossil fuels Economic dependence on the producttion of persistent, unnatural, man-made substances Economic dependence on the wasteful use of natural resources

Waste

Any Measurable cost that goes into our product that doesn't add value for our customers

SARA 313

Damaging Chemicals that triggered mandatory reporting to the federal environmental protection agency The objective? To make sure that every Interface facility, no matter where it's located, no matter how lax the local environmental laws might be, complies with the strictest rules on air and water pollution in effect at any of our facilities anywhere in the world; that is, the strictest rules anywhere apply everywhere at Interface. We just do not believe a brown company can make a green product. Reducing the use of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons in interface facilities

Not really because vendors still were not completely forthcoming about the chemicals they used in their products. Some of them worried about revealing proprietary formulas. Others (maybe most) just didn't want to open up their own Pandora's box too far. It took us a while, but ultimately we abandoned the effort to make them do so.

Did reducing their suppliers help them to reach their sustainable goals?

Solar PPA

Turns you into a power-producing solar utility

The boxes they used were going to be used over and over again as long as they can be boxes again.

What did Anderson mean by "a box is a box...."?

A brown company cannot make a green product

What did the Fonterra example illustrate?

Quality Utilizing Employees' Suggestions and Teamwork

What does QUEST stand for?

Superfund Amendment and Reauthorization Act

What does SARA stand for?

True

T/F: All fossil fuel will be counted as waste to be eliminated

RECS

They are tradable certificates that represent a subsidy for a certain amount of renewable electricity (usually one megawatt hour) They are not grid power They represent the environmental attribute of renewable energy that is produced and sold into the grid somewhere else provide people with a way to legally own the social and environmental benefits of renewable energy, separate from the flow of electrons

They realized that the greenhouse gases they discharged from their smokestacks and wastewater pipes far outweighed the solid waste we hauled off to the landfill. They've eliminated a third of their smokestacks that were made obsolete and closed down by smart changes in our production processes.

Was Interface able to address the pollutants released through smokestacks?

Benefits: Help for longer term solutions Limitations: Unsustainable Temporary bridges

What are the benefits and the limitations of an "end-of-the-pipe solution?

Works to reduce transportation impacts as well as upstream energy usage

What is "dematerialization through conscious design"? What does he use as an example for this idea?

Larange's own municipal landfill was filling up: Space was going to run out in just a few years, which would mean that the city would have to either find a new site or throw in the towel and hire someone to come in and haul their trash away and pay more for the privilege Methane gas was seeping out of town's existing landfill into air : The smell was also an environmental assault on the people that lived nearby Landfill gas is one of the largest sources of methane emissions into the atmosphere, and it is a very potent greenhouse gas Global warming potential is twenty-one times greater than that of carbon dioxide

What were The problems of the Lagrange Landfill?

The city committed $3 million in capital costs to capture and pipe the methane to our factory

What were The solutions of the Lagrange Landfill?

How were overruns reduced by 54%

When billy replaced the beams entirely of smaller, portable "creels" that could be set up to match perfectly the amount of yarn required for each run.

Bill McDonough

Who wrote Cradle to cradle?

To eliminate toxic emissions, they has to work upstream with their suppliers to keep bad actors from entering their factories in the first place.

Why did Interface reduce its number of suppliers?

Effluents

liquid waste or sewage discharged into a river or the sea.

Precautionary Principle

when the risk of not acting overshadows the cost of acting, it is time to act. When we slow down in our cars before taking a blind curve. It applies to business practices, too; and governments are not exempt either.