Green by design

Automotive Design & Production, Jan, 2003 by Kermit Whitfield

William McDonough envisions a seemingly contradictory world where manufactured products are plentiful and the environment is clean and healthy. His method to get there is equally shocking: eco-effective, profitable companies free from regulation.

William McDonough is nothing if not ambitious. An architect by trade and a visionary by nature, McDonough wants to fundamentally change the way product design and manufacturing are viewed. Though he is known in the automotive world chiefly as the moving force behind the greening of Ford's Rouge complex, even that massive project represents only a tiny component of McDonough's self-imposed design brief. With his partner, German chemist Michael Braungart, he has developed a sophisticated model for re-making industry in a way that enhances profitability while eliminating waste and regulations.

Food In, Food Out. McDonough posits that the world has two distinct metabolisms: biological and technical. The biological metabolism consists of the complex cycles of nature in which biodegradable materials are continuously recycled: one organism's waste is another's food. The technical metabolism is the industrial system of product design and manufacturing where resources are extracted, transformed into products and eventually discarded. McDonough sees the current technical metabolism as a cradle-to-grave system that is both environmentally hazardous and inherently wasteful. Although there are recycling programs, what he proposes is a fundamental redesign of manufactured goods from the molecular structure up, in such a way that valuable materials are designed to go back into high-quality products without being degraded.

McDonough thinks that both biodegradable materials, "biological nutrients" in McDonough-speak, and metals and synthetic polymers ("technical nutrients") can be used by industry in an environmentally friendly way as long as the two streams aren't mixed. "We're not just going back to nature; we also see huge value in synthetic products. The world will need highly intelligent synthetic polymers," he says as he prepares the punch line, "because if everybody wore cotton and Birkenstocks the planet would dry up and we would run out of cork."

Closing the Loop. McDonough outlines a closed-loop system in which manufacturers maintain ownership of products and simply lease them to customers for specified periods of time. What sets this "eco-leasing" concept apart from current leasing programs is that once the manufacturer has gotten the used product back it is seamlessly used as raw materials for new models. McDonough says this approach would not only keep untold

tons of valuable materials from landfills, but would greatly reduce virgin material costs and strengthen the relationship between producers and consumers.

Of course, it would mean embracing design-for-disassembly methods on a grand scale, but McDonough doesn't see this as an insurmountable obstacle. In fact, he thinks it is an opportunity for better product design. "The mental model has to be expanded beyond the idea of disassembly being tedious and destructive," he explains. "Once you design for disassembly you find that the assembly becomes easier, because when you realize you are going to take it apart the whole protocol shifts. You often end up with larger assemblies of one material that don't have to be disassembled to be reused." To facilitate the process, McDonough says parts must be tagged with the appropriate information. To make this work cost-effectively companies will have to understand and alter the basic chemistry of their products to eliminate contaminants and hazardous materials. But this can--and has--been done. McDonough cites a BASF-developed formulation of Nylon now being used to make commercial carpeting that is a true technical nutrient. T hat is, it can be used to make new carpet of the same quality when its useful life is over.

One of the problems raised by engineers to the technical nutrient approach is that from the point of view of energy, it can be very demanding when it comes to changing a polymer to a reusable monomer. But McDonough points out that there are materials like polyolefins that can be readily melted and reused at a low energy cost. Still, he acknowledges that conversion to a technical nutrient system will not be simple. "Its not just enough to have the one molecule as your base material. You have to develop the auxiliaries--the dyes, the finishes, the adhesives. It immediately gets complicated because you do want to go down to that level." To help companies do that McDonough and Braungart formed the eponymous consulting and training firm McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC).

MBDC is already making a mark in the automotive industry, It is working with Visteon to develop a comprehensive sustainable materials and systems protocol that can be shared with its vast customer base. And it has consulted with Ford on the development of its sustainable vehicle concept, "Model U" (See "It's All About 'U'," pp. 28-30.). McDonough says of Model U, "It is what we call an 'essay of clues.' It will contain our strategy in its incipient form. It is not perfected yet but it's got the clues. In other words, Model U contains technical and biological nutrients. We have not been able to go into every molecule yet but we will. Model U sends that signal."