DP2.- Cradle to cradle: Waste = Food
I want to start my second post with the ad campaign ran by Shell: “Don’t throw anything away, there is no away”. As you can see there are smokestacks pumping out flowers instead of gases.
It would be great just have positive externalities from the industries and the rest of the companies…
Q: Does it sound idealistic? Utopic?
A: It’s not!
It’s a project that can become true…
Despite the ad was a greenwashing campaign, the phrase echoes in my head like a mantra. What do we think “away” means? This planet is the only house we all have, and Mother Nature, as a mother, teaches us how to act.
Q: When have we seen waste in nature? …
A: There is no waste in nature.
Imagine the CO2 exhaled by humans and animals, it is useful for plants to growth, then animals can consume these plants as food, and then they will produce organic waste that will turn in to food for flies. The upshot is that the soil nutrients always go in cycles in which the waste of some beings becomes food for others.
Everything was part of this perfect cycle until the industry came and we created substances that cannot be returned to the ground harmlessly, but as a negative externality that causes damage to the environment, animals and people.
Regarding that it is easy to divide every product material into two categories:
1.- Biological nutrients: are the products or materials that with the proper design can be returned into natural cycles, It is to be food for soil microorganisms or other animals.
2.- Technical nutrients: are the products or materials that with the proper design can be returned into the technical cycle, It is to be raw materials for industry again and again.
When the population started to grow, we also started to take more land resources than we were able to replace starting a conflict over land, resources and food. Therefore, we started to develop intensive systems such as synthetic fertilizers that increased agricultural production but that also eroded the land in a very aggressive way. At the same time, we “forced” other parts of the world to import food and other products nonstop.
Nowadays disposable products are literally filling our lives. When these products are throwing away, they do not just occupy space, but contain valuable nutrients for both industry and nature that we are wasting, leaving them to die. It is the cradle to grave system we are living in, cause nowadays products as people have graves.
I don’t know when was the first day in which unpacking new products, things we would use for the first time made us feel powerful, because that’s true, having things makes us feel powerful, more things do you have, more powerful do you feel!
How powerful we are with so many things!
Then whenever we want to end those products life, we will throw them away! But one moment… where if we agreed there is no away?!
As we just have this planet, our waste have to live here with us, and I am sure we don’t want to make our home a dump… or someone wants to?
If the answer is no, we just have one option. Imitate nature and eliminate the waste concept. All products can supply both biological and technical metabolism with the proper design, so we can rich a nerver-ending cycle!
Let’s do it! 
2 comentarios /
16 Dec 2011
por
Aitana Leret Garcia
IMSD /
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