Frugal Value: Desigining Business for a Crowded Planet (part 2)

Modified from Carina Millstone, originally published by Resilience.org  

The story continues…

So we’re not so much running out of resources, but out of Planet.

A shame, since it’s where we all live… But we haven’t been destroying our home just for the hell of it: using resources to grow the economy lifts the poor out of poverty, and is behind the material prosperity that enables us to lead comfortable lives in richer countries. So we’re left with a bit of a conundrum: economic growth lifts the poor out of poverty and sustains material prosperity, yet relies on the use of declining resources and results in unacceptably dangerous interference with natural systems.  This means one of two things:

1. We can ignore our leaders’ dire warnings, do everything we can to keep the global poor in poverty, continue consuming an outsized share of resources in richer countries, and enjoy our oil-fuelled party while we still can; or

2. We figure out how to deliver decent material prosperity for all using fewer resources in rich countries, and more in poorer countries.  

If Option One is more attractive than Option Two, stop reading now. 

So how can businesses which use resources to create value, respond to the momentous challenges of the Anthropocene?

To begin with, the production and consumption of physical objects must change to use fewer resources and create less pollution. We need a new type of product, and businesses engaged in product design and manufacturing have a key role to play.  Product design affects the whole of a product’s lifecycle, from manufacturing to use and disposal. Consequently, environmental impacts, be they detrimental or beneficial, are also overwhelmingly committed at the design stage. So if designers make “environmental benefit” their goal, we will see a shift in production and consumption toward more sustainable patterns.

What does “environmentally beneficial design” mean? First of all, products must be efficient in their resource use – that is to say, they must use minimal amounts of resources and generate minimal amounts of pollution during their manufacture, use and disposal. Many businesses are already on board with the notion of product efficiency, not least because it can result in cost savings. Current innovative initiatives include ecological design programs such as biomimicry, materials substitution and dematerialization, which is about using the strict minimum of resources for a product to perform effectively.

These interventions are all important, but if we’re trying to consume fewer resources, they are ultimately doomed to failure. Aiming at resource efficiency confronts us with a paradox named for the man who first identified it, Stanley Jevons. In his 1865 book, The Coal Question, Jevons wrote that while one might expect that more efficient use of a resource, in this instance, coal, would decrease its consumption, this was “wholly a confusion of ideas”; “the very contrary”, Jevons wrote, “is the truth”. While technological progress may support greater resource efficiency, this reduces its cost, encouraging further consumption. The paradoxical effect Jevons observed is pervasive and regularly negates efficiency gains. For example energy saving light bulbs may make us less cautious in switching off lights. Perversely, resource efficiency makes us extract, produce and consume more stuff.

To make up for the shortcomings of efficiency, designers must also consider the sufficiency of products: that is to say, they ought to design products that contribute to reducing the number of objects overall. Together, efficiency and sufficiency are about better and fewer products.

While efficiency can quite readily be designed into products, sufficiency is another kettle of fish. Designers can’t just make products that reduce the number of objects overall. However, they can integrate features that support reducing the number of objects, say by making them sharable so they don’t sit idle (cars in sharing schemes) or durable (reducing the need for replacement). Designers need to meet the challenge of ‘timeless design’.

More on Frugal Value in coming weeks.