Who is responsible for the earth?

Recently I attended a talk at the Haas Business School on “designing for sustainability”. The speakers were from Patagonia, IDEO, and Gap, and each had unique perspectives on how to best design sustainable products. They all agreed on two things, however.

The first was that perfect sustainability was a myth. Rick Ridgeway said that “At Patagonia, we don’t believe sustainability is even possible.” He cited the example of agriculture, where despite being close to nature and millenia of efforts, we’ve only been 95% sustainable in our best efforts. As our population grows, it will become even more difficult. Even just feeding this many people is not sustainable by the earth, according to the speakers–let alone providing everyone with SUVs and Tickle Me Elmos.

The second point of agreement was that the ultimate responsibility and choice for the earth was in the hands of consumers. No matter the efforts of producers, they said, the final choice in stores will be by regular people who may not have the same concerns. They are the ones choosing between a “sustainable” t-shirt for $15 and a non-sustainable one for $10. Education–or as I call it, “guilt”–of consumers then becomes the best way to truly effect change.

I don’t agree with this point. Certainly a higher level of awareness can change individual choices, but in a world of so many choices–something I *don’t* expect to change–it is impossible for any person to fully consider every product decision, and naive to think they will make choices for the greater good even against their financial or personal needs.

I put the burden of sustainability back on the producers, then. For people to make the right choices, they need to have better options. We should ensure that only sustainable products are offered for sale, or at least that they are the most competitively priced and marketed, so that the default choice is a sustainable one. In web language, sustainability today is an “opt-in” choice, and it needs to become “opt-out”.

One way to ensure sustainable production is through regulation. James Gustave Speth said, “[Government is the way we inject values into our economy](http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R804021000)”. We could push for more laws that regulate how products are made, consumed, and disposed. Ridgeway mentioned that a major reason Patagonia started its [Common Threads](http://www.patagonia.com/usa/patagonia.go?assetid=1956) take-back program was the expectation that producers would be required by law to do this in the near future. But regulations will only affect companies in the countries they apply to, and in an increasingly global economy this leaves the door wide open for less environmentally-motivated companies and countries to continue dangerous practices. I wouldn’t hold your breath for a world-wide agreement on environmental stewardship either…

We may yet find an unlikely savior in capitalism. As we consume and dispose of raw natural resources, their prices will continue to rise–say hello to [peak oil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil), with peak water just around the corner. The panelists were optimistic that recycled polyester had just recently become a profitable product–albeit at [one cent per 500 grams](http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19426035.900)–and was poised to be very profitable as oil prices rise. Patagonia’s supplier built an enormous $100M plant–far bigger then Patagonia themselves required–to prepare for this opportunity. Similar effects can already be seen in transportation, packaging, and waste disposal.

These and other indicators show that designing from a sustainable perspective can make products cheaper to produce and use. The work and writing of William McDonough are focused on this side of sustainability, and it’s attractive to me as well.

The Pixar film [Wall-E](http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/walle/) is about a robot left behind on Earth to clean up after humans have destroyed it and left. While we may never be perfectly sustainable, by designing and producing in a better way–focused on the goal of true sustainability–we might delay the point at which we must abandon Earth to the clean-up bots.

[My sketch notes from the session](http://ryskamp.org/brain/images/design-for-sustainability-sketch-notes.pdf)