If you own, run, or work for a business (and that’s just about all of us), and you’re even halfway aware (and hopefully that’s at least most of us), you know that sustainability is the game you’ve got to get into. Operating in a way that doesn’t cost the Earth or, better yet, actually enhances its systems, is no longer an option. It’s a necessity.
But it’s not an easy goal to achieve. Many if not most companies get stuck in the how-the-heck-do-we-get-from-here-to-there phase of things. What’s needed is a how-to guide, and a brand new report from Businesses for Social Responsibility and IDEO (our Wee Generation baby bag partners) offers an excellent one.
Building on 20+ years of experience, Aligned for Sustainable Design, An A-B-C-D Approach to Making Better Products shows us the processes that lead to sustainable design and to products whose environmental impact is lessened if not eliminated. The report illuminates the complexities of the art for casual observers and is must-reading for anyone with any design or management responsibilities of any kind. This is what we need to do and this is how we do it.
I particularly like the idea that sustainable design represents a new kind of organization intelligence in which “designing for sustainability means organizing so that people can recognize how their choices are shaping product sustainability and can identify resources to improve them.” This is a central idea — training ourselves and each other not to be myopic in our eco-think but to extend it into every phase of our lives, both at work and at home, until acting for the planet as we act for ourselves and each other becomes the second nature we need it to be. When we get to that point, we’ll have won the race. And we’ll look back and marvel at the days when reports like this represented such groundbreaking thought.
