When you think of the myriad of college curricula related to interior design programs, what comes to mind—computer-aided space planning; furniture, finish, and equipment selection; or, perhaps, understanding the psychology of color? Mount Mary College in Milwaukee boasts one of the nearly 100 US-accredited programs in interior design, as well as a progressive Department Director, Pamm Steffen, whose mission is to arm her students with these and other valuable skills. Steffen has a passion for taking learning outside what is recognized as traditional in the industry and challenging the imagination of her students to reach well beyond their limits. In order to prepare this group of gifted scholars for the real world, and encourage them to continually “push the envelope,” the college annually hosts an American Society of Interior Design (ASID) Career Day. The most recent event was jam-packed with internationally-recognized trail blazers whose messages centered on finding a path to the future that would open each participant’s eyes—student, educator, and industry professional alike—to new choices and possibilities, as well as to the impact of their contributions on their profession and society as a whole.
We are like that, too,” Steffan noted. “Our society thinks that we can beat environmental deterioration in the same way as Einstein’s home builders believed they could beat time. Despite the fact that we can not move away from time, we do, however, have a choice in how we live,” insisted Steffan.
Reports Anderson, “We operate factories that process raw materials into finished products: carpets, textiles, chemicals, and architectural products. To produce this year’s sales of $802 million, we extracted 1.2 billion pounds of material from the earth’s natural capital.”
When he requested the related calculations which would attach an environmental cost to sales figures, the answer that came back was staggering. Of that 1.2 billion pounds of material, this is how the cost of doing business broke down:
What’s worse is that, although the fossil fuel is gone forever, in its burning wake is carbon dioxide escaping into the atmosphere which contributes to global warming and melting polar ice caps. Now think of the thousands, perhaps millions, of companies like Interface who are contributing to the depletion of earth’s resources and you can see why Anderson perceives this as such a heavy burden to bear. Our ecosystem can be viewed as a paper thin shell—8,000 miles in diameter but only 10 miles thick—surrounding the earth. Each one of us must be a steward of this fragile environment.
In the eyes of an industrial nation, Anderson would be considered a captain of industry, a modern-day hero whose business prowess now provides over 5,000 jobs that contribute to the betterment of our society. So why is he shouting from the rooftops that he’s a self-convicted earth rapist? Because Anderson, and visionaries like him, has seen the proverbial light. Recognizing that there is a finite limit to the resources that we have at our disposal, this plundering of the earth can not go on indefinitely.
We are leaving a legacy of debt—both financial and ecological—which future generations will have to bear if we don’t start taking on some responsibility now. According to Anderson, “Some have called it inter-generational tyranny. The market in that system of the first industrial revolution allows companies like mine to shift costs to others; to externalize those costs—even to future generations.”
Anderson is sounding the rallying cry to industry leaders to recognize that the only way that we can beat environmental deterioration is to make choices in, and take responsibilities for, how we conduct our businesses. And, indeed, others in the industry are following the same path. John Picard, President and Founder of E2 Environmental Enterprises of Los Angeles, is a leading voice and catalyst for environmental change in the design of residential and commercial buildings. As a symposium speaker, he discussed how his career in construction management evolved into environmental consultation for such clients as Compac Computers, Dreamworks, Motorola, Sony, Southern California Gas Company Energy Resource Center, and The Gap. Not surprisingly, these are a few of the cutting edge companies who are considering how their businesses impact the environment. Picard’s own home is a nationally-acclaimed model for resource efficient building design.
Business leaders like Anderson have created a lot of economic growth through the first industrial revolution—but at what cost to the earth? Common sense tells us neither the environmental damage nor economic growth can continue unchecked. “We must begin,” warns Anderson, “to take the first steps to sustainability—to dismantle the destructive, voracious, consuming technologies of the first industrial revolution and start to replace them with gentler technologies of the second industrial revolution. We must reinvent our whole civilization.
Sound attainable? At Interface, Anderson is leading the charge to first become sustainable and then head toward becoming restorative. “It is a mountain to climb higher than Everest,” admits Anderson. Interface, however, is already exploring technologies that emulate nature. Anderson is convinced that this is where he’ll find the model. “A computer is mundane while a tree is technology,” he declared. “We have to learn to operate off current resources such as solar energy (which is) abundant every day—not off of stored natural capital.”
Anderson’s vision includes technologies of the future which will enable Interface to:
Emulating the cyclical, circular pattern in nature means there is no waste. When the ecosystem is in balance, one organism’s waste becomes another organism’s food. In Anderson’s industrial process world, recycled petrochemicals become technical food to be reincarnated. “During the second industrial revolution, we will never take another drop of oil from the earth,” projects Anderson.
So is this all just pie-in-the-sky, or are quantifiable improvements really being made? According to Anderson, “At Interface, Inc., we have reduced total waste by 19% which has saved $17 million in hard money that we reinvest in this revolution. We’re redesigning our products for greater resource efficiency.” In fact, they have already developed carpets with lighter face weights and greater durability.
At Interface, all employees are encouraged to perform the day-to-day environmentally sensitive acts which, collectively, are just as important as what Anderson refers to as the five big technologies of the second industrial revolution:
According to Anderson, “Sustainability redefined as taking nothing from the earth and doing no harm to the ecosystem is hugely ambitious.” His goal, however, is to move beyond sustainability to restorative. “Once we achieve sustainability,” notes Anderson, “we’ll help others toward the same, thus, on balance, putting back more than we take.”
Lending to the global focus of the symposium, David Gastrau, of Furer-Gastrau Architektur Switzerland and Gastrau-Furer USA, discussed cultural, human, and environmental issues concerning the built environment. In Europe, sustainable development projects, which may include seemingly simple items such as codes for daylighting and windows that actually open, are the norm rather than the exception.
A little closer to home, Brian Kliesmet, President of Landscape Architects, Inc., discussed growth strategies for a sustainable Milwaukee and the 30th Street Corridor Master Plan. In the blighted 1,200-acre area, where only 30% of the original industries exist, creative economic development funding teamed with new green spaces, tourist attractions, and adaptive reuse of buildings for residential facilities, will once again make this brown field a vibrant and appealing place to live and conduct business.
What Anderson had to say about industry’s pillaging of the earth then started to make perfect sense. “We mine lead, copper, cadmium, arsenic, and asbestos—bringing it back to the surface in many forms and into our living rooms.” Unlike other species who have had thousands of years to evolve in response to changes in nature, we cannot adapt fast enough to tolerate our man-made pollution—so children and older people get cancer. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how pesticides can harm people as well as kill insects. “PCBs collect in fish and in human mothers’ milk,” warned Anderson. “We know that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. All matter, sooner or later, will find its way into the natural ecosystem and disperse.”
In order to better comprehend Robert’s four principles of sustainability, Anderson synthesized them as:
1. Substances from the Earth’s Crust Must Not Systematically Increase in the Ecosphere. This means that fossil fuels, metals and other minerals must not be extracted at a faster pace than they can be redeposited and reintegrated into the earth’s crust, turned back into nature’s building blocks.
2. Substances Produced by Society Must Not Systematically Increase in the Ecosphere. Manmade materials must not be produced at a faster pace than they can be broken down and integrated into the cycles of nature or deposited in the earth’s crust and turned back into nature’s building blocks.
3. The Productivity and Diversity of Nature Must Not Be Systematically Diminished. We cannot cut the forest; it produces oxygen to keep us alive. Diversity in nature must be protected.
4. There Must Be Fair and Efficient Use of Resources to Meet Basic Human Needs. Meeting basic needs for all must take precedent over luxuries for a few, otherwise we will reap a harvest of social instability. How can we lift the lowest economically without dragging down the highest? The answer is in resource efficiency. The National Academy of Engineers estimates that the efficient use of resources to meet human needs in the US is 2˝%. We must show a better model than that to the developing world.
In the challenge of our lives, who will take the lead? Visionaries like Anderson are already doing their part. What choices are you and your firm making in the way you conduct business which will make a difference? Even those of you who contribute to marketing and strategic planning can add the issue of contributions made to achieving a sustainable environment. Opportunities abound for those firms with foresight to lead the charge.