Ulm School of Design - a View behind the Foreground Book

The central issue in this book is the notion that we can manufacture products and infrastructure that are really, actually good for the environment instead of simply being "less bad".

Here's an example of what on Earth that could possibly mean. In making paper, you have two options. (1) You can cut down a tree to make clean, high-quality paper, but on a large scale this involves massive deforestation and the annihilation of ecosystems. (2) You can recycle old paper. However, paper fibers get shorter and shorter the more they're recycled, requiring more and more environmentally-questionable chemicals (bleaches, stabilizers, etc.) to produce a product of less quality than the original. The authors call this "downcycling", which means just what it sounds like it means. Finally, the chemicals involved in the creation of either kind of paper remain in the environment long after the paper fibers themselves decompose.

So option (1) above is clearly bad, and option (2) is what they call "less bad". As an actually "good" alternative, they made their book out of some sort of inert plastic polymer that can be indefinitely recycled. The pages are as papery as plastic can be, and overall the book feels the way a book should. Maybe a little heavier than your typical 180-page book, but sturdier and waterproof. (I got hoisin sauce all over mine and it wiped right off.) Apparently, if you send this book back to the manufacturer it can be recycled into other books with close to zero loss in overall quality.

(I want to stress that this argument hasn't changed my overall view of recycling. In the absence of "good" options it still makes sense to pick the option which is least bad. I'll continue to downcycle my junk until it's possible to, uh, upcycle, even if that merely postpones the apocalypse instead of preventing it.)

This is a microcosm of what this book is actually about. Right now, we as a society are locked into a false choice between the standard capitalist notion of "progress" and the standard environmentalist notion of "sustainability". This book presents a third option that goes a long way towards reconciling the two. Rather than choose between progress and sustainability, why not design/engineer sustainability into products, buildings, and infrasrtucture?

The authors argue that this extra design effort can be economical for businesses when you consider the overall cost of manufacturing. They give the example of a manufacturing facility they designed in which the effluent water from the factory was actually cleaner than the influent. It took some extra money to design, but now the business doesn't have to pay regulatory fees or worry about how to dispose of its liquid wastes. Overall, that initial design effort saved them money.

I guess this review is getting a little long. Here is the punchline. Environmentalism and industry don't necessarily have to be arch-enemies. (I guess Captain Planet brainwashed me a little...) Intelligent systems design can create an industrial environment which is actually beneficial to local ecology. This book gets four stars rather than five because I wish it was longer. I wanted more details about specific things that have been/can be done in the service of this idea. Instead, the book is short and talks in broad strokes for a more skeptical audience than me.

I would love to loan this book to you.