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Sustainability Resources in the NYSID Library: Home

What is Sustainability?

From the Dictionary of EcoDesign by Ken Yeang and Lillian Woo: 

"Sustainability: The basic principles and concepts are balancing a growing economy, protection for the environment, and social responsibility.  Common use of the term in the context of modern environmentalism began with the publication of the World Commission on Environment and Development report Our Common Future, in 1987. Also known as the Brundtland Report, this document characterized sustainable development as 'development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.'  This concept of sustainability encompasses ideas and values that encourage public and private organizations to become better stewards of the environment and promote positive economic growth and social objectives." (p.234, emphasis mine)

Cradle-to-Cradle Thinking

                   

Architect William McDonough, working with chemist Michael Braungart, wrote the definitive book "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things" in 2002.  They suggested that design and science should be working together to offer society safe materials, sources of water and energy, and collaborating to completely eliminate waste.

Their design framework for a circular economy involves three basic principles:

Everything is a resource for something else. "In nature, the 'waste' of one system becomes food for another". Human systems and objects should be "designed to be disassembled and safely returned to the soil as biological nutrients, or re-utilized as high quality materials for new products as technical nutrients without contamination."

Use clean and renewable energy. Living organisms use the natural energy of the sun--similarly, human constructs should be capitalizing on clean sources of energy, for the good of society and the earth.

Celebrate diversity. Design should embrace local diversity, resources and indigenous, adaptable solutions. 

McDonough and Braungart argue in "Cradle to Cradle" that design should be a "positive, regenerative force—one that creates footprints to delight in, not lament",  which can "reveal opportunities to improve quality, increase value and spur innovation."

 

Their follow up book, "The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability, Designing for Abundance", was published in 2013.

 

 

Circular Economy

As opposed to the traditional, linear economy that can be described as "take-make-waste", a circular economy is sustainable.  It is designed to be regenerative, to benefit corporations, consumers and the environment, and to disconnect economic growth from the depletion of finite resources. 

Life Cycle Analysis and Environmental Product Declarations

                                                        E-books on life cycle assessment from EBSCO

Life-cycle assessment (LCA): Can also be called life-cycle analysis, or cradle-to-grave-analysis. From Dictionary of Ecodesign: "The assessment of the environmental impact of a given product or service throughout its life-span.  The goal of LCA is to compare the environmental performance of products and services and to select the one that does the least amount of damage". (p.146)

Environmental Product Declaration (EPD):  From Environdec.com: "An Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is an independently verified and registered document that communicates transparent and comparable information about the life-cycle environmental impact of products... the foundation of any EPD is a lifecycle assessment (LCA). This LCA allows you to evaluate your product’s environmental performance over its entire life-cycle. It typically takes into consideration...material extraction through to manufactured product, its usage stage and end of life."