Sustainable Defined: Part I
August 14, 2013What would design be like if we saw ourselves as part of nature instead of separate from it?
This is the question I hope to address in my next series of posts. First, let’s be clear about the definition(s) I am using when I talk about sustainability. Two definitions that have influenced my thinking are addressed in this post, and three more that have become more influential in the world of sustainability that I will take up in the next one.
1. What is sustainability? The clearest and most concise articulation I know of the goal and work of sustainability comes from Professor David Orr in his book Ecological Literacy. It is a definition that we can use to consider any action we undertake as humans:
“[sustainable design] is the careful meshing of human purposes with the larger patterns and flows of the natural world…”
The idea that sustainability is an aspiration rather than a defined state is consistent with what we know, and how little we know, really, about how nature works and how we humans are really supposed to fit into it—especially seven billion of us, along with our stuff.
2. What drives sustainability? At a conference in Maastricht in 2000, my friend and mentor Hal Levin said (and I paraphrase) “Sustainability is really about a change in consciousness.” Having been grappling with a host of technical sustainability strategies and policies at the time, I realized at that moment that the aspiration of a sustainable world, like the aspiration of peace, is what allows any material changes to happen. You can’t have Orr’s definition unless you are open to it. This is not to say that one can’t legislate or design better environmental performance of the things we make—only that sustainability comes from the values and consciousness that we bring to it.
Next up, I will take on the Brundtland and People-Planet-Profit definitions, as well as the essence of McDonough Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle…
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