A Radical Proposal for Sustainable Manufacturing

In most of our history on the earth as human beings, the objects and substances we have created have not been significantly altered from their original forms.  Building homes from logs was simply a rearrangement of wood, and given time, the wood did what wood would always do - decay, and become food for insects, and return to the natural cycle of things.  With a few exceptions, such as pottery, metals, etc., all we created naturally returned to its original forms within a few generations, and the few things that did not were inert substances that behaved like rocks - simply stayed in their form, buried in the earth, having no effect on its surroundings.

However, in the last 100 or so years, we have started creating objects, substances, and life forms that have never before existed on the face of the earth, that have an impact on its surroundings, and that won't disappear, in some cases, for thousands of years.  We have fundamentally altered the chemical nature of our environment, with effects and consequences we are only beginning to realize.  We are rapidly creating change that nature was never designed to undo, and we are unconsciously re-engineering the composition of our planet with so far little thought of the results of those changes.

When we first started manufacturing substances alien to the earth, nature seemed so vast that it was hard to imagine that anything we could do would have a real impact.  We were used to living in a world where any mistakes were rapidly forgiven by nature, and things would return to normal in a relatively short time.  Even if we permanently destroyed some part of the earth, the planet seemed so vast that we could always move to another part that was not spoiled.  It has taken us some time to grow powerful enough to overwhelm the ability of nature to recover from our changes, and then again some time for us to realize that that has happened.  Today, we are trying to compensate and undo the effects of some of our "sins" against mother nature.

However, we still see this as a few mistakes we have made that need to be corrected, rather than a lifestyle change.  Reduce carbon emissions, stop putting mercury into our soil and water, stop cutting down the Amazon, and everything will right itself again.  Right?

Wrong.  We are at a stage of power and growth where pretty much anything we do as a species will impact the planet, and there will always be some consequences that will be unexpected, and some of those consequences will be critical to the survival of the planet.  It is not enough to fix the problems we have created; we need a new way of relating to the earth that prevents us from continuing to create new problems.

So, when it comes to the things we manufacture, here is the proposal:  Everything - every object, chemical, life form, substance - everything we produce out of the natural elements of the planet must be made with a plan on how to eventually return that object or substance back to its natural form.  Anything we do as a species, we do in large quantites, and if the effects cannot be reabsorbed back into the natural system, it will alter our environment, and that can always have unexpected consequences.  Every object and substance must have a sunset clause - how it is going to be returned to nature, if it is not going to naturally biodegrade back to a natural form.

And since some objects and substances are very expensive to return to natural forms, the cost of doing so must be assumed by those responsible for creating the objects and substances in the first place.  In other words, the cost of destruction must be built into the price of the cost of creation, which will get passed on to the consumer, who is the one making the manufacturing desirable.

So, you manufacture a new form of wooden kitchen spoons?  No problem, they get tossed in a landfill and in no time they are like a branch fallen from a tree, and nature does the transformation for us.  But you manufacture plastics?  Just how are you going to make sure your creation will return to nature?  The manufacturer could pay for the cost of all the plastic recycling efforts and a chemical process that returns plastics to a natural substance, like oil, plus the costs of storing that oil somewhere where it does not damage the environment.  Originally that oil was deep under the soil where it did no harm.  Someone has to put it somewhere, and make sure all the plastic trash of the world gets put somewhere, where it returns to its natural harmless conditions, or where it is treated in a way that does not impact the earth.  The manufacturer needs to be fully responsible for anything they produce, from birth to death, and pay the costs to be sure the ending of the lifecycle of its products has no impact on the earth.

The effects of this?  The costs of some manufactured objects would instantly skyrocket, because the costs of the cleanup of those substances are huge.  But we, the world, are having to pay for the costs of cleanup now, through taxes to governments who are bogged down in political wrangling and who have too many vested interests to effectively make change to ensure a stable world.  If the manufacturers are held responsible for the sunset of all of its products, their prices would made a radical shift in how we, the consumers, would choose what things to buy.  It would reward companies that make biodegradable products by being able to have lower prices which would attract more buyers.  And it would put the cost on the party creating the problem.  

No one would buy products that are unhealthy for the earth unless they are available and cheap.  And they are available and cheap because today, manufacturers do not have to pay for the deconstruction of the things they produce.  They can produce something for one dollar that takes 30 dollars to return to its natural state.  Who will pay the 30 dollars?  You and I, through taxes.  And our dislike of paying those taxes has no effect on the manufacturer's decision to continue to produce things alien to the earth, because they are not affected - they continue to follow the profit motive, and as long as it is profitable to produce some product, they will continue to do so no matter what the cost of undoing what they have created.

Yes, this is radical.  Yes, it would cause turmoil to our world if suddenly implemented.  Yes, no one can see today how many of our products could ever be returned to a natural state.  But in the long run, doesn't it make sense that anyone doing something that would eventually cause destruction to our planet, also be responsible for undoing their actions before it actually does harm?  Should not everyone, corporations included, be held responsible for the destruction of what is needed for the common good?  And the beauty of the free market is that when the cost is passed on to the one creating the problem, the market will rebalance itself very efficiently to the new rules.  No punishment is needed for what has been done - we simply need a new set of rules to live by and manufacture by.  Place the cost for preventing damage to our earth on those who are causing it.

There is no way of recycling a laptop.  All we can do is pass it on to others until it can't be fixed, then choose which landfill to put it in.  Think of what a huge task it would be to return a laptop's parts to their original substances. It was obviously designed without a single thought given to recycling.  Today, old computers wind up in third world countries, where they go to landfills to deteriorate and leech poisons into their land and water.  "Recycling" is not possible when it comes to things like laptops - all you can do is move them from one country to another, so that someone else has the problem.  Laptops contains a large number of poisonous chemicals, and no one has any plans on what to do with them.  

Imagine for a minute that the costs of decomposing a laptop is built into the price.  First, we would start to build laptops in a radically different way, with radically different substances, because prices on our current type of laptop would be astronomical.  Perhaps parts would be made to be taken out and reused rather than tossed, and other parts would be made to naturally disintegrate.  Recycling efforts would be paid for by the industry.  Ingenuity would reign, and manufacturer would put their best engineers to work reducing the new costs to stay competitive.  Maybe some parts will never be able to be recycled - then a fee could be charged for the space taken in a thousand year storage facility for unrecyclable items, or for shipping our trash to the sun for destruction.  When money is involved, people will pull out all stops to create new solutions.  Where governments are responsible for cleanup, there will be corruption, inefficiency, vested interests, wasted time, solutions that don't work, and the general failure we have come to expect of large bureaucratic governments.

We have a beautiful earth.  In some ways, we as a species have been caught by surprise by our ability to destroy our own home, and terrified to realize we may have already done so to a disastrous amount.  It is time we start to take responsibility for the impact we as a species now have, and start to make intelligent plans on how we can in the long run live on the earth in harmony with the natural cycle of nature.