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A new environmental agenda for Rio+20 and the Middle East

Desso is a European manufacturer of carpets, carpet tiles and synthetic sports surfaces and sells in over 100 countries.  Andrew Sibley, Desso’s regional sales and marketing director, looks at the new environmental agenda ahead of the Rio+20 conference.

 

In June this year in Rio de Janeiro, governments across the world will be called upon to sign up to ten new sustainable development goals, to build greener economies and to set out a strategy for sustainable development for the 21st century.

 

Twenty years ago, leaders from 167 countries first came together in the same Brazilian city for an environmental summit that has shaped thinking on climate change and sustainable development ever since.  The 1992 summit coined the phrase “eco-efficiency” in the pursuit of sustainable development.

 

This, so it was hoped, would transform industry from a system that takes, makes, and wastes into one that integrates economic, environmental and ethical concerns.  Essentially, eco-efficiency means doing more with less.  

 

The first principle of the Rio Declaration stated: “human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development.  They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.”

 

Twenty years on, the main theme for Rio+20 is "a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication."  That theme indicates how the world economy has changed since the first Rio summit.

 

In 1992, the consensus was that it was up to governments to ensure that economic development did not harm the environment.  Now, the new consensus is that national governments can only do so much.  The new environmentalism of the 21st century must embrace all stakeholders, including the industries that underpin economic prosperity.

 

That sea-change also reflects another reality.  In 1992, the developed countries were experiencing economic growth while the developing world needed jobs.  Today, that paradigm has been reversed: the developed countries need jobs and much of the developing world is demonstrating solid economic performance.

 

A Middle East context

 

While creating jobs, especially “green” jobs, is a priority for Rio+20, so too is a transformational approach to how we grow our economies and how we measure that growth.  Judging economic performance on the basis of production and consumption, as is the case now, merely encourages over-consumption and puts little value on the natural environment.  In the Middle East, in Egypt and elsewhere, there have been suggestions to create robust “green” GDP indices – offering more meaningful data measuring production, consumption and the natural environment.

 

Another driving factor towards a new kind of economic model is the rising cost of resources – everything from oil to food, from energy to other basic raw materials.  The new economies of the 21st century must therefore look beyond eco-efficiency to adopt new thinking on how we make the very best possible use of all our natural resources.  Doing more with less, the old mantra, is no longer the best-possible way forward.

 

The new agenda was reflected most recently in the Middle East by the United Arab Emirates which announced earlier this year a national green initiative to transform the country's economy.  Launching it, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, said that it seeks to make the UAE “a global hub and a successful model of the new green economy, so as to enhance the country's competitiveness and sustainability of its development and preserve its environment for future generations.”

 

Sheikh Mohammed said that there had to be linkage between the economy and the environment, and that improvements in one do not have to be made at the expense of the other.  The UAE Green Economy Initiative will focus on energy, green investments, cities, climate change, biodiversity and green technology – the same agenda as Rio+20. 

 

The UAE’s announcement follows publication of a report published at the end of last year, Green Economy in a Changing Arab World, by the Arab Forum of Environment and Development (AFED).  The AFED Arab Green Economy Initiative seeks a “transitioning from virtual economy based on real estate and financial speculation and depletion of resources, to the real economy based on sustainable growth combined with productive investment which creates new job opportunities,” according to Najib Saab, Secretary general of AFED.

 

It is an agenda of sustainability that Desso understands, because we have taken inspiration from Cradle to Cradle® design, a philosophy introduced in 2002 by the German chemist Michael Braungart and American architect William McDonough, and which models human industry on the natural world, in which materials are nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms.  It’s a philosophy that uses nature as a template for how we can redesign everything that we do – including manufacturing industry – to be more eco-effective.

 

Cradle to Cradle®

 

The 1992 eco-efficient approach meant assessing manufacturing and distribution processes and then finding ways to minimise impacts on the environment.  It has been

an enormous step forward in galvanising companies to think and behave in new ways and has brought significant environmental advances – often from companies thinking laterally, and working collaboratively.  For example, in the flooring sector, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic beverage bottles are now being recycled in their millions to make polyester carpet fibers. 

 

But for us, and a growing number of manufacturing companies, it’s been about adopting the new theory of eco-effectiveness, which looks at manufacturing industry as regenerative rather than depletive, and designing goods that celebrate interdependence with other living systems.  From an industrial design perspective it means making products that work within a circular rather than a linear economy.

 

In the living environment, materials are constantly being transformed without losing their capacity as nutrients.  As in nature, so can we do the same, using innovative supply chain managements to use materials from one industry to support others, eliminating the concept of waste because all waste becomes tomorrow’s raw materials or nutrients. 

 

 

Braungart and McDonough state that when designers employ the intelligence of natural systems – for example, the effectiveness of nutrient recycling, or the abundance of the sun’s energy – they can create products, industrial systems, buildings, even regional plans that allow nature and commerce to fruitfully co-exist.

 

In 2008, we entered into partnership with the Hamburg-based Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA), the brainchild of Cradle to Cradle® co-founder Michael Braungart and intend that all our products will be designed and produced according to Cradle to Cradle® design principles by 2020.

 

Nature and human nature

 

It’s an approach that works commercially as well as environmentally.  Our earnings (normalised EBIT of the original carpet business) have risen, and our Cradle to Cradle® journey is now the subject of a case study by the London Business School, produced by strategy professor Ioannis Ioannou (1).

 

Professor Ioannou said:  “Under Stef Kranendijk’s leadership [Desso’s CEO], Desso is building the foundations of a profitable, innovative and sustainable business model while having a fundamentally positive footprint on our planet.  There is no doubt that this will be the biggest challenge for the world’s leading corporations in the years ahead and Desso is surely taking critical steps in the right direction.”

 

Reflecting how commercial and environmental interests can coincide, we were appointed as a supplier to the Masdar Institute of Technology near Abu Dhabi, the first phase of a “green” city development that by 2025 is expected will have 40,000 residents – a world-class project to champion eco-friendly strategies for urban areas.

 

In 2010, Desso received a Cradle to Cradle® Silver certificate for an entire carpet tile product (denoting that 97% of all the material in the product was made up of positively-defined chemical components).  (2) The polyolefin based layer of the Desso EcoBase® backing is fully recyclable in our own production process.

 

In line with our Cradle to Cradle® commitment, we have introduced a Take Back™ programme and have developed a special separation process called Refinity™ where we collect used carpet from our clients and competitors and ensure that it is properly reprocessed.  We offer an international collection service on a project basis, which includes all carpet, irrespective of brand and type – with the exception of carpet containing PVC, which is not considered suitable for reuse according to Cradle to Cradle® principles.

 

Today, over 60% of Desso’s carpet tile range contains Econyl® yarn, a yarn made up from 100% recycled content, including post-consumer yarn waste from Desso’s Refinity™ plant. (3)

 

Collected carpet will be processed by a waste management company and used as secondary fuel within the cement industry or re-used for other recycling initiatives.

 

Within the scope of the Take Back™ programme, logistic and recycling processes will continue to be further optimised, to provide the ideal solution for customers while contributing to Desso’s Cradle to Cradle® ambitions.

 

Ellen MacArthur Foundation

 

Desso’s contribution to the sustainability debate has just been recognized in a major new study launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which claims that businesses in the EU could save up to $630 billion by moving to the circular economy – cost savings that could be applied anywhere in the world.

 

The report, Towards the Circular Economy: Economic and business rationale for an accelerated transition (4) was launched in January by Dame Ellen MacArthur, the round-the-world sailor and founder of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which produced the report along with founding partners BT, Cisco, B&Q, National Grid and Renault.  McKinsey & Company worked on the case examples and analytics.

 

Writing in the foreword, Janez Potočnik, the European Commissioner for the Environment said that the report, “invites readers to imagine an economy in which today’s goods are tomorrow’s resources, forming a virtuous circle that fosters prosperity in a world of finite resources.”  While the EU was pushing for a shift to a more restorative economic model, he added, it would be up to businesses to drive the change – a message that will loom large in Brazil in June.

 

The report concludes that the modern challenges of scarce resources coupled with the increase in consumer demand meant that the time was ripe for a change from the linear ‘take, make and dispose’ economy to the circular one.

 

From a manufacturing perspective, Cradle to Cradle® doesn’t mean making products more durable or designed to last longer.  It doesn’t mean asking consumers to use their mobile phones or TV sets for longer, because consumption is bad.  Cradle to Cradle® makes planned obsolescence good; it makes consumption good.  It merely asks us, the consumer, to buy new products from companies committed to the most sustainable closed loop manufacturing methodologies.

 

There are obvious benefits for all of us.  First, it makes good business sense because, without waste, companies save money from having to source valuable new resources and, second, with nutrients being constantly recycled, it diminishes the need to extract any more new materials. 

 

That really does change the design of the world and as world leaders prepare once more to travel to Brazil, offers a valuable blueprint for manufacturing industries, in the Middle East as everywhere.

 

(1)  Desso Taking on the Sustainability Challenge – CASES A&B.  Prof Ioannou & Amandine Ody-Brasier, London Business School 2011.  Available online at: http://www.ecch.cranfield.ac.uk

 

(2)  Positively defined = all ingredients have been assessed as either Green (optimal) or Yellow (tolerable) according to the Cradle to Cradle® assessment criteria.

 

(3) 60% relates to the sales volume of products with Econyl yarn in the commercial carpet tile collection.  The total % of recycled content varies per product and per colour.  The exact % can be found at www.desso.com

 

(4) The report is available online at: http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/

 

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