A Tale of Two Worlds

Are we in the best of times? The worst of times? This can be debated, however this is one of the most pivotal. We are the first humans to traverse a planetary epoch, because we have caused major shifts in earth’s systems. We are the first to live in a time when the total mass of the human-made world exceeds the mass of the living world. We have given birth to a larger-than-life technological system. Welcome to the Anthropocene Epoch.

Can our natural world coexist with the technological one?

The living world, or biosphere, and the human-made world, or technosphere, have evolved quite differently. The world of living things is a complex arrangement of diverse and complementary components using the elementals of nature, like solar energy, water, minerals and atmospheric carbon. Its system, perfected over billions of years, leaves nothing to waste. In the Regenerative Biosphere, waste equals food.

The technosphere has overtaken nature in only a few hundred years by pulling materials from the geosphere, atmosphere and biosphere in a less sophisticated system that trades its speed of production for untold wastes, inefficiencies and toxic outputs. The remaining havoc and destruction makes us wonder whether we humans are at war with nature.

From One War to the Next

I was born in Japan in 1951. The war was over. The destruction had run across the entire Pacific theater. It had been phenomenal, terrifying and horrific. My parents were trained by the US Army to go into Japan as one of 200 young American couples to begin the process of healing relationships and reconstructing the economy. As a child I watched the recovery begin to take place.

The wartime infrastructure converted its purpose into the production of consumer products, leveraging two valuable engines to generate a churn of materials and money. The first was “planned obsolescence,” where products were intended to last just long enough to give a sense of value before needing a new one. The constant replacement would create economic activity and jobs. The second was to encourage people to be part of modern trends and fashion.

Think about the washing machine. After the war, people were moving into new homes and, of course, wanted the washing machine. Appliances of all types were designed as part of modern life and they would be available in matching colors. In 1962, the Color Marketing Program was launched to support the matching of colors with fashion trends. Now suddenly you could have any color appliance, as long as it wasn't black. Well, as long as it was in fashion, anyway –1957 Pink, everyone?

During this time, Life Magazine glorified “Throwaway Living”, claiming that “disposable items cut down household chores.” This resulted in single-use products and packaging that was, in most cases, bigger than the products they encased.

Refashioning the Future

An exaggerated version of this is clothing. Fashion portends a potentially desirable future. At the same time it can produce stress –especially for young people on social media, continuously striving to be up to date. Fashion is the currency of the contemporary. And as the fashion cycles speed up, so does the demand and consumption of energy and materials.

These trends have accelerated our pace of consumption. We have perfected a timeful mindlessness. We make, sell, and use products with a voracious appetite. These ephemeral goods are destined to become waste, like single-use packages or fast fashion garments. Their detritus accumulates into an immense loss from natural sources, depriving their use from our children. This destruction is happening so powerfully and quickly it is as if we are forgetting we need a future.

I think it's time to realize we have more than a climate crisis on our hands. We have a waste crisis, an ocean health crisis, a microplastics crisis, and more. This is not news; these problems are increasingly well-documented. Ultimately, this results from a failure of imagination.

Applying Lessons from the Biosphere to the Technosphere

Nature doesn’t have a design problem. People do. Nature provides us with sources, design models, and mentorship. We can learn from this and co-create a positive future with nature. We can start by learning from the Regenerative Biosphere and eliminating the concept of waste by applying our ingenuity with purpose.

Think about information. Our Regenerative Biosphere utilizes DNA to instruct every tiny living particle how to assemble and disassemble nutrients. Likewise, we can utilize tiny emerging RFID technologies to safely provide the human-made world with product information to efficiently plan their next use. Purposeful innovation could help us build a world of optimized materials, designed with efficient recovery systems and healthy material recirculation. We call this the Circular Technosphere.

Our traditional, linear economy has had a clear purpose: grow at all costs. We hear discussion about de-growth as an approach to stabilizing the impacts of industry. But let’s not oversimplify with indiscriminate growth or de-growth.

Timelessly Mindful

Looking at the beauty of a cherry blossom reminds us that growth can be timeless and fleeting at once. The ultimate expression of constructing the world in this new paradigm would be making things timelessly mindful of the future. We can design for re-circulation, re-use, re-pair, re-cycling and re-turn to the biosphere. We can do this with a new design elegance that transcends the linear economy. We can start by understanding how economics are driven by our needs, wants, and loves.

Think of cars. We need mobility services, the car that comes when you call. We want the experience of driving with safety, comfort and performance. But in the end, what we love are the memories that transform a car into an heirloom. We can build successful businesses that provide mobility services with inventive transportation systems. We can provide thrilling driving experiences with circular fleets of vehicles. And if we really want customers to own something, let’s make sure it will last and be passed on.

Leading businesses see commerce as an engine of change. They are re-imagining their role as not simply the seller of stuff, but as product stewards, developing deep customer relationships that can span generations. Creating a resilient future while building lasting value is not so much a responsibility as it is an Extended Producer Opportunity. But we have to all work together to realize it.

Humankind is the essential element that can join the Regenerative Biosphere with the Circular Technosphere in a complementary relationship of a world without waste.

Learning from my parents’ work in Japan, I can now see our task is to wage peace by design, recharacterize our relationships, and heal the worlds we live in. Through our daily choices, our children can watch this recovery begin to take place. We can then realize our role as the first intergenerational stewards of the Anthropocene Epoch.