Cycles of Endless Resourcefulness

I am not an economist. I am a professional designer and practice design at multiple scales from regional to molecular. As such, I am in a continuous dialogue with the logics and details of economics by necessity and interest. My engagements require enthusiastic engagement with matters of economic value creation and metrics, productivity and performance, at every scale in our planetary sphere. I work primarily with businesses because commerce is typically the engine of change, and the innovations that drive the transformations we intend are those that thrive in the marketplace if they are to achieve meaningful velocity and scale. With a growing population, well-meaning people will want to operate human enterprise in ways that go beyond “sustainability” and also create new sources of value, generate dynamic economic revenue and growth while at the same time refreshing themselves without depletion and harm to the life support systems we call home. Ironically perhaps, for our societies and ecosystems to survive and thrive, businesses must grow. And we need and want them to grow, now more than ever, to generously meet the needs, wants and loves of all the world’s children, of all species, for all time. We can only hope to reach positive goals, and help fulfill the World Economic Forum’s mission of improving the state of the world. Humans influence growth at every scale, in developed, emerging, and developing nations alike. We can honor the laws of natural and human rights and collectively become a robust provider of economic wealth and a wide spectrum of ecological and social benefits as well. Thinking about the laws of nature, as an architect, I have had to integrate the laws of motion and gravitation, and their relation to economy, ecology, and equity for many years; this is not just a good idea…it’s the law. The law of gravity, of course, is an architect’s constant companion, but the art of designing, making and building, at its best, is an intense engagement with all of the earth’s natural processes, a creative interaction with sunlight, geography and climate, water cycles, nutrient flows, and the sublime diversity of living things. I recall being awed by humanity’s long and varied dialogue with nature when, in 1993, I stood in the pulpit of The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. I had been invited to deliver the sermon, A Centennial Sermon, Design, Ecology, Ethics and The Making of Things to honor the one-hundred year anniversary of the laying of the cathedral’s cornerstone. Moved by the cathedral’s magnificent representation of humankind’s highest aspirations, I spoke of ways in which design manifests our intentions, and how design modeled on the ecological processes that animate life can make economic growth a magnificently regenerative, life-giving force.

The word ecology comes from the Greek roots oikos and logos, or “household” and “logical discourse.” The fundamental logics of our earth household, which govern the movement of materials and energy through living communities, give us the principles with which to design good growth. Following the principles of ecology, we can reproduce natural processes of production, which operate on current solar income and are extraordinarily effective systems for creating and cycling nutrients, so economical that contemporary methods of manufacturing pale in comparison.

The language with which I describe good design and good growth has evolved over the years, but the laws of nature, and the principles derived from them, are perpetually productive and enduring. They underpin The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability (1992) and Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (2002). They inspired buildings designed to harvest and share more usable energy than they consume and companies profitably engaged in producing safe, healthful materials designed for continuous cycles of use by industry. They inspired factories powered by the energy of the sun that restore biodiversity and enhance community health, and a growing recognition of global interdependence, manifested in China’s embrace of the circular economy in 2003, and the recent emergence of a circular economy infrastructure in the European Union. Now, further, we see in the concept of ecological civilization the integration of social and ecological benefits with conventional economic values and metrics.

Against the grain of economic systems and industrial processes fueled by fossils and ever-expanding consumption, a scenario driven by the notion “that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world,” a belief Kenneth Boulding famously ascribed to “either a madman or an economist”, the circular economy has already proven to be a robust strategy for sustainable growth. Gaining international traction over the past several years through a series of initiatives and publications by the World Economic Forum, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and McKinsey & Company, the circular economy is a synthesis of economic thought and design practice, including Cradle to Cradle, inspired by living systems and built on carefully managed material flows. In a circular economy, technical materials, flowing in continuous cycles of use, recovery, and re-manufacture, feed the creative work of industry, while biological materials are safely returned to the earth after use, rebuilding soil and natural flows of nutrients. Together, these two distinct, cyclical flows decouple economic growth from resource constraints and environmental harm. Circular strategies, then, are regenerative and profitable by design; they create value by recognizing “waste” as a source of revenue, a recurrent asset supporting capital formation and long-term growth. In Cradle to Cradle terms, the circular economy doesn’t just eliminate waste or minimize harm; it eliminates the very concept of waste and establishes cycles of endless resourcefulness.

The economic benefits are substantial. A 2013 McKinsey study estimated that a transition to the circular economy in the European Union would provide $1 trillion in annual savings by 2025 and create 100,000 jobs within five years. A 2014 report by TruCost, commissioned by the Cradle to Cradle Product Innovation Institute to measure the impact of the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ Product Standard, recognized higher than average sales performance, positive growth, increased profits, and significant cost savings for water and energy. Prior to the report, more than 200 leading companies had profitably designed and manufactured thousands of products following the Cradle to Cradle standard, which evaluates products across five categories: material health, material reutilization, renewable energy and carbon management, water stewardship, and social fairness. Shaw Industries, for example, the world’s largest carpet manufacturer, received Cradle to Cradle Certified™ designation in 2007 for its EcoWorx Tile, and it is now the company’s fastest growing product. The water and energy savings for total production of EcoWorx in 2012 equated to a cost savings of more than $4 million. In addition to the savings generated by these efficiency measures, which we all know are just good business, Shaw’s approach, instead of simply shrinking the footprint of the things it did not want, also signaled its intention to grow the things it does want: revenue, market share, and the number of Cradle to Cradle products it brings to market.

Cradle to Cradle and other circular strategies create regenerative growth because they are built on principled innovation. They are values-based frameworks, purpose-oriented and attentive to social and ecological concerns, and they yield profitable, restorative products and services because they are modeled on the structures and cycles of living systems. They have nature’s principles in their DNA. Principled innovation expands commercial opportunities beyond conventional business. Much of the innovation in conventional business begins with metrics, short-term tactics, and strategic goals; it’s designed to perform in relation to ambitious benchmarks defined by existing measures of performance, such as reducing carbon emissions or increasing the production of existing products.

Principled innovation, on the other hand, begins with values. As a designer of products and buildings, when I set out to create something new, I ask myself “How I can upcycle the quality of my design and make the world a better place? How will this innovation will benefit all the children, of all species, for all time?” I ask, “How I can create cycles of endless resourcefulness, like nature, like a tree. How can I upcycle economic growth, social benefits and ecological health?”

When we first used the term upcycle, we were referring to the improvement of product quality from one cycle of use to the next. But as I observed how a company’s commitment to Cradle to Cradle standards and principled innovation generated productive synergies and a wide spectrum of economic, ecological, and social value, I began to see upcycling as a vital, life-affirming pursuit of quality at every scale. As an architect, deeply interested in form, I am inclined to see the upcycle and the regenerative cycles of the circular economy as ascending spirals rather than circles. I imagine spiral economies. Spirals represent growth in three dimensions. In nature, spirals upcycle, expanding up and out, the radius of curvature continually increasing in a process Aristotle called gnomonic growth, in which organic forms, the nautilus shell, a variety of leaves and seeds, grow by adding mass in the same shape, but of greater magnitude. Modern science articulates the growth process of organic spirals in mathematical formulas, which describe cradle to cradle repetitions of form from one cycle of creative expansion to the next. We love these forms. We love the circle for its clarity and closure. We love how a nautilus shell projects beauty, growth, life, and expansive form.

A quick search of economic terms, however, suggests a spiral is bad news. It represents collapse, a whirlpool in a tub sucking value and assets toward a dark and dangerous oblivion. That’s the nature of the old industrial economy, based on take, make, and throw away. But away has gone away. I’m reminded of that each time I look at the famous image of the Earth sent to us from the Apollo mission, which prompted Buckminster Fuller to call our planet Spaceship Earth. Earth got smaller in that telescopic observation.

Four decades later I have had the privilege of working with NASA to design a space station on Earth. Now our mission is to create a counterbalancing force, a positive force that does not simply close the drain and stop the whirlpool, but recharges growth, refilling the tub, by summoning the forces of nature into form and seeking continuous improvement and beneficial interactions with the world: Buildings like trees and cities like forests; factories with rooftop gardens that feed their employees and solar arrays that produce more energy than they consume; green-roofed offices, apartments, and research centers that provide jobs, create habitat, restore landscapes, and create beautiful, deeply satisfying places to live, work, and learn.

A spiral economy, therefore, expands the concerns of circularity. Upcycling economic growth supports future generations and species other than our own; it enhances life and is replenished by the forces of nature. As Francis Crick pointed out in Of Molecules and Men, life likes to grow, take advantage of the free energy of the sun, and operate in an open metabolism of chemicals for the benefit of organisms and their reproduction. Life seeks more of itself, wastes nothing, and engages fruitfully with its surroundings. The flows and metabolisms of industry can do the same, creating recurrent wealth from solar income, oxygen-rich air, fertile soil, clean water, and photosynthetic growth. This process of building capital put to use in cycles as perpetual resources allows us to move from currency as the flux of trade into a form of what I enjoy calling “recurrency.” By design, we can seed, support, and widely share these nutrient and energy flows that animate Earth’s natural cycles of regeneration.

The concepts of the circular economy are being engaged globally. China’s five-year plan is titled The Circular Economy. The Dutch have created the Circle Economy. The World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation have made significant investments in scaling up the circular economy, establishing a cooperative infrastructure that includes thought leaders, influential companies, universities, graduate students, political actors, and entrepreneurs and issued a call to action to scale up circular strategies worldwide.

The World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on the Circular Economy will, I hope, perform like a force of nature, driving circular economy growth into a spiral upward expansion. In my talk at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine more than 20 years ago, I reached back to the Greek philosophers to ground design, ecology, and economy in fundamental laws and logical discourse. I sought to look at the world through the lens of natural systems and identify values and principles that would define a sturdy framework for good design. That remains the animating force of my work, and as we engage in the discourse of the Meta-Council on the Circular Economy, we are endeavoring to call forth, celebrate, nurture, and grow a wellspring of endless resourcefulness, of clean materials, energy, water of course, but perhaps the first order of the human enterprise is the positive potential and endless resourcefulness of principled human creativity and generosity.