Rethink Recycle Rebuild

Rethink Recycle Rebuild
Article by: Alan Bernstein AIA, ASLA, LEED AP
September 1, 2009



“A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff”
George Carlin, “A Place for your Stuff”, Braindroppings, 1977

During World War II we created an industrial and manufacturing machine. The machine after the war needed to continue to feed and support the growing population. These industries changed from wartime to peacetime. Air bombers became passenger planes, nitrogen bombs became fertilizer and tanks became tractors. Designers of the war machines became industrial designers.

In the 1950’s designers developed the idea of planned and perceived obsolescence. This would keep the industrial machine operating producing goods. The machine is still running, it has expanded to Japan, India, China and elsewhere. Every year there is a new faster and neater cell phone we have got to have!

Annie Leonard, in the “Story of Stuff” processes simply moves along these stages: “extraction to production to distribution to consumption to disposal. All together, it’s called the materials economy.” It is a linear process and we are running out of materials very quickly. “We live on a finite planet and you can not run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely”. Paul Hawkin, Armory Lovins and Hunter Lovins say “In the past three decades, one-third of the planet’s resources, its ‘natural wealth’, has been consumed.”

Mining for iron ore, drilling for oil and harvesting trees that destroy large tracks of land. Transporting materials all over the world leaves a trail of pollution and smoke. Processing the raw materials dumps waste products in rivers and dumpsites. Manufacturing creates all sorts of toxic chemical waste and products that are indefinitely in the web of life such as dioxin and DDT.

Labor paid at minimum wage receive no health insurance or any other benefits to support their family or later years in life when they are sick from the toxic work or manufacturing in poor conditions destroys eyesight and health.

Big box stores then sell the product for a very low amount like $5.00 for a portable radio or CD player at Radio Shack. Do you ever ask how can they make that product so cheaply? The cost is being deferred in planet health and resources. We look at these products as low cost one time consumption products. When they are done we throw them away and add more to the garbage dumps. Someday soon I think we will start mining the dumps.

“To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”

Theodore Roosevelt, Seventh Annual Message, December 3, 1907

In “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the way we make things”, by Architect William McDonough and colleague German chemist Michael Braungart, there is a call to transform industry to a more ecological design. Carpet manufacturing has a huge impact on our garbage dumps and toxic waste. Interface Carpet has rethought the life process of carpet tiles. At the end of the tile’s use they can be easily pulled apart rubber backing from fabric and made into new tiles. McDonough and Braungart call for a process to rethink this and make carpet so it can be recycled and made into a new carpet and given life again. Companies like Interface Carpet, Steel Case and Herman Miller are changing the way we think about manufacturing so less ends up in the trash and has less toxic materials.

The authors “insist on the rights of humanity and nature to co-exist in a healthy, supportive, diverse, and sustainable condition”. And that humans can live beneficially with the environment.


Alan Bernstein is a licensed Architect, licensed Landscape Architect, U.S. Green Building Accredited Professional (LEED, AP) and Certified Green Building Advisor. For questions or comments contact Alan Bernstein at (818-707-9215) or email at alan@abarchitects.com

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