Lighten Up

A policy of full producer responsibility for product and packaging disposal or re-use will also almost certainly promote dematerialization through accelerated product redesign. Indeed, much of what needs to be done can be accomplished through product redesign. Consider the difference between a 1960s stereo set and today's iPod. The 1960s stereo is bulky, as are the thousands of vinyl albums that required numerous trips to the music store. The iPod is lighter and more energy efficient by far, and the music is usually accessed without travel. This is the very emblem of dematerialization-through-design. There is now a rapidly advancing science to all this, variously called sustainability analysis, ecological modernization, industrial ecology, societal metabolism or lifecycle assessment. These concepts and methods focus on the "weight of nations" (the sheer mass used to generate goods and services) and the embedded energy and embedded environmental costs in every product, industrial process, policy decision and consumer choice. Leading research and advocacy organizations include the Wuppertal Institute in Germany, Redefining Progress in San Francisco and the Journal of Industrial Ecology. Moreover, our individual choices could be advanced through collective action and public policy. Many municipalities (including, for example, Toronto, Ontario and Portland, Oregon) have taken climate change initiatives that make it much easier for individuals to reduce their ecological footprints. While George W. Bush continues to claim that Kyoto is a threat to the US economy, greenhouse emissions for the county that includes Portland have already been reduced to below 1990 levels by municipal efforts. Portland has built bicycle paths as well as an enormously popular streetcar and light rail system. It has offered discount transit to municipal employees and encouraged businesses to take similar steps. And the municipality has saved $500,000 on electricity by changing all streetlights to newer technologies. All of this should be seen as waste reduction (and indeed will help to reduce the actual waste stream somewhere).3