The Human Factor as Part of the Whole, within Systems Thinking

The integral importance of the human factor for SD is emphasized by the very first principle of the Rio Declaration, which set out the overall global framework of international cooperation towards SD at the Earth Summit in 1992.

Principle 1

Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature

(http://www.unep.org/Documents.multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=78&ArticleID=1163), accessed 15.11.10.

Sustainable Product Design (SPD) evolved from earlier definitions such as Green Design (single-issue focus) and Ecodesign (2-issue focus: environment and economy, supported mainly by life cycle management (LCM)). The present definition is now

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aligned with the three components of Sustainable Development. These are concern for the environment, economy and social factors, or otherwise expressed as the 3Ps of ‘people, profit and planet’ (Elkington, 1998). A model for design and ‘well-being’, illustrated below (Figure 4), shows how individual well-being is integral to linking the three components of sustainability.

Figure 4: A model for design and ‘well-being’, (Fuad-Luke, 2007, p. 24), adapted from (Fuad-Luke, 2005, 24-25 October)

“Ecologyis the science that addresses the relationship between living things and their environment” as originally defined by Haeckel, becoming a formal science by the end of the 19th century (Belovsky et al., 2004). Due to environmental awareness that grew from beginning comments (Carson, 1962), the environmental movement strengthened with every disaster caused by industry. Therefore the need for restoration and the reintegration of humans with their environment became evident. “The most important roles for ecologists in this time of transition are to quantify connections between the biosphere and society and to help define sustainable future paths as natural energy flows again assume a greater importance. We define ecology broadly as the study of the functioning of the biosphere, and ecologists as those who seek to understand this functioning” (Day Jr et al., 2009, pp. 321, my italics). Roy Clapham first used the term ‘ecosystem’ in 1930, to describe the environment including all known biological and physical attributes.

23 Chiapponi described the environment as a system which included mankind (Chiapponi, 1998) and subdivided into anthropic: (technosphere/sociosphere) or non-anthropic: (biophere/geosphere). He declared that design could play an active role in addressing environmental problems, yet warned of reducing environmental design simply to recycling issues and promoted interdisciplinarity to provide complexity of thought and different expertise. Therefore humans must be understood as part of the system; all environmental problems are those that involve humans, and that previous detrimental actions can be reversed through human design. This makes emphasis on the social element of SD/SPD a powerful tool for reintegration of humans with their environment, and the regeneration of healthy ecosystems.

The outright denial of damage persisted until concerns were publicized from early environmentalists, notably Rachel Carson (Carson, 1962), a leading voice of a group that encompassed growing numbers of left-wing activists and scientists against industrial and government practices, of environmental pollution through the use of toxic chemicals and radio-active testing, gathering strength from the 1950s onwards. Her attacks were mainly against the chemical industry and the manufacture of pesticides for agricultural, residential and also industrial use: the waste chemicals being directly fed into streams and rivers once discarded. In ‘Silent Spring’ she depicted a future scenario of no birdsong, because the birds had all been poisoned by eating insects laden with toxic chemicals.

Besides this, Carson was also against the industrial mores that had helped to further remove and alienate humankind from nature and empathy with other living species. Modern industrial manufacturing systems are driven by specialization and economic concerns, so that a wider perspective is lost or not valued. Yet this wide perspective of systems thinking, of how humans relate to the environment and other life-forms as well as the economy, is precisely what is necessary (Carson, 1962, p. 29), and indeed, underpins the whole concept of SD.

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Carson likens the carcinogenic effects of chemicals as akin to radiation. The chemicals in question are largely “DDT, lindane, benzene hexachloride, the nitrophenols, the common moth crystal paradichlorobenzene, chlordane, and, of course, the solvents in which they are carried” (Carson, 1962, p. 201). She accurately depicted the bio- accumulating effect of toxic chemicals and/or other toxic substances when stored and accrued in all life-forms, as they are passed on and enlarged in the food chain. The disastrous effects of toxic chemicals can impact on animals and humans alike, interfering with the endocrine system, causing cancer and/or mutations. What is little known is that products can also contain thousands of synthetic chemicals, which are legal yet remain largely untested (Foster & Clark, 2008, p. 6).

This is of great concern to industrial designers and engineers, as designed artefacts will be in direct or indirect contact with the end-user not only in their use, but also become part of the landscape through landfill. This can then have enormously detrimental effects on the environment, the food chain, and humans. Yet the links between toxic chemicals, products and their negative consequences remain largely invisible, and also unaccountable.

According to Foster & Clark, 2008, Carson’s concerns were supported by members of the scientific community, including U.S. geneticist H.J. Muller, a Nobel Prize winner in 1946 in physiology/medicine (he discovered that genetic mutations in organisms could result from radiation), and “the most prestigious scientific defender of Carson’s

Silent Spring” (Foster & Clark, 2008, p. 5). The authors report of Muller:

the real importance, he suggested, of Silent Spring lay in the profound understanding that it conveyed of the interconnections within nature and between nature and society: in “the enlightenment it brings the public regarding the high complexity and interrelatedness of the web of life in which we have our being” (Foster & Clark, 2008; Muller, 1962, p. 5).

Foster and Clark, 2008, see that “this larger ecological critique that challenged the whole nature of the modern production system that represented her most enduring contribution” (Foster & Clark, 2008, p. 15). The worst chemicals such as DDT have

25 now been banned, but the fight to change industrial and consumer behaviour has only just begun. The challenge for industrial designers and engineers is therefore to change

user behaviour: with products that promote SD, are simultaneously benign in their composition and use, and also have meaning and are a delight to use.