To begin with, I have to appreciate this week’s reading – cradle to cradle because these chapters not only have my familiar chemical words like PVC/PTE but also the writing logic & possible solution. What matter are these examples authors take, which lessen the distance from thin books to daily life.

For chapter 1 History of the Industrial Revolution, it reveals that industry doesn’t cause following terrible consequence subjectively, just like the narrative and discussion about capitalism and Marxism in the last lecture(Capitalism does not create practical products when it is regarded as original sin, I’m keeping exploring this philosophy and dialectics)  Meanwhile, these engineers and designers overlook such a huge change out of limitation in a certain period. Next, for the factory itself, it’s an aggregation of technology and production while the establishment of a new factory could promote surrounding areas’ economy and prosperity obviously. What’s more, there exists a general negative feedback mechanism that businessman intends to improve productivity and demand for more workers. With the gathering of people gradually more and more stores and hotel do benefit from this process. On the one side, attached facilities are put on the agenda in the future waiting for constructed; on the other side, a booming area also attracts enormous people who volunteer to be a part of its development.

We all know Victorian London was called “the Great & Dirty city” by Charles Dickens, even these people needed to wear clothes with specially designed cuffs and collars while authors said Beijing was also in the same situation. Right, I feel an urgent necessity for me to release the lastest scene of Beijing for you guys. I don’t know what Beijing looks like in your mind cuz this country is changing rapidly with each passing day.

You could see these images I post and I hope this could help refresh some conventional and innate impression (stereotypes).

Right, I have to mention that Beijing has experienced those tough days when our main aim was to motivate our productivity and boost the economy. However, with the arising awareness toward energy and environment, during the 13th Five-Year Plan our Ministry of Ecology and Environment announced that China has achieved its carbon reduction target ahead of schedule in 2020 and in next stage will take efforts to achieve carbon neutrality. There is no doubt that it can be a magnificent feat and also becomes a good example of how to lead and guide citizens to do. Just like the solution “Leasing”  in this chapter, actually, this behaviour might be in heavy restriction and only popular in small scale. If any governments or companies could bear the responsibility to guide and develop their audiences’ habits to do leasing, we could use enough nutrients of natural resources.

Luckily, we’ve witnessed some companies had already done this. Take Apple, for example, they’ve announced an upgrade plan that if joining in this plan, you could receive the latest iPhone every autumn. All you need to do is just to wait for the stuff exchange a new phone with the old one. In conclusion, during this process what consumers purchase is the service provided by manufacturers while the device or products you use is just a medium to load the virtual service just like VR and virtual money.

Upgrade Plan, Apple

Some people also show their concerns about ownership in the leasing process. They argue that excessive loans could cause certain companies could monopolize the market which could do harm to consumers eventually due to little competence. Absolutely, if we look at a wider perspective it does become a problem needed solution but nowadays the first thing we need to do is just develop habits and awaken people’s awareness of our real situation.

The next interesting point in this chapter is the metaphor of banks. The authors compare the hidden energy and resource to savings in our accounts while our use and exploration of the hidden are just like swiping a credit card without any limitation. Remaining this situation which is just paying out but no coming in, we’ll get fewer and fewer nutrients to process and use. In my opinion, our world is a close system and so-called “use-out” is just an energy transformation when energy converts from the form we could use to we couldn’t use. So what if we come up with an idea or a technology to use these unavailable energies? Does it mean that we could do everything if we want?

Unluckily, no. Just like the author trying to find a new material to replace the replaced PET, wool and ramie could only simplify the degradation compared with the PET. In other words, what we now really could do(change the way we make and design) is to increase the layer of energy usage and efficiency which has been taken in lots of chemicals factory.

(btw I’d like to modify these five blogs in midweek with more illustrates and enriched argument 🙂

[Week5]Cradle to Cradle / Yanming He / Environmental Design: Materials, Ecologies, Futures (2020-2021)[SEM1] by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0