The tree's abundance of blossoms is both safe and useful, contributing to the health of a thriving, interdependent system. And the tree spreads multiple positive effects-making oxygen, transpiring water, creating habitat, and more. Eco-effectiveness seeks to design industrial systems that emulate the healthy abundance of nature. The central design principle of eco-effectiveness is waste equals food. When a product returns to industry at the end of its useful life and its materials are used to make equally valuable new products, the minerals or plastics of which it is made do not need to be minimized-because they will not become waste in a landfill.
Industry saves billions of dollars annually by recovering valuable materials from used products.
Similarly, products designed to be made of natural, safely biodegradable materials can be returned to the soil to feed ecosystems instead of depleting them. This fundamental conceptual shift leads to design strategies that some might find surprising. Eco-effectiveness has profound implications for industries everywhere. Rather than lamenting a world of hazardous waste, scarce resources, and limited opportunities, it celebrates an abundance of continuously valuable industrial and natural materials, of rich and diverse living systems, of economic and environmental wealth. All rights reserved.