Michael Braungart: First, I would like to know a little bit about your expectations a minute there, just tell you what you have been…I’m quite glad I could meet and got a lot of information about you. I’m quite glad, because I think, for what we need to do a really digital world, there is no waste anymore, because you know what it is.

Michael Braungart: Therefore, you need to program it. You need to plan it. You have to do material flows to go into biological, technological stuff. It’s just all cradle-to-cradle. lots of money.

Audrey Tang: That’s right. I’m aware of that idea.

Michael Braungart: Yeah, but I would like to know about your expectations first also, because I am not there to tell just from my side. I want to be good for you.

Audrey Tang: Just by way of introduction, I’m Taiwan’s Digital Minister in charge of social innovation. Most of our work nowadays is around the Sustainable Development Goals, or the SDGs. My purview is just to make sure that people get access to reliable data, to build effective partnerships, and build ecosystems around open innovation.

Audrey Tang: That, I think, is key, because previously, when we talk about sustainability, at least in Taiwan, people often think linearly in the sense of more recycling, less waste, and things like that, which is all very good, but it doesn’t really tap into the social and economic development imperatives, because it’s not by design.

Audrey Tang: It is rather capturing at the end. There’s a lot of work nowadays, for example, when we banned the takeout plastic straws for our national identity drink, the bubble tea. We did not only focus on this lack of awareness about marine debris.

Audrey Tang: Of course, that is important to make people aware about marine debris, but even more important is alternate materials for straws that are carbon-reducing, or at least zero carbon, and also about redesigning the cups so that one doesn’t actually need a straw to begin with, and so on, and so forth.

Audrey Tang: We see all the industrial circular economy, as we call it here, as a redesigning behavior metaphor in a way that people can participate to build mechanisms – including coupons, crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, crowdselling, even – to make sure that people do build a complete awareness.

Audrey Tang: For example, about voluntarily share their air quality measurements into a shared ledger, so that people can not only make decisions together, but rather bargain together, when it comes to public policy.

Audrey Tang: For example, forcing [laughs] essentially the environment minister to not only ratify people’s numbers but also going into the industrial area to install into the lamps those AirBox measuring devices, so that it is participatory policymaking, not just consumer, what we call, media literacy, which is more about the viewers and readers, rather, about competence, which is everybody being their own media.

Audrey Tang: This data coalition cooperatives is a way that we can realize such reliable data together.

Michael Braungart: I just take care of a research program in Germany, which is to say if you have maybe a tool which tells you all the time what actually is the air quality around you, how would it change society?

Audrey Tang: That’s right, exactly.

Michael Braungart: Because if was years of a lifetime expectation. We have 40 times more than by traffic accidents. If you empower people to know all of it, time, every second, what’s going on, how would it change society?

Audrey Tang: It’s like ambient awareness, exactly.

Michael Braungart: I got some brief information. Did you look before?

Michael Braungart: What is your background? What are you doing?

Audrey Tang: I can interpret for them. [laughs]

Michael Braungart: What keeps you healthy?

Audrey Tang: They say that they want another meeting with me to talk about the co-curation project that they’re doing. If you want the entire 40 minutes to be “yours,” and so they’re being very humble and said that maybe we can focus on your ideas, instead of what keeps them healthy.

Michael Braungart: OK.

Audrey Tang: But anyway…

Michael Braungart: Maybe can you introduce yourself to…?

Audrey Tang: Sure, please do.

Shi-Chieh Chien: I’m Shi-Chieh, and I’m based in Taiwan. I mostly work on the scientific project here about certification, product signing, and material selection.

Yi-Chin Chang: I’m Yu-Chin, so I’m currently running the office. We have a very small team…

Michael Braungart: What does that mean, currently? Do you have different plans?

Yi-Chin Chang: No…

Audrey Tang: For the time being. Aware of the impermanence of humans.

Audrey Tang: For this century.

Yi-Chin Chang: In the past and currently, in the future. I’m running the office. We have a small team in Taiwan, but we have only been in Taiwan for 10 years. Our major partner with the Taiwan government is the Taiwan EPA, but we hope to reach out to more departments.

Yi-Chin Chang: As you know, cradle-to-cradle will focus on the design. We think that all the products should have good concept at the beginning and use good material, instead of you try to figure out how to recycle it in the end, but it’s not really an innovative design.

Yi-Chin Chang: It’s a current design, and it won’t change the whole system. I’m trying to encourage people to work with us, so we have a strategy alliance in Taiwan. We have more than 100 members. I would say it’s the first circular economy initiative in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: That’s awesome. You would be part of the GCTF also that takes place next month, the Global Collaboration and Training Framework around circular economy. Or, because it’s a US thing, they call it Sustainable Material Management, or something like that.

Audrey Tang: It’s essentially the same thing. There will be a lot of efforts around just building exactly such an ecosystem as you describe around circular economy in Taiwan. The eco designers, I think, is one of the key professions that we really want to put to the forefront, so that people understand it’s about design.

Audrey Tang: Design is not only about product design or space design, but rather, it’s about interaction design and mechanism design.

Yi-Chin Chang: It’s very good to collaborate with you, because well, actually, maybe it’s kind of my fault. Maybe I haven’t introduced very clearly to Michael yet. We are here to present our idea of celebrating the C2C concept in Taiwan for 10 years.

Yi-Chin Chang: We want to make it a very fun and interesting event for the public. Because the father of Jean is very good at marketing. Sorry, I’m introducing you.

Jean Chang: Thank you.

Yi-Chin Chang: It actually means a lot that we have Picobi’s help, and we have our scientific profession, so we can work together to, not just for the business people, more for the public. That’s why we are here together.

Yi-Chin Chang: Also, it’s very nice that we could have Michael, our founder, here, so we could also introduce our concept to you. Actually, as Jean probably told you already, that one of the other purpose is that we actually hope that maybe you would have some ideas that how can we reach to government.

Yi-Chin Chang: I would say our work is a bit hard, even though we have tried for 10 years. Still, we don’t see so many C2C products in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: You mean C2C-certified products?

Yi-Chin Chang: Yeah, not just certified, but people follow these principle. We have principle for the certification, but it’s OK if you don’t get the certificate. You could follow it. We haven’t hears so many people actually make a product code.

Yi-Chin Chang: We think there’s a barrier between, I don’t know how to say it, but maybe the designer and manufacturers, and also the whole system.

Audrey Tang: It probably is an awareness issue, for sure. I’ve met many people who do use this principle in their designs without realizing that they’re doing cradle-to-cradle, sustainable, or circular economy. These are relatively new terms. In Taiwan, we’ve been upcycling for glasses for decades.

Michael Braungart: Digital, it’s all religion is what I’m saying. I’m really mostly interested in you, because we still don’t have the way to deal with the data properly and to deal with the social and culture consequences about…

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Michael Braungart: I looked at your background, and so I thought, “This is unique.”

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think it is about building, exactly as you said, an ambient awareness platform, so that people understand, even in day-to-day circumstances, without having to rely on an annual report, BNR, or something like that, that they can weave these into their normal behavior day-to-day.

Audrey Tang: Air quality, water quality, earthquake advanced prevention and things like that, I’ve been working on that for the past four years through the co-called Civil IoT Project. We know something about giving an identity to anything from the air and water quality on one, or on actually building materials on the other.

Audrey Tang: If you see one building as potentially a stop for the next building when it tears apart, it changes a construction worker’s view on material management. I think we know something about digital, about giving things an identity, and relating people to it.

Audrey Tang: What we don’t quite yet know is how those curation projects fits into people’s behavior, like what kind of behavior change you want from everyday citizens. We understand it’s mostly about a designer’s mindset, but the designer also need to understand that it’s now the social sector.

Audrey Tang: The social norm has changed to change their behavior. It’s a chicken and egg thing. I’m firmly on the chicken side, by the way, [laughs] on the producer side of data.

Michael Braungart: On the other side, look, I analyzed my students’ mobile phone. It has 41 rare elements. Do you know we call it recycling when we can just divert best for recycling of it. It’s not to get nine elements back.

Michael Braungart: All the rare ones are not really regained at all, because we really don’t know how to do so. No indium, no gallium, no germanium, no rare elements it’s really recycled.

Michael Braungart: It’s really amazing. This is where we, as well, in a digital world, we need to have defined two periods. You need to know how long it’s used, and how it’s used in a context. This is where I would like to make, show you just a few slides.

Audrey Tang: Sure. We probably need to rethink this whole idea about ownership, anyway, but it’s a longer-time goal.

Michael Braungart: Does it work?

Audrey Tang: I guess, yes.

Michael Braungart: Good. We survived a lot of government changes and activities. To see, we have someone formerly known in the government here. That’s the chairman.

Audrey Tang: Now, secretary general of the president’s office.

Michael Braungart: Yeah, sure. You see it here, that we have a long history. The basic idea is to distinguish between consumption products, like shoe soles, break pads, and washing detergent sinks, which are actually consumed by being used and chemically, biologically changed by being used, and things which are just services.

Michael Braungart: The amazing thing is there are no business models for that. Never, in no area of the world. You don’t need to own a washing machine, you just need to service a…

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Michael Braungart: The traditional way of sustainability makes your customer your enemy. You tell her, “If you don’t buy it, it’s even better.” You’re 100 percent bad in 1980, and your goal is zero, but do you want to…You tell your customer, “Don’t buy it. If you don’t buy it, it’s even better. Do you really need it?”

Michael Braungart: Instead, we say it’s not about efficiency. It’s about effectiveness. It’s saying, “Hey, this is where you are. The more you buy it, the quicker we are.” This is where we want to be in 2030. Then my customer is my friend, because he helps me for changing.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Michael Braungart: It’s not necessary to reduce a use of oil and gas and coming to zero. We want to have a footprint which supports life. A beneficial footprint by just being less bad, by being less bad. We have far too many people on this planet.

Michael Braungart: We need to learn to be good for the other species. Therefore, it’s a top-line, things which are extremely successful for business, beneficial for the environment, and good for society at the same time. Traditionally, the environmental area, and also sustainability goals, are still the same there.

Michael Braungart: It’s about minimizing impact. We have too many. We need to learn to have a beneficial impact for the other species as well. Look at the tree, the spring. It’s not about reducing, avoiding, minimizing. It’s beneficial.

Michael Braungart: Everything’s nutrition for the biosphere, using it right, and celebrating diversity, because only diverse systems are really stable as well. API is an institute which combines different institutions with that.

Male Announcer: Look at a cherry tree in spring. Its materials are beneficial. The cherry tree vine makes a handful of cherries, actually. All the materials are designed to go back into a biological system.

Female Announcer: I think, but not too many. It depends what those nine billion people are doing.

Male Announcer: A cherry tree makes soil, makes oxygen, and cleans the air. It’s not toxic. It’s not dangerous. All nutrition, and what we do, we make some wrong things perfect, and then they are perfectly wrong.

Female Announcer: When you think about ants and termites, there’s four times as many, but they don’t cause problems because they produce nutrients and no waste.

Male Announcer: They convert biomass into nutrients, so why shouldn’t we be able to do the same?

Female Announcer: Cradle-to-cradle divides products into two spheres, our technical and our biological one. We have to redesign products. On the technical side, we have materials such as metals that can be used forever, like in chairs and washing machines.

Female Announcer: The biological side, we have products that will dissolve back into nature, like cosmetics or the natural fiber textiles.

Male Announcer: It’s that simple, right? The concept of waste will be obsolete. Instead of reducing our footprint, let’s rethink for a positive footprint.

Male Announcer: I want that the money I give for a product brings positive impact toward the society.

Female Announcer: I’m optimistic, because I think everything is going in that direction.

Male Announcer: It’s never too late to start doing stupid things.

Michael Braungart: What it means, it means European approach has some problems, American way to get things done, and certain way to enjoy life, and an Asian way, really to think in cycles,. It’s all about sustainability, because sustainability is optimizing existing stuff.

Michael Braungart: True innovation is not just “sustainable”. Mobile phones, not sustainable as stationary phones before. It’s about holistic quality. It’s about beauty, and that’s what we do. It goes beyond just sustainability, which is basically about minimizing impact.

Michael Braungart: Sure, we know people’s stuff, like is circular economy. With one pizza, you eat one sort of a business cut, just of paper chemicals, because it’s never made from circular. We have wetness stabilizers in toilet paper, where you don’t get only nine elements.

Michael Braungart: We actually get out, sustainability, also fine, but the real thing is no different when we’re now facing a young generation who just wants to be proud of what they’re doing. For them, recognition in social networks is more important than money.

Michael Braungart: You don’t need ethics for that. You can just be proud of what you’re doing. It’s a biosphere, the technosphere. These are paper products, many of them, there is healthy printing initiatives, meaning cradle-to-cradle paper.

Michael Braungart: For the biosphere, we can make perfectly de-cradleable stuff, and that for all different areas. Now, 11,000 products in the market. You just, why we need your ambition and your skills is there is no software for it, amazingly.

Male Announcer: Mass Line will implement the most comprehensive cradle-to-cradle passport ever seen for the new giant EEE ships. The cradle-to-cradle passport will identify each and every nut and bolt of the giant, 60,000-ton ships, making vastly improved recycling possible for most materials…

Michael Braungart: We can make stuff which is beneficial. We can make carpets, we will just sell 10 years of floor packaging materials or flooring systems. These carpets are not just non-toxic, they are actively absorbing fine dust.

Michael Braungart: Everything becomes services, so it’s making use of best materials, not the cheapest ones. It means we need to develop business models for that. Now, you’re no longer selling chairs. You’re selling healthy sitting insurance.

Michael Braungart: Society is a different one. We can see this with materials all across in all different areas. Here in Taiwan, in Taipei, there is a hotel which applies cradle-to-cradle, and it’s extremely successful with that.

Michael Braungart: We need to, buildings as material banks, material passports. You need digital word. We need to know whether it’s the biosphere or the technosphere. Instead of durability, we need defined use periods, as well as you cannot…

Michael Braungart: People are still at the beginning. People buy solar panels, for example, but you don’t need a solar panel. You only need to harvest photons. When you buy it, you need to get the cheapest stuff. When you just buy 20 years of service, you can use the best material.

Michael Braungart: People buy it raw as well. This is from BMW’s Factory of the Future. Can you imagine, they buy 200 robots, but nobody needs a robot. You only need melding points. Digital understanding is not there. This is why your approach to go into these interfaces makes so much more sense.

Michael Braungart: We can do put information in recordings at the beginning. There’s a regulatory burden where you can see that these are universities who I work for right now, in Munich. We need cradle-to-cradle platforms.

Michael Braungart: This is why we are here, basically, as well. Taiwan is quite successful with that. You see, there are a lot of names in there. This is our Taiwan regulatory platform. Compared to the speed, this is what Jean says, we are far too slow.

Michael Braungart: What does it help us when we are successful? It’s like sitting on the Titanic bailing out water with a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon. That’s pretty helpless. Sure, there is a lot of opportunities for industry in that, because it allows innovation.

Michael Braungart: We do buildings which support life, buildings which clear air, buildings which support the other species, buildings which clean water. It’s about cradle-to-cradle economy, things which are beneficial, not less bad.

Michael Braungart: It means like you do it, and I looked at a lot of your stuff. It looks like people, how nice that you’re here, not could you be 10 percent less evil. It’s celebrating your own footprint instead of minimizing it. That’s where we are behind it.

Audrey Tang: This is great. Actually, I like the last slide. This is very, very nice. In Taiwan here, what we are fostering is what we call an intentional economy, where people do investment not just to avoid harm, but rather to promote social environmental benefits.

Audrey Tang: I think we’re very much aligned in this mission. The main ask I had in the beginning was just exactly what kind of behavior change of redesign or to redefine that you would like to achieve in a Taiwanese population.

Audrey Tang: I think that is the key question that we need to ask ourselves. It’s a deliberately very ambiguous and very open question, but without that, there is no common value around which to do social intervention. I think that remains my main question.

Audrey Tang: Perhaps that’s what part of what your curating can help answer, is that how might we live together as a Taiwanese society with a redefined look on the redesign. That comment, we might just be one…Cradle-to-cradle might just be one of the many angles. We will make sure that they align with all the existing approaches as well.

Michael Braungart: The idea of Taiwan, first of all, it’s not about just adoring nature, but learning it’s a partnership, because of the permanence of earthquakes and summer storms. You cannot talk about muscle growth, but muscle wouldn’t kill people in society.

Michael Braungart: It’s a partnership. It’s learning from nature, but being proud of your own skills as well. The question is, could we consider Taiwan, with its difficult status, from a positive angle to say why couldn’t Taiwan be basically the innovation place of the world?

Audrey Tang: We don’t have to wait for Brussels. We don’t even have to wait for the UN. Taiwan can innovate without permission.

Michael Braungart: For example, we have a lot of companies now where you can make a difference. They need a place where they can find out whether it makes sense. To give you a simple example, tires now last twice as long as they did 30 years ago.

Michael Braungart: But there are 470 different chemicals in there which are amazingly poisonous when you inhale them or when they go into water, they make microplastic. Now, we have new formulas of tires, but we need a place to test it basically.

Michael Braungart: To say, “Hey, what does it mean to this island?” It’s ideal for that, or printing chemicals, for example. Normally a paper and magazine like this, normally would have 50 dangerous chemicals which don’t allow composting or incineration.

Michael Braungart: 30 years ago, it was 90 dangerous chemicals. Where’s the difference whether you get shot 50 times or 90 times? There’s not a real benefit. This is the first time in human history that we have printing materials which you can perfectly compost.

Michael Braungart: It only makes sense once the whole packaging, all society does the same, otherwise, you still have a problem with the material. This is a lot of control debates as well. This is why I want you to consider how Taiwan could be an innovation engine for the world.

Audrey Tang: We’ll get…

Michael Braungart: …electronic for quite a while, and still are for textiles as well. Right now, there is the Intersport in Germany, which mostly have Taiwanese textile companies. They are still…

Audrey Tang: We’re certainly raising awareness by using deliberately, entirely circular materials for our awards, for our printing materials, and things like that that’s out of our office. I think raising awareness is just first step.

Audrey Tang: Mostly, it’s about incentivizing and promoting technologies and designer to think of their contribution. A couple of months ago, I met with a materials science person. They have a new technology that can shrink the Styrofoam, which was very difficult to…

Audrey Tang: Not to say recycle, to move in any form. They can shrink it to one-hundredth or so of its original size in small pellets, so that it can be transported much easier. Again, what they are using is, again, a sandbox approach, where they worked with the places where it’s the most costly to ship Styrofoam waste, such as the Pescador Island.

Audrey Tang: Because they don’t have any processing capability in that remote island, they have to actually take a ship to ship it literally back to Taiwan. They then worked with the Pescadores Islands, on such an experimental field.

Audrey Tang: I totally get what you’re saying is that, whenever there is new idea, what the designers are mostly looking for is a way, even if it’s running against current regulations, and the current regulation didn’t anticipate this kind of design or technology, we give a sandbox for them to experiment.

Audrey Tang: Show the society, including to Europe, that this is actually a better way forward, or if it fails, at least we know this doesn’t work.

Michael Braungart: Definitely.

Yi-Chin Chang: Because Jean has…

Jean Chang: Because I have respect this agenda, I am talking about the sustainable fashion, and also introduce the cradle-to-cradle concept for the textile industry.

Audrey Tang: That’s awesome.

Jean Chang: I have to be…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, sure.

Jean Chang: …there at one o’clock.

Audrey Tang: No problem. Yeah, so I guess we’ll catch up in another meeting.

Jean Chang: Yeah, sure. Thank you. Sorry. Michael, see you tomorrow morning.

Michael Braungart: OK, see you. Bye-bye.

Audrey Tang: About the event, what’s the event?

Michael Braungart: I brought you some chocolate from Europe.

Audrey Tang: Oh, thank you. Thank you. That’s very sweet of you, literally.

Michael Braungart: I thought because it’s time, you can… read this magazine. It explains what cradle-to-cradle is.

Audrey Tang: Thank you.