In my blogs and posts, I've always liked to write about what each individual can do to conserve our earth's resources, to produce less waste, to use less energy. And it's true: I can do something. You can do something: fly less, ride a bike instead of a car, shower less often and for shorter periods, buy food regionally and seasonally, repair (have repaired) things instead of buying them new.
And it's also true: all of this has to do with doing without. It's always a bit of a buzzkill. And it always helps just a little. No matter how much we limit ourselves: We will still produce CO2 in the future, we will still consume energy and raw materials. If we really wanted to save the earth, we would have to abolish ourselves. But we don't want to save our planet per se, we want to save the earth as a habitat for us humans.
So what can we do? How would it be if we looked at us humans for once not as the problem, but as the possible solution. You could think the other way around: not how you can do less damage to the environment, but how you can be useful for the climate in the future.
How to make your children climate positive
What if you could use compostable children's diapers in the future? The baby would then produce an amount of compost from birth to potty through these diapers that could plant 150 trees. Which in turn store lots of CO2. So by going diaper-free, your child would already have a positive carbon footprint - and have done their part to prevent global warming!
Or how about designing washing machines, for example, in such a way that we could completely disassemble them at the end of their life cycle and reuse everything inside? In other words, a true circular economy. And anyway, it's not about owning a washing machine. It's about using it. That's what we should be thinking about and designing our products accordingly.
I'll admit: I didn't come up with these ideas. But when I heard Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart talk about such ideas at the 15th Sustainability Days in Düsseldorf last December, I immediately thought: 'Yes, this is the direction we need to go in!
Man and the environment - rethought
Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart is the co-inventor of the cradle-to-cradle idea. The idea behind it: Everything we produce should be designed in such a way that it is either completely biodegradable, thus returning valuable nutrients to the natural cycle. Or in such a way that the individual parts could be completely reused, i.e. returned to the production cycle. And even better, why not design products or materials that take CO2 out of the atmosphere? That is, that not only damage our environment less, but actually make it 'healthier'? A return to 1900 century levels of greenhouse gases should be our goal.
Much of this is still pie in the sky. But people around the world are working on such products and processes. And that gives us courage.
But the most fascinating thing for me is that Prof. Braungart is completely rethinking the relationship between people and the environment. He says that man can become part of the solution to the problem he has created. By saying that there can be no right life in the wrong one and therefore it is not about doing less harm, but about having a positive effect. We cannot solve our problems with the same ways of thinking that caused them, but we have to think and develop everything anew. In order to come to new solutions, it is necessary to relentlessly question our current status quo.
For me, this lecture by Prof. Braungart alone made the visit to the Sustainability Day worthwhile.
Heike Hundertmark
PS: By the way, allsafe was one of the finalists for the award for the most sustainable company in Germany.
