Eco-effective design is an alternative concept to Eco-efficiency. It was presented by Michael Braungart, a chemist, and William McDonough, an architect, in their book “Cradle-to-Cradle: Remaking the way we make things” published in 2002. Then followed by another in 2013, which is “The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance”.

While Eco-efficiency tends to lower undesired emissions to zero and adopts a linear design process, Eco-effectiveness adopts a circular cradle-to-cradle design to eliminate the concept of waste and replace it by “nutrients management” to coordinate the material flows among actors in the product system. It focuses on creating products and systems that contribute positively to the people and planet in all aspects, from ecological health and abundance to long-term economic growth and social responsibility.

The concept is based on the idea of intelligently choosing the materials used in a product or system to be able to circulate safely in either biological or technical cycles. Biological nutrients are useful to the biosphere and technical nutrients are useful to the technosphere, which constitutes of the industrial mass.

There are several criteria to achieve an Eco-effective design.

  1. Material health: selecting materials that are free of all toxic and unidentified chemicals so that the nutrients remain safely circulating in the above cycles.
  2. Material re-utilization: products are designed so that they can either biodegrade safely and return to the biosphere as biological nutrients or recycled (after safe disassembly if necessary) as technical nutrients to feed in the technical cycle.
  3. Energy and water: The manufacturing operations should be powered with 100% renewable energy and water should be regarded as a precious resource. So, it should be recycled for reuse.
  4. Social fairness: All operations should respect the well-being of the workers, employees, customers, and the cultural viability.

To know more about this pioneering design concept and to start re-thinking the way you design, visit the C2C-certified website and EPEA website.

Below is a video from DESSO Carpets by Tarkett to explain the cradle-to-cradle concept.

Check the video here!