SD innovation > glossary Glossary: written by James Greyson, updated 26th Oct 2005 cause or symptom?
Emissions of greenhouse gases, such as from burning fossil fuels, are conventionally seen as potential causes of symptoms such as climate instability. This has led to 'solutions' such as energy efficiency campaigns and international emissions reduction conventions, which unfortunately are largely ineffective. Emissions can alternatively be seen as symptoms of a problem, which focuses attention on the wider assumptions and incentives which support the loss of resources as wastes. Levels of emissions and wastes will respond to changes in these wider factors. circular or linear economy?
The single most important, but least discussed, decision for any society is whether their economy will allow used resources to accumulate as wastes in the air, land and waters, or whether new resources will be made from old. German, Japan and most recently, China have policies to shift from linear to circular economics. Every kind of product can be designed or substituted to become compatible with a circular economy. However most circular economy policy is distracted by technical recycling efforts when the real need is for economic incentives which allow the market to prevent wastes. See precycling insurance. complexity
Nature is endlessly complex, which makes decision-making based on predicting the consequences of accumulating wastes fairly ineffective. Small improvements in today's situation require massive efforts in research and political agreement. Alternatively large improvements could be gained with small research and political efforts with decision-making based on the low complexity of sustainable relations with nature. Preventing problems is less complex than just reducing them. corporate social responsibility (csr)
CSR is the business response to society's problems. CSR programmes publicly demonstrate a responsible attitude, however most CSR work is incremental and aims only to do a bit better than in the past. A growing number of businesses including DuPont, Fuji, Xerox, Collins Pine, Ricoh, Konika-Minolta, NEC, Toyota, Hewlett Packard, Epson and Interface use the more ambitious target of eliminating wastes. Despite such good examples, the leadership role of business in society may not be achieved until the market is reformed to reward CSR. economic instrument
Governments use various instruments to influence the market and to raise revenue. These economic instruments affect prices and shape whether an economy is linear or circular. Current instruments fail to reward CSR and do not account for lost resources and wastes in product prices. The large number of complicated instruments in use is an impediment to further progress, though it is possible to replace many current burdensome instruments with a single instrument based upon insurance. Precycling insurance rewards CSR and corrects prices so the market becomes a 'level playing field' stimulating rapid transition to a high-growth sustainable circular economy. economic growth
The rate of change in total economic activity, or economic growth, became important during World War II as a measure of wartime production capacity. Today, Gross Domestic Product - GDP is every nation's main indicator of economic progress. GDP doesn't measure losses in natural resources nor accumulating problems, but it does count the unproductive costs of security, crime, sickness, flooding and storms. Unproductive costs are growing and sooner or later they will exceed the value of productive activities (bancruptcy) which suggests that the goal of continuing economic growth can now be achieved only by switching from a linear to a circular economy. end of pipe
The 'pipe' is the flow of opportunities for preventing a problem, such as waste. At the end of the pipe, after waste has already been produced, it is still possible to recycle (sometimes), burn or bury rubbish. Material which is burnt or buried generally means a permanent loss of resources as harmful wastes and requires new resources to be produced, with further energy and environmental costs. However, end of pipe waste management does not help reduce waste generation, fund more recycling, or shift from a throw-away society to a resource-making society. front of pipe
The sustainable alternative to end of pipe 'solutions' is a front of pipe strategy. Every individual and individual organisation can take decisions and actions today which will prevent future waste. See some front of pipe ideas. Collectively, it is possible for any society to replace burdensome economic instruments with a single simple instrument called precycling insurance. Old-fashioned end of pipe waste strategies are steadily being replaced with front of pipe strategies aiming to eliminate waste. incremental approach
Most policy aims for gradual improvement; less waste, less emissions and less damage to nature. This incremental approach succeeds as a compromise between supposedly conflicting economic and environmental goals, but the approach has unfortunately failed over decades to actually achieve overall less waste, less emissions or less damage to nature. The incremental approach assumes that deeply interconnected problems can be managed separately and that marginal changes in awareness and practice can match the scale of today's problems. The alternative to an incremental approach is a preventive approach. innovation
Technical innovation is widely promoted as a solution to global problems, with vast funds available for research and development. Decisions over choices of technology are influenced by market prices and government policies which are both vulnerable to errors which perpetuate problems rather than solve them. Since global problems require improved relations with nature and between people, the solutions are primarily non-technical. There is a need for new ideas and new market signals which can then reliably drive new decision-making in technical innovation. New thinking is needed before new technology: unfortunately such non-technical innovation is rarely supported. leverage
Global problems such as waste, nature conservation, poverty and warfare are notoriously resistant to resolution. A 1999 paper by Donella Meadows, Leverage Points: places to intervene in a system (Sustainability Institute, Vermont. 1999. www.sustainabilityinstitute.org) suggests targeting interventions at points where the influence, or leverage, is greatest. The greatest leverage comes from interventions which work systemically to prevent rather than minimise problems. This involves adopting a preventive approach, front of pipe strategy and circular economy. Precycling and precycling insurance are examples of high-leverage interventions. management system
Many organisations have formal management systems for issues such as the environment. These conventionally assess a set of known issues and the risks to the organisation. Incremental targets are set and procedures to meet them are defined. Such risk-based systems rarely succeed to genuinely engage the creativity and initiative of the whole organisation and the risk-avoidance mindset does not consistently stimulate innovative, preventive or systemic solutions. It is also possible to design and operate opportunity-based management systems to promote innovation throughout any organisation. missing feedback
Why do unsustainable systems persist when their consequences have been known for decades? The slow rate of improvement towards sustainability is due to the absence of corrective feedback such as awareness of alternative approaches, price signals which include the risk of unsustainability and labelling which shows the likelihood of becoming waste at the end-of-product-life. Imagine the progress with organic farming if conventional crops identified the pesticides used, at the point of sale. Or the speed of waste-reduction programmes if the cost of recycling was included in the product price? opportunity/risk
Opportunities and risks may appear as two sides of the same coin but the thinking differs greatly. Incrementally reducing risks suggests making the least changes at the least costs and involving the least people. Opportunity-maximising requires more creative thinking often involving widespread changes and involving large numbers of people. Risk management systems are designed and run very differently from opportunity-based management systems. paradigm
The assumptions underpinning a human-based system are its paradigm. Paradigms have historically not been questioned but any viewing of modern news media shows how assumptions are increasingly challenged and discussed. For example the traditional acceptance of remote decision-makers, is being rapidly replaced by a paradigm of participation and inclusiveness. Questioning assumptions is a vital start towards replacing the paradigm of waste-making with a resource-making paradigm. precycling
Activities which prevent products becoming waste can be called precycling. Obvious precycling activities include improvements in design or materials, and provision of recycling/reuse/remanufacture infrastructure. Interestingly, activities which support social or ecological sustainability, such as greater inclusiveness and neighbourliness or creation of new natural habitats, also boost precycling. Neighbours cannot pass on unwanted goods if they don't know each other and diminishing habitats cannot absorb new emissions and effluents. Everyone influences the future of the goods around them so everyone can precycle. precycling insurance
Precycling insurance is an economic instrument for implementing a circular economy by systematically stimulating and funding precycling. This single simple correction to product prices can replace a wide range of prescriptive and burdensome regulations and taxes. Product producers (ie, manufacturers or importers) pay a precycling insurance premium in proportion to the risk of their product ending up as accumulating wastes. Premiums are used to fund activities which reduce the risk of products becoming waste, in other words precycling is funded. Companies with low waste product/service offerings pay low premiums and gain advantage in the market. In effect the power of the market is able to make the necessary changes that have eluded decades of effort by governments and environmental campaigners. preventive approach
There are two possible approaches to solving global problems; either make changes within the system to reduce impacts or make changes to the system to prevent impacts. A preventive approach is more ambitious but can be paradoxically easier to implement, since a small number of preventive solutions can address a large number of issues throughout an economy. Preventive solutions are typically simpler and thus can more easily engage large numbers of staff or the public. Front of pipe strategy, precycling, the circular economy and precycling insurance follow a preventive approach. resource/waste
Decision-making based on impacts, such as life cycle analysis, requires many dissimilar variables to be compared, which restricts the speed and quality of decisions. Decision-making based on a transition from unsustainable to sustainable systems presents a clear choice between ensuring that products become new resources whether in the economy or in nature) or allowing products to end up as unusable wastes (whether in the air, waters or land). This approach supports the process of thinking beyond a product's useful life, to the point where it becomes a new resource, together with the diverse changes needed to make this happen. sustainability
The ultimate goal of sustainable development, corporate social responsibility and a host of other buzz-words. Sustainability is under-used as a strategic target since many people struggle to see how it could work if the rest of the world remains unsustainable. For any single organisation or economy the choice of strategic target need not be driven by the prospects of the rest of the world. It is an internal question. Do we navigate towards a sustainable business model or away from the many impacts of unsustainable business models? Which of these options offers the strongest basis for planning for the future? sustainable development
The process of achieving the goal of sustainability is called sustainable development. However, low expectations of success allow sustainable development to be mistakenly treated as the goal. The term also suffers from an overabundance of definitions which are generally of limited value for either learning or decision-making. Fixed definitions can also interfere with group discussions about options for the future. The term 'sustainable development', and all other jargon can usefully be introduced after a group has developed its own ideas about the future. symptomatic
At the end of the cause-effect chain come the symptoms: both obvious symptoms like environmental impacts, linked symptoms such as stressed people rushing around and hidden symptoms such as accumulating chemicals which have not yet triggered problems. Society's response to symptoms can either focus on the symptoms or the system which produces them. A sypmtomatic response will seek to force cuts in emissions whilst a systemic response will seek to change economic and cultural signals to discourage emissions. systemic
Widespread. Both the causes and the effects of unsustainability are systemic. There are two forms of systemic solution to this systemic problem:
1. Top-down. Change the 'rules' of the system so the outcomes change without being forced.
2. Bottom-up. Do something splendid which can be replicated far and wide. systems thinking
Seeing things whole. Systems thinking involves interrelationships rather than things, patterns of change rather than static views. It originated in 'feedback' concepts of cybernetics and in 'servo-mechanism' engineering theory but it is also instinctively practised by everyone who applies common sense to look beyond symptoms and solves a problem at source. upstream/downstream
Downstream we find the effects of what happens upstream. Everyone believes they are acting upstream but not every upstream action makes improvements downstream. In practice if progress seems slow then you need to look futher upstream. If waste is the downstream problem then you could ask local authorities to collect more for recycling. Then you could shift the financing of waste processing from the point of disposal to the point of purchase. Even further upstream you could progressively implement an economy where every product is designed to end up as a new resource. At the source of the stream you can support a change of mind so that waste is no longer taken for granted. waste hierarchy
The waste hierarchy was first introduced in the European Union’s Waste Framework Directive of 1975. The hierarchy ranks waste management options in order of preference; reduction, reuse then recycling (including composting). This list is also known as the 3Rs. This is the most widely quoted but least used waste principle since policy, funding and action on waste consisently neglects reduction and focuses on increasing recycling rates. Disposal to land is replaced by disposal to air by burning. Thus the waste hierarchy is currently practised in reverse. zero waste
The goal of eliminating accumulation of waste in the biosphere. Zero waste is often confused with closed-loop industrial processes, in which waste from one business is used by another. Zero waste is a global goal, within which large scale emissions could be processed by nature so long as economic signals account for the risk of accumulation. A renewed market can stimulate all the necessary changes. Zero waste can also be implemented by local authorities, businesses and households by front of pipe strategies and precycling. Return to the top of this page Return to the 'SD innovation' homepage Return to the Front of Pipe strategy homepage Contact SD Innovation www.sdinnovation.co.uk | 
