the three Rs return

As long as I can remember, we've been told about the three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. At some point we've added Repair (to extend the life of a product) and Repurpose (when it isn't suitable any more for what it was made for, use it for something else). That's all very well, but most products aren't designed with this in mind, so it's difficult to take the mantra seriously. With the focus on carbon though, we're starting to move from cradle-to-grave analysis, as a way of looking at a product's lifecycle impacts, to cradle-to-cradle analysis that is intended to encourage products to be designed never to enter landfill sites.

Buildings are given recognition under green accreditation schemes like LEED, BREEAM and Green Star for being designed so that the materials that go into them can be used for something else when the building is disassembled. Products can also be C2C certified, which means they are designed not just to be carbon neutral, but to produce zero waste: either recycled or reused endlessly, or returned to a natural, ecologically benign state. If things are designed this way, then the three Rs become a meaningful paradigm, and the goal of zero waste might just become reachable.