GD Capstone 09

Done By: Maryam.Z, Shamsa and Zainab

The chapter began with the story of Henry Ford, who bought the land and brought materials and started to do his project and the plant began producing cars. In the following decades the river Rouge grew to became on of the largest industrial complex on the planet. By time the factory became old and affected the soil and water. [brown lands – abandoned industrial land]
They could have abandoned the place & start new in another clean area but William Clay Ford took the challenge to restore the place.
William met with Bill to discuss eco-effective thinking. Bill assigned to lead the redesign on The Rouge. They start to Create a Rouge Room in the basement of the company’s HC and bring in all sector’s heads and scientists [ like chemists, toxicologists, biologists, etc.] to put strategies of how to restore the place in an eco-effective way].
The company`s almost went to bankruptcy after WWII & struggled to get back. Bill opened the door for new thinking where hundreds of employees of all sectors gathered and came up with ideas. Like put skylights all over the factory and put grass on the roof.
ISO certification to the company for its ability to monitor the quality of production by standard metrics and environmental performance.
Tim O’Brien points out that most manufacturers don’t like to examine the surrounding area too carefully because any problems could lead to lawsuits. When they do discover something, they remove the soil & bury it somewhere safe. This means relocate the problem.
Ford said to assume the worst and there were some soil problems in some of the plants. So they undergo a soil treatment in a new way. It would remove and bury only the top soil, then clean the deeper layers.
innovative cleaning methods:
phytoremediation [a process that uses green plants to remove toxins from soil]
mycoremediation [cleaning soil with mushrooms and fungi]
these cleaning measures were not taken just for the government but for other things:
- the number of warms in each cubic foot.
- the diversity of birds & insects & aquatic species in near by river.
- the attractiveness of the site to local residents.
It’s main goal: “creating a factory site where Ford employees’ own children could safely play”
The company found more opportunities to improve environmental performance without having any financial issues.
The storm water. [the idea is to absorb rain water and undergo some cycles to end up in the river, clear and clean] – it cleans the water and the air, provides habitat, and enhance the beauty of the area while it saves the company $35 million estimation.
Ford sees River Rouge as a laboratory of ideas that will lead to better way of designing manufactures worldwide.

5 steps to eco-effectiveness:
The question of how did Ford company redesign itself? How can engineers change their ways of using things the way they used it their entire life, in another way that will save the environment.
As Albert Einstein says if we want to solve a problem, we need to change our way of thinking in which it created the problems in the first place.

Step 1. Get “free of” known culprits.
Turn away from substance that are widely known as harmful. [not replace them with worse]
Goal: Positively selecting the ingredients of making a product & how they are combined.
Example: chlorine free food container
When thinking of replacing the substance, it was impossible, but when actually possible, they discovered that the in the food there is chlorine-related dioxin.
Getting X substances-free[PVC, cadmium, lead, and mercury]: getting rid of mercury based thermometers.
Design filter in the minds of designers. [a design solution that wont make people sick]

Step 2. Follow informed personal preferences.
Bill distributed questioners to manufacturers who he wanted to work with asking them what exactly their products are made from. The replies were limited to “It’s proprietary. It’s legal. Go away”. So they had to choose carefully according to their limited amount of information.
example: they choose carpemting instead of glueing it.
they choose water based paint.
use full spectrum lighting. But they didn’t know about the chimichals in the bulbs.
However, an ugly facility was not their intention.
Bill believed that his job is to find the right things to put together, and they are somewhere in the world. He just needs to know what and where they are. It didn’t take him long to discover some of those component and he saw that he could help in making them.
The thing is that we live in a world full of undefined ingredients but not all of them are eco-effective to use. And it is up to designers to choose which are the best ingredients that are sound to use.
Example: someone choose to be vegetarian to not eat meat that is harmonic feed. But being vegetarian you don’t know how those plants were grown unless you plant them yourself. Or even how they were packaged or handled. It’s about choices we make for a better eco-effectiveness.
- Prefer ecological intelligence:
trusting ingredients that says it’s sustainable and harm-free without further research of it’s truthiness is a choice too. It points that the maker has these issues as a mission.
Choose ingredients that will minimize the risk of making people ill.
- Prefer respect.
Consumers prefer eco on luxury in choosing products.
- Prefer delight, celebration, and fun.
make the customer fell happy instead of guilty.

Step 3. Creating a “passive positive” list.
Becoming really eco-effective by making information available to everyone about the content of products.
Problematic substances lists:
- the X list. [the most harmful substance and must not be used in any way and if possible be replaced]
- the gray list. [not that problematic if used. Specially if there is no other substance to replace it]
- the P list. [the positive list or preferred list. It is healthy and safe to use]
Try as much to use ingredients from the P list as possible. Not entirely change the ingredient bit try too be safe as possible.

Step 4. Activate the positive list.
No more becoming less bad but actually becoming good. The step of becoming fully eco-effective.
Using materials that can be recycled in manufacturing.

Step 5. Reinvent.
The car cycle: now that the car is made out of zero-harmful materials, why not design it to release positive emissions and generate other nutritious effects on the environment.
Push designing further and design a whole new transportation infrastructure where it would take less place and land that could be used for housing and agriculture.

Five guiding principles
Becoming an eco-effective needs a lot of hard work, time, money, creativity, etc, to accomplish.
Example: Nike.
To improve the odds of success:
1- Signal your intention. [the statement of the whole project that everyone should follow and believe in, like an encouragement to follow.]
2- Restore.[design things that can be restored]
3- Be ready to innovate further.[“feed forward” not just feedback]
4- understand and prepare for the learning curve.
5- exert intergenerational responsibility.

Please post your team presentation as a new post.

Here is an example:

0. Go to Site Admin/write/Post

1. Title: C2 Chapter 1 by Alia and Sara J

2. Content: Check the process page out! Summary with your own interpretations of information will be great! Make all of us learn. Remember you only read the chapter, others are relying on you for the knowledge, so be objective and opinionated at the same time. It’s an art!

3. Visual: You might want to use any visuals to make your presentation effective such as objects, diagram, or any video clip.

4. Category: Presentation ( choose from the below option: categories)

5. Publish

Looking forward to the presentations.

cheers,

yun*