A close friend of mine said to me recently that when it comes to sustainability, we're a whole lot of good people having a bad conversation. We're still focused on the wrong issues, he said. More often than not, discussion centers on conserving resources, when really we should be figuring out how to rethink our methodologies.
We've been through an industrial revolution and a chemicals revolution. Now we are in the throes of a technological revolution with potential to create intelligent new systems that can provide better, safer and truly sustainable ways to live on this planet. We have the manpower. We have the need. We have the desire. It's time to start talking about the right things.
So how to change the subject?
It starts with getting the right people together in the right room. This spring, I attended a number of gatherings where major industry players joined forces to network, brainstorm and better understand the transitions we all need to make to achieve sustainable development in product and manufacturing. It was truly inspiring to see longstanding companies developing smart, nimble, forward-thinking ways to collaborate, figuring out how to drive change with a sense of urgency, and affirming immediate commitments to rethink design from the bottom up.
On Earth Day, for example, Macy's Green Living Campaign brought together experts from the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute alongside leaders from Levi's, Cotton Inc., Under the Canopy and others, in a far-reaching discussion of how retailers - yes, even very large retailers - can work toward corporate sustainability. A few days later, at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation CE100 Summit in France, I joined a group of global multinationals in a series of high-level workshops to foster cross-sector, cross-industry collaboration. Together we worked to develop circular economy pilot incentives, figure out better ways to build capacity, improve our network and become more adept at sharing the latest thinking. (If big groups working across industries and national borders can come up with ways to drive change at speed and scale, no one else has got a good excuse.)
Next, it's about serving as an interpreter, translating from old methodologies to new. I believe this is one of our most important roles at C2C: to help articulate and communicate what a circular economy can and will make possible. At C2C's own Community of Practice meeting in May, attendees joined up at Park 20/20 in the Netherlands - a living, breathing testament to the fact that a group of motivated, like-minded people can achieve very real, very tangible and very promising results. Park 20/20, a full service Cradle to Cradle working environment combining sustainable design, an optimal ecological approach and a groundbreaking way of doing business, is perhaps our strongest statement of C2C's key principles: design for disassembly, products of service, materials banking and productivity and health. As the first environment of its kind in the world, it's a bridge to the future - built not only of words but also of action.
Last, but certainly not least, it's about knowing when to offer guidance and when to yield the floor. It's about opening up the conversation to the young, innovative and dynamic thinkers who have a real stake in this game, for whom conversations about long-term materials sustainability and safety are not merely academic.
Nowhere in recent memory have I felt this more viscerally than at the fourth Copenhagen Fashion Summit in May, where the breakaway Youth Summit in particular felt like a call to action from one generation to the next. There - watching young innovators mingle with senior leaders from companies including H&M, Nike and Patagonia as well as figures from fashion's most important organizations - I felt an almost palpable sense of accountability, one group of leaders saying to another: You are in power now, but tomorrow it will be us.
The Youth Summit mandate for commitments and change reminded me - and should remind us all - of the critical role today's leaders must play in starting a new conversation now, so we can begin to build momentum toward a truly circular economy. As its participants made very clear, we don't have time - nor is it ethical - to sit around and wait for the next generation to clean things up, cooling our heels while the planet gets hotter, our impact grows increasingly toxic, and critical resources run dry.
The truth is that there is a better new way to live on this planet: creating intelligent methods by which safe materials can be perpetually cycled and used by our children and our children's children. When a whole lot of good people start having this conversation, the right conversation, we'll be able to start rebuilding our systems to take advantage of an abundant world.