THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 10, 1997 TAG: 9702080267
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAN CIENSKI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: 90 lines
When most people see a junked TV or a stained, worn-out carpet they see garbage. William McDonough sees food.
He sees plant food such as biodegradable carpets that can nourish plants once their commercial use is gone and food for factories such as non-polluting and reusable components for television sets.
He envisions a time when products and industrial processes are engineered to do no harm in the first place, avoiding the need to clean up messes later.
``The filters of the future are in our heads and not at the end of pipes,'' said McDonough, who is dean of the University of Virginia's School of Architecture.
His ideas differ from traditional recycling in which complicated manufactured products such as plastic computer consoles are melted down for simpler uses like a park bench. In McDonough's vision, complicated products would be endlessly reused for more complicated products.
Take television sets. Contemporary televisions are full of components that are poisonous or harmful to the environment when the set is thrown away. McDonough wants manufacturers to design sets that can be taken apart and reused.
McDonough has been putting his ideas into stone, wood and even fabric for more than a decade.
In 1993 he and his partner, German chemist Michael Braungart, were invited to design a new fabric for the New York firm DesignTex. They designed not only the appearance of the cloth, but also its chemical content and process of manufacture.
Out of more than 8,000 commercially available dyes, McDonough chose 38 that he said were entirely free of harmful substances. The fibers are a combination of wool and ramie, a shrubby plant found in the Philippines.
The result is a completely biodegradable cloth used mostly for furniture, such as chair coverings. When it becomes worn or out of fashion, it can be tossed onto a compost heap where it becomes plant food.
``Our customers are saying they're definitely interested in this way of looking at things,'' said Susan Lyons, vice president of design at DesignTex. ``It's a real epiphany for people. Everyone talks about the green issue but nobody has come to the table with a plan that makes sense for industry.''
The fabric has had another benefit - it solved the waste problem of the Swiss textile mill that produces it, said Lyons. She said that in Switzerland, fabric trimmings are considered toxic waste. McDonough's fabric has no such drawback.
``The manager had a huge problem of how to dispose of his waste product,'' she said. ``For him, this was an elegant solution to a problem he was having.''
McDonough's latest plan is a project to redesign the carpet industry. Under his idea, you wouldn't own the carpet covering your floor. A company would lease you the carpet; when it's time to replace it, the company installs new carpet.
The big difference, however, is that the old carpet never ends up in a landfill. McDonough has redesigned the carpet so that it is completely recyclable into new carpet.
``We've designed a whole flow of carpets so they can go back forever,'' he said. ``This carpet company would no longer have to use natural resources. It's no longer out in nature wreaking havoc.''
If it works as he hopes it will, the idea could make McDonough a rich man. Katharyn Wise, spokeswoman for the Carpet and Rug Institute, said carpet makers have been grappling with the same problem for the last few years.
``This is not a new idea but it is an idea that has not reached fruition in the economic area,'' she said. ``The problem is that carpet is bulky and then when old, it holds dirt. The problem is transporting the carpet and breaking it down in an economically efficient way.''
McDonough's ideas are part of a growing trend in architecture, according to Fred Koetter, dean of the Yale University School of Architecture.
``More and more architects are becoming aware in various ways of how their work affects the environment and resources,'' he said.
Before McDonough started toying with redesigning whole industries, he began by taking a new look at how buildings were designed and at what materials were used to build them.
One of his early projects was designing the headquarters of the Environmental Defense Fund in New York in 1985. The building is lit mainly by natural light, provides 30 cubic feet of fresh air per minute per person - up from the national standards at the time of 5 cubic feet - and used almost no toxic materials. Even the carpets are tacked down to avoid using glue.
McDonough recently designed the corporate campus for clothing retailer The Gap in San Bruno, Calif. The building's roof is made out of earth covered with living grass. It provides insulation and doesn't use the toxic materials that make up most roofs.
But while earthen roofs and environmentally friendly textiles are good for the environment, McDonough will need more tangible proof to convince people that his ideas have merit.
``What I'm interested in is success,'' he said. ``In order for this idea to become endemic, we will need to become economically successful or else people won't copy it. We'll do well while doing good.''