Number of words – 292

In products design, a classic example of the universal design solution is mass-produced detergent. Major soap manufacturers design one detergent for all parts of the United States or Europe, even though water qualities and community needs differ. For example, customers in places with soft water, like the Northwest, need only small amounts of detergent. Those where the water is hard, like the Southwest, need more. But detergent are designed so they will lather up, remove dirt, and kill germs efficiently the same way anywhere in the world – in hard, soft, urban, or spring water, in water that flows into fish-filled streams and water channeled to sewage treatment plants. Manufactures just add more chemical force to wipe out the conditions of circumstance. Imagine the strength a detergent must have to strip day-old grease from a greasy pan. Now imagine what happiness when that detergent comes into contact with the slippery skin of a fish or the waxy coating of a plant. Treated and untreated effluents as well as runoff are released into lakes, rivers, and oceans. Combinations of chemicals, from household detergents, cleansers, and medicines along with industrial wastes, end up in sewage effluents, where they have been shown to harm aquatic life, in some cases causing mutations and infertility.

To achieve their universal design solutions, manufacturers design for a worst-case scenario; they design a product for the worst possible circumstance, so that it will always operate with the same efficacy. This aim guarantees the largest possible market for a product. It also reveals human industry’s peculiar relationship to the natural world, since designing for the worst case at all times reflects the assumption that nature is the enemy.

Excerpted from Page 29-30 of  ‘Cradle to Cradle’ by Michal Braungart and William McDonough