A bit of liveblogging, at least. I’m in Stockholm for the Globe Forum 2010, resting for a moment after a talk and interviews. The Forum brings together people building businesses focused on sustainability. Work ranges from computational fluid dynamics for better wind energy to a technology that lays down nanoscale films of a tungsten disulphide composite on steel surfaces to reduce friction in engines. Two of five finalists for the Innovators Contest were innovating in nanomaterials.
Up now: “Prof. Michael Braungart, founder of the design concept ‘Cradle to Cradle’, together with Stef Kranendijk, CEO of Cradle to Cradle company”, quoting from the electronic meeting oracle that serves as a badge, and schedule, and notebook, and can be set to vibrate when a particular person is nearby (etc.). The device is somewhere between useful, intriguing, and annoying; the speakers are here to talk about a different way to structure a system that provides (for example) cell phones.
Today, you buy a new cell phone, and the old one goes somewhere, perhaps to be recycled — but not very well, because it contains so many materials in intimate contact.
The speakers are promoting a system in which one buys, not the device, but the service that the device provides. When a new cellphone displaces the phone of an elder generation, the carcass returns to the manufacturer… where machines that are (for example) specialized to handle that model of cellphone can do something smarter than shredding it — separating indium-containing parts for indium recovery, lead-contining parts for lead recovery, and so forth. The device itself would of course be designed to facilitate the process.
Less structural entropy, greater efficiency, better resource efficiency.
As one speaker asked, to you want to own indium, or get a service?
Up now: The remarkable Dennis Pamlin, and the story of 21st Century Office (here’s the trailer).
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