Back-casting – a method promoted by The Natural Step. The idea is to encourage organisations to think about sustainability by projecting 10, 20 or 50 years ahead to where they would like to be. Back-casting is the process that enables you to start from where you want to get to, and figure out the steps you’d need to take to work backwards to where you are now. So, you might set a target of ‘climate neutrality by 2030’. Back-casting would fill in the action you’d need to take from 2030 backwards.
Bottom of the Pyramid – a term coined to encapsulate the growing recognition that helping the world’s poor does not have to be down to charity but can be good business. This is not necessarily exploitative since it can serve the needs of those who are usually off its radar screens. It includes developing products or solutions specifically for this market, rather than trying to adapt products that were designed for developed markets or relatively wealthy customers.
Cleaner Development Mechanism (CDM) – part of the Kyoto Protocol package, the CDM requires industrialised countries to buy about 200-400 million tons (CO2 equivalent) greenhouse gas emissions per year (between 2008 and 2012) through projects that help developing countries become more sustainable.
Climate neutrality – This involves off-setting any activities which affect climate change (such as carbon emissions) so that your overall impact on the climate is neutral. It can apply to either the whole company or to a specific product. This would need a combination of reducing emissions or waste in the first place or, where unavoidable, doing something to counteract the effects.
Closed loop - This can be within a production system, allowing you to reuse and recycle water and energy, for example, or within a larger system, allowing products to be reused, remanufactured or recycled. It means moving from a linear flow of goods and materials to a more cyclical one.
Corporate social responsibility - A growing function in business life, based on the belief that business can't isolate itself from the society in which it operates. It includes environmental responsibility, employee conditions and ethical behaviour generally.
Dematerialisation - This can mean making a product lighter or smaller, either by miniaturisation or by making it multifunctional, so reducing the amount of material per unit of performance; or it can mean moving from goods to services.
Design for environment (DfE) - A general term for designing things to minimise their environmental impact. This could be by making them more energy efficient, easier to recycle, remanufacture or repair, or using materials that are less toxic, or renewable or recyclable. Sometimes called eco-design or green design (though the latter is less commonly used). It could also include designing, say, a service that would reduce the need for products (see 'dematerialisation' above).
Design for sustainability (DfS) - Also known as sustainable design. Although sometimes used interchangeably with design for environment (above), design for sustainability is more of an umbrella term, since it includes consideration of all the same environmental issues and social and economic issues.
Eco-efficiency - A term that links business resource efficiency to environmental responsibility through more sustainable processes and products - the 'eco' refers to both 'economic' and 'ecology'.
Ecological footprint - The amount of land, based on a global average productivity, needed to service the consumption patterns of a given population.
Ecological rucksack - The 'hidden history' of a product. A laptop might look neat and sleek, but what went into its production in terms of material and energy flows? Such rucksacks can be hundreds or thousands of times greater than the end product.
Emissions trading - using market mechanisms to reduce carbon or other emissions in aggregate, by allowing those who produce less than their allotted amount to sell ‘credits’ to those who will exceed their permitted emissions.
Industrial ecology - This involves trying to set up systems that allow the 'waste' of one process to fuel another, while minimising transport needs. For instance, putting the Marmite factory next to the brewery.
Life cycle design - Looking at the whole life cycle, as some say, from 'cradle to grave' or preferably 'cradle to cradle' (see 'closed loop' above). Also linked to various tools and techniques for assessing the life-cycle impacts of a product or material, known collectively as life cycle analysis, or LCA.
Mitigation banking - a mechanism being used in the US which encourages people to invest in nature conservation, such as protecting, restoring or even creating wetlands, in return for being able to sell ‘credits’ to those who feel a need to destroy valuable habitats. It’s part of the process of internalising environmental costs which have often been externalised (that is, do not appear on the balance sheet) and therefore ignored.
Pollution prevention - As the name suggests, this is about designing pollution (waste and toxic emissions) out of the system rather than finding ways to clean it up. 3M made huge savings through its Pollution Prevention Pays programme. See also 'zero waste' and 'resource productivity'.
Product service systems (PSS) - Finding ways to design a system or service that reduces the need for energy and material input while delivering the same or better functionality.
Product take-back - A growing body of EC and other legislation obliging manufacturers to take responsibility for their products once the user/customer disposes of them. Similar to producer responsibility which also makes manufacturers consider the disposal of their products after they've left the factory gates - a great impetus to engage in life-cycle thinking and sustainable design.
Rebound effect - Sometimes greater efficiency at a microlevel leads to less efficiency at a macrolevel. For example, if cars become much more fuel efficient, it can lower the cost of driving so that people use their cars more and in aggregate more fuel is consumed and emissions increase.
Recycle - This can refer to using recycled materials, or designing things using materials that can be recycled at the end of the product's life, or designing things so that the product itself can be recycled. Some materials are recyclable in principle but lack a recycling infrastructure or market - the UK Government's WRAP programme is specifically aimed at encouraging a market for recycled materials, to bridge this gap.
Remanufacture - Xerox takes back its products and refurbishes any components that can be reused, or recycles materials that cannot. Therefore a 'new' Xerox machine will contain parts or materials that have been used before. They have saved millions of dollars doing this and have ensured that all remanufactured products meet the same quality standards as 'virgin', thereby removing the 'second-hand' stigma of remanufactured goods.
Resource productivity - Coming at zero waste from the other end, as it were - Zero waste = 100% resource productivity. Getting more performance or benefit out of every unit of material or energy input.
Sustainable - Meeting the social, economic and environmental needs of ourselves and others, improving the quality of life for all, without compromising future well-being in the process. Ideally it also means moving to a system where we can repair some of the damage already done. Think of all systems flourishing.
Teddy bear factor - A large proportion of discarded products still function, so just designing something to be durable may not be enough. The missing teddy bear factor is what makes people want to keep and care for a product - the emotional bond between the user/owner and the thing. Think of the difference between cars that just look old and dated and those which acquire the status of 'classics'.
Zero waste - Self-explanatory but an explicit holy grail of some organisations; also ‘zero emissions’.