I was thinking about my personal dependence on oil as I was getting ready for the World Without Oil (WWO) symposium in January, powering my hair dryer, considering my tube of toothpaste, my toilet seat, the emissions from cultivating and transporting my coffee beans, and on and on.
Let’s face it, as biologist Dr. Dayna Baumeister said at the symposium, “Oil defines all of our realities, not to mention all the realities of every other species on the planet.”
From provocative presentations like Mirko Zadini’s reflections on global responses to the 1973 oil crisis (including the emergence of board games like “Oil War” and “Energy Crisis”), to curious predictions shared by Bruce Mau (we might have 50,000-60,000 years left of oil extraction), it was refreshing to hear important questions being raised about what so-called “industrialized” societies can learn from indigenous communities and traditional knowledges in the transition off oil.
This marriage of “old” and “new” thinking, industrial production and handcraft, will require unlearning, relearning, new learning.
· Mau asked the audience to reframe the discussion – can we imagine a beautiful future with oil? Not because we should, but because we can. It would be embarrassing if we don’t.
· Fritz Haeg and Baumeister reminded us that we are nature. Nature is not something we escape to on the weekend.
· Baumeister shared her thoughts on biomimicry as a practice of deep remembering of who we are as a species. It’s time to throw away our egos, admit we don’t know what we’re doing and ask for help. It’s time to leave an era of extraction and borrow some recipes from the biosphere and our co-inhabitants.
The calibre of thought leadership at the symposium was inspiring, but I left the symposium hoping future dialogues about oil venture will evolve into a more cross-disciplinary debate.
What else was missing from the day?
Perhaps a discussion about why Canada was named the “colossal fossil” by Climate Action Network International at the 2009 Summit on Climate Change held in December in Copenhagen. Few countries have had the dishonour of receiving three consecutive fossil awards.
Despite the dishonor, Canada continued to aim low at the Copenhagen talks, not letting a day pass without earning a Fossil of the Day award. This “prize,” bestowed on countries blocking progress at the summit, was awarded daily by a coalition of 400 leading international NGOs.
Let’s not forget that the Oil Sands are the fastest growing source of global warming pollution in Canada.
Extensions of the Word Without Oil symposium that cannot be overlooked:
· A film called “Petropolis” is a fantastic resource for a deeper understanding of how Canada is transforming the Athabasca Watershed at a spectacular rate to fuel. This way of life requires some serious rethinking. Peter Mettler’s aerial perspectives of the Oil Sands in Northern Alberta offer cryptically beautiful insight into the magnitude of the impact of oil extraction and an embarrassing reminder that we are facing the end of cheap oil.
· David Orr’s 2009 book, “Down to the Wire,” addresses the reality that we have already exploited the cheapest and most accessible oil: “Having exhausted the easiest cheapest and nearest sources of oil, what remains is deeper down, farther out, harder to refine and often located in places where the politics are unfathomably contentious – as a result it has become far more expensive to extract, refine, transport and defend our access to it.”
· Hubbert’s peak theory, which accurately predicted U.S. oil production would peak in the 1960’s, also applies to our global economy. Orr reminds us that we are not just facing the end of cheap oil, but the end of a way of life built on flimsy assumptions of easy mobility, convenience, and dependability of long distance transport of food and materials.
It is dangerous to talk about oil in isolation from climate destabilization, habitat destruction and consumption. We are faced with a convergence of challenges of an unprecedented, global scale. This is what Orr calls humankind’s long emergency.
A world without oil is also an unprecedented design problem. Our long emergency will require the genius, commitment and passion of all the disciplines.
Nadine Gudz
Director, Sustainability Strategy
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Nadine Gudz, Director, Sustainability Strategy, InterfaceFLOR Canada
What an honour it is to present at the World Without Oil (WWO) symposium on a topic that warrants far more than one day of discussion. Oil is the one material, the one resource that’s in nearly everything we see. Yet, when we talk about making the world a “greener place,” we often talk about every issue but oil. The social, economic and ecological impact of oil extraction is no “flavour of the month” topic. This is a challenge of a lifetime.
Communities around the world are stepping up to the challenge through initiatives like the transition towns movement. How can the design community help facilitate humankind’s transition off oil? Presenting the WWO symposium is an opportunity to support the design community, stir thought leadership and action around systems change toward a more just, closed loop economy.
InterfaceFLOR is the world’s largest producer of carpet tile, and we have a plan to get off oil – completely. Our goal to eliminate our dependency on oil (and other virgin raw materials) by redesigning our products, processes and purpose makes InterfaceFLOR’s operations more efficient, inspires us to innovate, and helps us become less vulnerable to the volatile price of oil. As Interface founder and chairman, Ray Anderson says, getting off oil is part of an even more ambitious and challenging commitment that we have made under the umbrella of “Mission Zero”; that is, to get off ALL fossil fuel-derived energy (coal) and materials (natural gas) by 2020. That means using renewable energy, and closed loop, recycled petro-derived or naturally renewable materials. And beyond those commitments, we intend to eliminate any other negative environmental impacts our operations and products may still have, as we strive for zero environmental footprint.
Having worked as a sustainability practitioner and researcher for more than 15 years, I have often felt frustrated and disenchanted with the slow pace of real, systemic change – going beyond purchasing “green” products (can we really “buy” our way to a sustainable future?) and rethinking our relationship with one another and the biosphere that supports life on Earth. Sustainability for me really gets at the recognition that all life is interconnected. My actions here, today, may impact someone or something else, here or somewhere else, now and/or in the future.
As “A World without Oil” approaches, I’m thinking about how this event might influence the lenses through which the design community sees their work and their relationship with the natural world. I am anticipating a day filled with rich debate and open dialogue to raise tough questions and encourage self reflection. I hope new ideas and collaborations may emerge from the symposium leading to ongoing dialogue and action. Overall, I am excited about the event’s living legacy through the future actions to be inspired by the event.
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Oil is the one material, the one resource, that’s inside nearly everything we see. That includes:
Permanent press clothing
Flip-flops
Fake fur
Ballpoint pens
Ink
Computers
Copiers
Magic markers
Telephones
Microfilm
Cameras
Earphones
Footballs
Knitting needles
Tennis racquets
Golf balls
Stuffed animals
Adhesive bandages
Rubbing alcohol
Hair coloring
Soap
Cough syrup
Hair spray
Lipstick
Trash bags
Egg cartons
Freezer bags
Candles
Wax paper
Carpet tile
Nylon spatulas
Formica
Garden hoses
Plungers
FLOOR wax
Spray paint
Balloons
Dog toys
Flea collars
Shopping bags
Videocassettes
Credit cards
Dice
Ink
Dishwashing liquid
Paintbrushes
Antiseptics
Dolls
Tires
Fishing lures
Deodorant
Tents
Sweaters
FLOOR wax
Model cars
Electrician’s tape
Soap dishes
Combs
Soft contact Lenses
Shampoo
Cameras
Fishing rods
Hand lotion
Dice
Ballet tights
Plastic hangers
Pantyhose
As a sustainability specialist, I often find myself giving presentations on how to choose environmentally-responsible finishes, including carpet. At some point, I like to ask my audience, “Where does carpet come from?” I push until someone nails the answer: oil. (Or, as I like to show in my slides, plastic sheep!)
Looking at the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) footprint of carpet tile, extracting and processing oil to create nylon dominates the environmental impacts. When we tally and analyze the environmental impacts from every phase of a carpet tile’s life (raw material extraction and processing, manufacturing, installation and use, transportation, and end of life recycling or disposal), the majority of impacts occur in that first phase of turning oil into nylon. In fact, our 3rd party verified Environmental Product Declaration (EPD®) confirms our own LCA, showing how across all environmental impact categories, more than 60% of the impacts occur in the extraction of raw materials.
What does this mean to a company like InterfaceFLOR? It means that using oil to make nylon is unsustainable. Not just because of the LCA footprint, but also because oil is a non-renewable resource and creates social, environmental, and financial instability. We know that we can’t continue along our society’s status quo of take-make-waste, and knowing which of our raw materials is doing the most damage means knowing which raw material we need to replace. To meet our Mission Zero™ goal, we must replace virgin nylon with a renewable resource.
For years, InterfaceFLOR has been working towards completely closing the loop on our carpet tile backing, but the missing link was how to recycle nylon, at least until 2007…
In 2007, InterfaceFLOR cracked the nut by uncovering a method to cleanly separate the carpet nylon from the backing, allowing us to introduce the first post-consumer content type 6,6 nylon carpet tile in the world. In 2009, we introduced post-consumer content type 6 nylon. We use this recycled fiber as a raw material to make our Convert™ carpet tile designs. The styles in the Convert Platform contain a total of 64-73% recycled content including 32-35% post-consumer recycled content (as of September 2009). Check out our EPD for 3rd-party verification of the reduced environmental impacts associated with these products.
InterfaceFLOR invested in an entire system that addresses both the raw material impacts as well as the end of life impacts of our products. Our recycled content isn’t from another industry; it’s drawing from our own history of products that we (and our competitors) made in years past. Using our own product as a raw material for making new product is a major breakthrough for us and the carpet industry. This is what “closing the loop” is truly about, and it moves us closer to our goal of getting off oil.
Lindsay James
Director of Strategic Sustainability
Backing Carpet into a Corner: Moving from Promises to Reality
InterfaceFLOR is making strides towards decreasing our need for virgin raw materials and increasing our product’s post-consumer content for our customers, all while reducing our overall environmental footprint.
For many people, recycling conjures up blue plastic bins and bottle drives. But recycling is a design principal, a law of nature, a source of creativity and innovation. Just a few years ago the word recycled carpet tile was looked at with cynicism. InterfaceFLOR decided to back carpet tile into a corner by working towards closing the loop on carpet backing. Since 1994, Interface has reclaimed more than 178 million pounds of carpet, and we anticipate reclaiming over 40 million pounds in 2009. All InterfaceFLOR and competitors’ vinyl backed carpet (commercial and residential, broadloom and tile), regardless of the face fiber used, can be recycled. Through patented technology, InterfaceFLOR cleanly separates the face fiber and backing of nearly any carpet type. Separated GlasBac® backing and similar competitor backings are recycled into new GlasBacRE backing using our Cool Blue™ backing technology. As part of InterfaceFLOR’s Mission Zero™ commitment to eliminate its environmental impact by 2020, it was critical that the process we created and implemented made good sense environmentally as well as economically. To that end, our carpet reclamation and recycling process (we call it ReEntry® 2.0) has lower embodied energy use than other recycling systems in use in the carpet industry today. Furthermore, not only will ReEntry 2.0 keep more carpet out of landfills, it will provide a steady stream of post-consumer recycled materials across the industry, essentially putting a value on what was formerly viewed as a waste product. As we continue to support the vision of the radical industrialist, our commitment to cyclical processes will help us to continue on our mission to zero.
George Bandy Jr.
Vice President of Sustainability/Diversity Strategy
Durability: the missing consideration in ‘sustainable’ products
Research using life cycle assessment illustrates the number one way to reduce the environmental impact of carpet — keep it on the floor for as long as possible. With the flurry of new ‘green’ products on the market, purchasers are finding that many do not hold up to everyday wear and tear, and eventually fail prematurely. The numerous listings of ‘green’ products fail to mention how the products perform in real world conditions, and are thus potentially misleading. If it won’t last, it’s not green. So how do purchasers evaluate performance?
There are a few standard industry tests, but manufacturers debate their relationship to real world wear. Therefore, InterfaceFLOR created our own machine to test durability, called the Appearance Retention Test (ART). ART simulates soiling, wear and routine maintenance for 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years or more and continually demonstrates that our carpet is made to last. InterfaceFLOR refuses, as a matter of policy, to impose an inferior product on our customers in the name of sustainability. Our products must meet or exceed all standard performance and aesthetic requirements of the marketplace, while also contributing to InterfaceFLOR’s Mission Zero™ promise to eliminate any negative environmental impact by 2020.
Some manufacturers tout “100% recyclable” as their green attribute. They are not considering the transportation, reprocessing, remanufacturing and reinstallation, all of which consume valuable resources and contribute to a greater environmental footprint. To truly reduce the footprint, we need to make it last.
I believe it’s time to move beyond “eco-sexy” and towards eco-functional. LEED™ has driven focus on recycled content and low off-gassing, yet does not require durable and high performing materials. This is the next step toward becoming truly sustainable. The most sustainable product is the one that lasts.
Melissa Vernon
Director of Sustainable Strategy
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