DESIGNING THE FUTURE

If coal plants release mercury--and mercury is a neurotoxin that damages children's brains--then reducing the amount of mercury in emissions doesn't stop that. It just says, "We'll tell you at what rate you can dispense death." Being less bad is not being good. Our idea is to make production so clean, there's nothing bad left to regulate. This is extremely interesting to people of all political persuasions--those who love the environment and those who want commerce free of regulation.

Can you really have industry so clean it requires no controls?

[At the Rohner textile plant in Switzerland] we designed a fabric safe enough to eat. The manufacturing process uses no mutagens, carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, heavy-metal contaminants or chemicals that cause ozone depletion, allergies, skin desensitization or plant and fish toxicity. We screened 8,000 commonly used chemicals and ended up with 38. When inspectors measured the effluent water, they thought their instruments were broken. The water was as clean as Swiss drinking water. A garden club started using the waste trimmings as mulch. Workers no longer had to wear protective clothing. And it eliminated regulatory paperwork, so they've reduced the cost of production by 20 percent. Why spend money on paperwork, when you can spend it delivering service or paying your workers a living wage?

Where would I find this fabric?

It was selected for upholstery on the new Airbus 380. It's made of worsted wool to keep you at the right temperature--cool when it's hot and warm when it's cold--and [a plant fiber called] ramie to wick away moisture. It's a high-performance-design product. Going ecological doesn't mean downgrading performance criteria.

How do you get more industries to adopt these ideals?