(excerpt from an article in April/May 2001 Green@Work Magazine)

by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

If you are leading or designing at a forward-thinking company today, you are probably striving to be more eco-efficient in an attempt to do something "good" for the environment. Essentially a damage management strategy, eco-efficiency works to make a system "less-bad," not the same thing as being "good." In fact efficiency, per se, has no value. It is simply a tool for a larger system, which can be positive or negative. (An efficient Nazi, for example, is a more terrible thing.) If the world's industries are ultimately destructive from a design perspective, making them more efficient will not help much.

But eco-efficiency's damage management can be a valuable transitional step. As part of a much larger agenda, together we have developed five distinct steps from eco-efficiency to eco-effectiveness which we use to help our clients turn around. These steps will help you slow down, figure out where you need to go, and make the journey to your vital new goal. We'll be describing these steps in alternating Web site monthly features over the next several months.

This month we start with the first step, Free of . . .

We find Free of . . . quite funny. To proudly announce that something does not contain a problematic substance is a curious thing to do. Consider serving a meal and describing it to your guests as "poison-free." Poison-free is not necessarily a mouth-watering prospect. But in the marketplace, the opposite appears to be true: to describe a product as being Free of . . . something is actually a selling point. So when we consider how to use the Free of . . . strategy in a productive way, it helps to first recognize the potential absurdity of the concept, and to understand that positive selection and definition of a product's ingredients is the ultimate goal.

Let's look at one of the less productive ways the Free of . . . label can be used. For example, some detergents display the message "phosphate free." This announcement on the box of detergent makes what the manufacturer perceives as the customer (whom we perceive as the "consumer" because they actually consume the soap--it goes back to the biosphere) less fearful because the product is free of phosphate. But the manufacturer hasn't necessarily told you what they've substituted for the phosphate, which might even be worse. In some cases, the phosphate has been replaced by toxins far more dangerous for the ecosystem than phosphate.

When used within an eco-effective framework, the Free of . . . strategy is an important first step towards transforming the making of things. A PVC-free product, for example, is less bad than one which contains PVC. If something is free of substances that can potentially cause harm and are bio-accumulative (what we call "x substances") such as PVC, cadmium, and lead, then eliminating those compounds is definitely a productive step.

One substance we urgently wish to see phased out is mercury. The mercury in thermometers sold to hospitals and consumers in the United States each year is estimated to total 4.3 tons. It only takes one gram to contaminate the fish in a 20 acre lake. Thermometers represent only about one percent of the mercury used in the U.S.; the largest percentage is used for industrial switches of various kinds. An industries-wide phase-out of mercury for this use and replacement with new technology is, from our perspective, a crucial Free of . . . agenda.

We would encourage the quick phase-out of x substances in existing designs. But this is not the best designers and leaders can do. The most prosperous strategy will be to select the positive ingredients that we really want to find in our products, our systems, our culture, and the world.

Also read the June 2001 Monthly Feature, explaining Step 2: Personal Preferences (from scientific experienc)