(excerpt from an article in March/April 2002 Green@Work magazine)
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

Over the past decade, design for sustainability has made great leaps from theory to practice. In many fields, designers have begun to apply ecological intelligence to the making of things, creating an emerging hope for the transformation of human industry. Indeed, design mirroring the safe, regenerative productivity of nature—what we call Cradle to Cradle Design—is already creating products and manufacturing systems that are not simply sustainable, but yield sustaining growth in economic prosperity, ecological intelligence, and social value. In this ongoing series of case studies we are exploring the ways in which innovative companies working with MBDC are putting intelligent design to work in pursuit of this wide spectrum of value.

The story of Herman Miller's "journey to sustainability" is an especially good example of the step-by-step process of integrating ecologically intelligent design into business practice. From hiring dedicated staff to pursue a new design protocol to engaging its supply chain in materials assessment, the Michigan-based furniture company is modeling a comprehensive, long-term commitment to sustaining industry.

Herman Miller is no stranger to leadership. In January, Forbes magazine once again selected the company for its "Platinum 400" list of the Best Big Companies in America. Herman Miller's furniture designers have included the likes of Charles and Ray Eames, and many of the company's creations are in the collections of major museums. Its Environmental Quality Action Team involves more than 300 employees working to improve environmental performance. And the company's "GreenHouse," a 295,000 square-foot landmark of sustainable workplace design (designed by William McDonough + Partners), won Business Week's first "Good Design is Good Business" award in 1997 for its documented benefits to both the top and bottom lines.

Many companies might have stopped there. Herman Miller's leaders, however, understood that the company's impact extended well beyond its home in western Michigan through supply and distribution chains that literally span the world. Continuing to pursue the company's commitment to sustainability, they reasoned, required a thorough knowledge of the materials that went into Herman Miller furniture, as well as a reliable, coherent way to measure their environmental performance. This kind of analysis is just what the MBDC Protocol offers.

Herman Miller initiated its ongoing, long-term engagement with MBDC with a one-year "discovery" project. Senior staff members were appointed to an advisory team charged with integrating Cradle to Cradle Design into Herman Miller's highly disciplined product development system. This interdisciplinary team represented key sectors of the company that would analyze and implement new environmental performance measures recommended by MBDC.

"As a company, we wanted to approach this holistically," said former advisory team member Keith Winn. "We didn't want to just develop a single product, we wanted to totally integrate the measurement of environmental performance into everything we do in the product development cycle."

Herman Miller and MBDC began by "deconstructing" the Aeron chair, one of the company's top performers. As team members traced the chair's materials through the supply chain they learned that gathering and using information on product ingredients would be ineffective unless the process was built into Herman Miller's organizational framework. Upon MBDC's recommendation, the advisory group assembled the Design for Environment team (DFE) to fill the missing links in Herman Miller's staffing. A chemical engineer would incorporate findings from MBDC assessments into an evolving materials database. A purchasing agent would act as a conduit and data source between the supply chain and Herman Miller's entire purchasing team, creating a coherent communication network that would ensure consistent procurement choices throughout the company.

Working closely with the DFE team, MBDC tailored its design framework and its chemical and material assessment protocol into a system that could be used by Herman Miller's designers and engineers. The program included a multi-faceted assessment, which analyzes materials for human health and eco-toxicological effects, recycle-ability, recycled content and/or use of renewable resources, and product design for disassembly. The analysis was embedded in a step-by-step approach to materials selection and product design.

Adapting quickly, Herman Miller's engineers embraced the new protocol. "We got to a point," said original DFE team leader Fred Pettinga, "where we thought, 'Hey, this is a workable thing. It's something you can put some data against. You can track progress. And it's something that an engineer can understand."

The DFE team and MBDC then began to engage suppliers as partners in applying new design criteria. Initially, the team selected more than 100 materials for MBDC to assess. Findings from the assessments were logged onto a new database, which manipulated the data and provided summary assessment results to engineers. These results were sent to suppliers, as were requests to investigate possible alternatives for problematic or questionable materials. Herman Miller has now begun to ask suppliers submitting new materials to include with their specifications an assessment of the material that meets the human health and environmental relevance criteria of MBDC's Protocol.

Herman Miller's new product development protocol has identified several compelling opportunities for creating economic value. The streamlining and added coherence of the purchasing process makes the company a more nimble player in the market, which can have a very positive impact on Herman Miller's purchasing power. And now, said Winn, Herman Miller can "begin to predict what materials might come back to industry for future use."

The company is also confident that a product with strong environmental performance does better in the marketplace, which means sales may be higher and production costs potentially lower. And when a company is producing a product that is environmentally sound, workers are exposed to less harm, regulatory restraints become obsolete, and materials can maintain high value through many product life-cycles.

Clearly, this is not just innovation for innovation's sake. The new product development protocol, the materials database, and Herman Miller's emerging ability to track the flow of product ingredients sets in motion a replicable process of ecologically intelligent product design that echoes throughout the company and the industry. With its widespread impact, the whole process may well become known simply as good design.

Learn more about Herman Miller's commitment to sustainability and the environment on their website.

Previous Monthly Features:

May 2001, "The Five Steps to Reinventing the World" (Step 1: Free of...)

June 2001, "Positive Design Decisions in an Imperfect Market" (Step 2: Personal Preference)

July 2001, "Textile Mills Lead Another Revolution"

August 2001, "Synthetic Materials for Eco-Effective Design"

September 2001, "Transforming Product Design within Current Production Systems" (Step 3: The Passive Positive List)

October 2001, "Do you know what they want to do now?" by Tim O'Brien, Director, Ford Environmental Quality Office

November 2001, "The Breakthrough to True Eco-Effectiveness" (Step 4: The Active Positive List)

December 2001, "Just Doing It. Nike's Track to Ecologically Intelligent Products" by Darcy Winslow, Nike Director of Women's Footwear

January 2002, "A Footprint Worth Celebrating" (Step 5: Reinvention)

February 2002, "The Promise of Nylon 6"

March 2002, "Making the Environment a Corporate Strategic Priority" by Gary Mayo, Visteon Corporation, Global Director of Environmental Affairs