University of Virginia Architecture School Dean William McDonough '73, one of the world's leading designers of environmentally friendly buildings, criticized society last night for failing to protect the environment and for wasting limited natural resources.
McDonough, the winner of the 1996 Presidential Award for Sustainable Development -- the nation's top environmental award -- is renowned for designing ecologically intelligent buildings, including The Gap Corporate Campus and Nike's Europe Headquarters.
But most of society, he told a crowd of more than 100 students and professors in 105 Dartmouth last night, is ecologically unintelligent.
"Our system is badly designed," McDonough said. "It is designed to persistently toxify the planet, and we must look at it and see the other opportunities we have to work with."
He called for an expansion of recycling beyond newspapers and aluminum cans. Society's "cradle-to-grave" production philosophy must be replaced with a "cradle-to-cradle" approach, which allows products to be returned to the manufacturer when they become obsolete.
Recycling of technical products -- like television sets -- is particularly important, since they eventually may be transformed into hazardous waste.
"You have to ask if the product can go back to soil safely or to organics forever," McDonough said. "If the answer is no, then it is a product that shouldn't be made."
McDonough said television buyers should be able to ask manufacturers to exchange old sets for updated models. This would relieve the owner of disposal responsibilities and would give the manufacturer the chance to reuse the parts.
"We used to think we could throw things away, but away has gone away," McDonough said. "We have to redesign in the context that things aren't going away."
His lecture, titled "Design, Ecology, Ethics and The Making of Things," was part of The George Link Jr. Environmental Awareness Lecture Series.
