A Cow Ate My Cell Phone!

The saying that your past can affect your future has never been more evident within the world as it is now. As resources are being deplenished, researchers are studying multiple ecosystems and developing new concepts to implement in order to preserve what is left of our natural resources. Within retailing industries, many of these new concepts are being discovered in order to change products from having a cradle-to-grave lifecycle to having a cradle-to-cradle lifecycle. Meaning, that once a product has served its initial service and is discarded it will be biodegradable.

The video Rhoener Textiles discusses biodegradability in-depth breaking it into in two forms of metabolisms: biological and technological. When a product is considered to be a biological metabolism, it can be broken down after its initial use into biological nutrients through different microorganisms and animals relatively quickly. If a product is considered to be a technological metabolism, it can be broken down into technical nutrients and recycled into different forms of technology using its different pieces. This concept of categorizing products was developed by researchers, William McDonough and Michael Braungart and is further discussed in their book, Cradle to Cradle.

In this book, McDonough and Braungart provide creative ways to develop products to be biodegradable as well as reasons why it would benefit consumers and businesses to adopt these products. One particular chapter entitled “Waste=Food,” discusses how all product’s lifecycles should be developed to have no waste. Where every piece of the product can be recycled in some format, whether it is by nature or by technical use. Other researchers have began to develop products based off these concepts, such as Je-Hyun Kim, featured on inhabitat.com in the article The Biodegradable Grass Cell Phone, by Mike Chino. Chino discusses Kim’s new invention of a cell phone made of grass that “automatically biodegrades” after two years, about the same length of most cell phone contracts.

My concept for the future stimulates from this idea, where technology will be produced to live for a certain amount of time and then be disassembled into the two different metabolisms, biological and technological. Instead of using plastic shells for the outer protection of items, such as cell phones and televisions, producers will use certain biological nutrients, such as plants like grass or weeds. They will then cover the metal pieces with a protective coating as to not contaminate the biological nutrients and when the items service is finished they will be able to upcycle the product by returning it to the manufacturer. The manufacturer will be able to toss the outer-shell as it is considered a product of consumption and take the technical nutrients and reuse them in a new product. My concept for the future will also require new laws to be placed into affect, where retailers will not necessarily have to buy back the product, but will have to give the consumer a type of incentive, such as a discounted price on the new product they purchase, similar to trade-ins at car dealerships today. As much as these new laws seem as though they might hurt retailers, they would actually benefit them by assisting them in building long-term customer relationships.

In conclusion, I expect that the future will still hold many hi-tech items; they will just have been modified to be more biodegradable. I also think in order to motivate large corporations to adopt new sustainable ideas, there will have to be certain laws put in place, while to motivate consumers to recycle, laws might be required, but incentives may be applied as well.