The middle way

With my son’s birthday approaching he advised us that his texting technique was now so fast that he had completely burned up his phone. So off we toddled to the phone shop, returning a few hours later with a new phone and charger. The phone went into immediate use and the charger went into the drawer with the other dozen or so chargers, all designed to service only the manufacturer’s model(s).

Provoked by a number of recent articles in BSJ, this got me thinking about sustainability. Why can’t all phone chargers be the same? Why not just agree a specification and all have the same transformer, leads and sockets? That way we would only need one charger in each house and the rest could cease to exist, saving all the time, cost and materials at a stroke.

But why stop with chargers, why not have one type of battery and one type of phone? That would cut out even more waste and make recycling so much easier. But when do you stop? I’d hate to have to carry around one of those early phones, the ones that resembled a house brick and dimmed the lights in the street when the charger was switched on.

Perhaps a better way forward is to keep development going until we have worked out how to get rid of chargers altogether. Of course this probably first requires the elimination of electrical resistance which causes much of the energy to be lost as heat. Superconductor technology can do this, but we’d need to crack room temperature functionality first or we’d all have to use gloves and ear muffs while using our phones as currently superconductors only work at -135°C. Then efficiency would be so good that the tiny little battery needed could be photo-charged every time you bought the phone into the light by taking it out of your pocket and, Bob’s your uncle, no chargers needed.

And there in a nutshell you have the conundrum. On one hand are the environmentalists who believe we shouldn’t consume any new resources, we should recycle everything possible and return to traditional methods. On the other are those who believe this leads to stagnation and decline and who preach the mantra of continuous improvement. They point out that the world is far from perfect and that many of its most acute problems can only be solved by allowing resources to be used in the pursuit of technological advancements that will provide us with a world without disease, limitless energy and an abundance of food. Of course, as environmentalists retort, there is no such place as paradise and the future is just as likely to be one of poverty and starvation as everything the earth had to offer is used up.

I don’t want to be responsible for hastening the demise of my grandchildren’s grandchildren

So where do I stand on this matter? Actually I’m in both camps. On one hand, I agree that we do not have the right to consume the limited resources of the world. They are there for all generations to come and I don’t want to be responsible for hastening the demise of my grandchildren’s grandchildren. But on the other, I believe we have a duty to leave the world a better place than we found it – which means sacrificing resources for the greater good.

In the end it all comes down to wants and needs. I believe it is perfectly acceptable to make value judgements on whether the need warrants the action. What I do not believe is acceptable is to blindly follow the leader, doing what they want without challenging them as to why it is necessary. Yet that is what many people do with their clients. Difficult as it may be, we all need to learn the skills to challenge our clients, without antagonising them, to ensure there is a legitimate reason for doing what has been asked, and that we are not aware of a better way of doing it. Then we can sleep easy, secure in the knowledge that we have done our best to use the minimum of the earth’s scarce resources as wisely as possible.

Kevin Thomas is founder of Visionality, which specialises in performance improvement in the built environment