Topic 2 7 eco-design principles with examples

🡪 Example: ECO-INDUSTRIAL PARK like Kalundborg Symbiosis in Denmark [http://www.symbiosis.dk/en/]

🡪 An eco-industrial park is a “community of businesses that cooperate with each other and with the local community to efficiently share resources (information, materials, energy, infrastructure, and natural habitat), leading to economic gains, improvements in environmental quality, and equitable enhancement of human resources for business and the local community” (President’s Council on Sustainable Development, 1996).

The requirement to sustain the integrity of the structure and function of both natural and managed ecosystems.

🡪 Example: ECO COMMUNITY | ECO VILLAGE [https://ecovillage.org/]

🡪 An eco-village is “a sustainable community formed by people who share a farmland or an urban space”.

The appropriateness of emulating the inherent designs of nature in anthropogenic management systems.

🡪 EXAMPLE: BIOMIMICRY like Reversible Smart Glue Inspired by Mussels [https://asknature.org/]

🡪 Biomimicry “is learning from and then emulating nature’s forms, processes, and ecosystems to create more sustainable designs.”

The need to make progress to a sustainable economy through greater reliance on renewable resources and more focus on recycling, reusing, and efficient use of materials and energy.

🡪 GREEN BUILDINGS like The European Portal for Energy Efficiency in Buildings [https://www.buildup.eu/en]

🡪 Green or sustainable building “refers to both a structure and the application of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building’s life-cycle: from planning to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition”.

The use of ecological economics (or full-cost accounting) to comprehensively take resource depletion and environmental damage into consideration and thereby address issues of natural debt.

🡪 EXAMPLE: ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT like the use of calculators [https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/#/questionnaire]

🡪 Ecological economics is “an interdisciplinary field defined by a set of concrete problems or challenges related to governing economic activity in a way that promotes human well-being, sustainability, and justice”.

The need to conserve natural ecosystems and indigenous biodiversity at viable levels.

🡪 EXAMPLE: Use of plants that fight pollution like Norway maple (Acer platanoides), the best among anti-smog tree is used in the roundabouts in the cities.

🡪 Biodiversity is “the variety and variability of life on Earth – the variety of animals, plants, fungi, and even microorganisms like bacteria that make up the natural world”.

The desirability of increasing environmental literacy to build social support for sustainable development, resource conservation, and protection of the natural world.

🡪 EXAMPLE: 17 Sustainable Development Goals and their actions, indicators, projects [https://sdgs.un.org/goals]

🡪 Sustainable development was defined in 1987 (Our Common Future – Brundtland report) as a: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.