Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development - 11:15 - 11:30 Nutrient Certificates a new paradigm counterpart to emissions trading - Katja Hansen (Academic Chair ‘Cradle to Cradle for Innovation and Quality’, RSM)

1. Nutrient Certificates
A new business paradigm as a counterpart to emissions trading
Katja Hansen
Academic Chair ‘Cradle to Cradle for Innovation and Quality’, RSM
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

2. The nutrient value of food is accepted practice in business…
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

3. As well as the content declaration for many products:
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

4. ….why not do the same for other products, including buildings?
Design for Disassembly
Technical Nutrients
Biological Nutrients
Defined Use Period
Defined (Recycled) Content
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

5. However…
Emissions Trading
Less bad: minimize, reduce, offset
 compensation for negative impacts
 possible market distortions due to non-
traceable materials
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

6. Current certificates are missing the positive benefits.
• Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) catalog the negative
environmental impacts of a product, often based on Life Cycle
Assessment (LCA).
• Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) contain a list of aspects defined
as hazardous and how to handle those, but are not designed to show
the beneficial qualities.
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

7. C2C principle as basis for nutrient certificates.
Cradle to Cradle® principle: Waste = Food
Nutrients are nutrients.
Everything is a resource for something else.
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

8. Nutrient Certificates
Set of data describing;
defined characteristics of materials in products that give
them value for recovery and reuse.
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

9. Nutrient Certificates
marketplace mechanism to encourage product designs,
material recovery systems, and chain of possession
partnerships…
to improve the quality, value, and security of supply for
materials…
so they can be reused in continuous loops or closed loops
or beneficially returned to biological systems.
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

10. …This is done by adding a new value dimension to
materials quality.
This new dimension is based on the suitability of materials
for recovery and reuse as resources in other products and
processes.
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

11. …So buildings are resource repleters instead of depleters.
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

12. Reinventing the wheel not necessary !
Examples of existing mechanisms to build on:
Authentication: Chemical and DNA fingerprinting are advancing
quickly as are nano-tagging and electronic micro-tagging, e.g.,
RFID.
Large retail chains and manufacturers have sophisticated database
tracking mechanisms for tracking inventories of components used in
their products.
Underwriters Laboratory (UL) certifications label and track
components in millions of devices.
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012

13. RESOURCE RE-PLETION
Role of Buildings
And Introducing Nutrient Certificates as a Counterpart to
Emissions Trading Schemes
KATJA HANSEN, MICHAEL BRAUNGART, DOUGLAS MULHALL
Published by The Springer Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and
Technology; Meyers, Robert A. (Ed.) 2013, 10500 p. 2500 illus. in color. In
12 volumes, not available separately
Seminar Cradle to Cradle® Practical Applications in Area Development – October 29, 2012