THE BIOSPHERE RULES

PRESENTED BY:-

AKANKSHA CHAUDHARY – U113067

ALISHA MISHRA – U113068

AMIT SHUKLA – U113069

ANANDVASWANI – U113070

GEETHA GOWTHAMI – U113071

ANSHUK PRADHAN – U113072

Use a Parsimonious

Palette

• 6 Natural Elements account for 99% weight of living things. “More perfect nature is fewer means it requires to operate. “

• Different materials add different performance charactertics - Potato chip Bag

• A simple palette makes recycling easy where as all the products cannot be recycled back. Less Is More

Cycle Up -Virtuously

• Nature: Repeated use of the same materials allowing biosphere towards more integrated and sustainable community.

• Up cycling maintains the quality of products through generations

• Virtuous Recycling relies on planned obsolescence.

Exploit the Power of Platforms

• General purpose platform leveraged over and again to create biodiversity.

• Platforms are widely used in the industry to optimize. From material level platforms of interchangeable components

• Materials are more fundamental platform on which components and final products are built.

SHAW INDUSTRIES

Produces Carpet tiles used as industrial flooring

95% of old carpet is ripped up and dumped in landfills

Carpet tiles were made of potentially toxic and difficult to recycle PVC

Shaw recognised the need for a simple palette of nontoxic materials

Made the switch from PVC to Nylon 6

Developed and integrated production system capable of using old carpet tiles as raw materials and turning them

into new carpet tiles

Shaw made huge savings when the cost of oil increased

Senior executives made a $2 million bet on unproven technologies.

• Simplifying the number & types of material makes recycling cost effective

• Aeron desk chair 800 chemical compounds – 96% recyclable.

• Material choice- Screening of non toxic materials. Ciba Chemical Dyes. 16/1600

• Materials must be physically capable of being up-cycled. Nylon 6, Nylon 66

• Cost Effective: 75% of steel and 50% of Al is recycled.

Think Fewer Material

• What designs will meet out product specifications using our existing material.

• Planning for the end at the beginning.

• Polyamid 2000 – highly effective recycling facility. 20mn/ 200mn pound of waste.

• American 45% Nylon vs European 25%.

Rethink Design

• Leveraging standard materials and cyclic production systems.

• Profitability depends on efficiency of execution

• Patagonia – performance innerwear recycled by Teijin. The platform extends to other products.

• Recycling requires lesser energy 76% for Patagonia and 20 % for Shaw.

• Extension of Product Line.

Think Scale Economies

• Finding ways to profitably recover products installed at customers location.

• The buyers will also become the suppliers. Manage product life cycle & input from vendors.

• The complex issue of reverse logistics will also need to be handled

Rethink the Buyer-

Supplier Relationship

THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

The article does not suggest any definitive ways of handling the counter-intuitive

issue of planned obsolescence.

The suggested method of providing incentives to customers to prematurely upgrade

might be misused by the companies.

The article only discusses certain examples and does not attempt to suggest

solutions that might be applicable across the board.

As the article suggests, there is no way of knowing if a strategy will prove to be cost

effective. Doubts remain over the financial aspects of The Biosphere Rules.