Our society is doomed to failure for one simple reason (among others): it is founded and continues to operate on the false premise that our built environment is independent of our surrounding natural one. Ever since the advent of the assembly line and Frederick Taylor's studies of industrial efficiency, the dominant paradigm governing business practices has been the model of the machine. This, in combination with the "man-versus-nature" mentality, has caused every single process in our economy to be based upon the mechanical exemplar.

The machine operates in a one-way manner: it consumes resources, utilizes them, and creates waste. Our society works in the same fashion; in our profligate lifestyle, we consume natural resources faster than they can be replenished and create enormous amounts of unusable refuse. Over time, this leads to a shortage of resources (as we are seeing now with our oil reserves due to dry up within 50 years) and an excess of unusable waste, not to mention detrimental environmental ramifications.

But nature works in a different way. When an animal defecates, for instance, does it collect its useless feces and ship it in a fossil fuel-powered vehicle to an airtight landfill where it will forever remain feces? No. The feces is a valuable fertilizer and source of nitrogen for plants and bacteria, which in turn provide food for another animal. Unlike a machine, nature works in a series of closed systems, in which waste from one member serves as a source of energy for another. In this way, no new resources are needed and no byproduct or waste goes unused.

This organic model can be applied to every process in modern society. Take food packaging, for example. Conventional food packaging involves the destruction of thousands of acres of virgin forests for paper and cardboard, the drilling for crude oil for petroleum-based plastics, and the production of toxic chemicals used as adhesives, inks, and coatings. After the food is consumed, the packaging in its entirety is discarded and trucked to a landfill where it will sit for thousands of years before biodegrading. By emulating natural systems, a new packaging system can be developed such that no new natural resources are needed and no waste is created.

The Coca-Cola Company has pioneered such a waste-free packaging system in Latin America: Coca-Cola beverages are shipped in glass bottles in stackable plastic crates. Each store pays a certain price per crate and receives a rebate for each empty bottle it returns to Coca-Cola per delivery. Therefore, stores require that customers return their bottles after finishing the beverage or pay a higher price for the beverage. Coca-Cola, in turn, cleanses the used bottles, refills them, and ships them once again in the reusable crates. Using this rebate system, the need for virgin glass is significantly reduced, along with disposal costs and litter problems. Like a natural system, every element is reused and nothing is created or destroyed. Why Coca-Cola hasn't utilized a similar program in the U.S. stems from the word "disposable" still connoting convenience and lower price.
But isn't our curbside recycling and rebate program similarly based on natural systems, you ask? No. Contrary to popular belief, although recycling diverts many materials from landfills, it only does so temporarily. Recycling is a band-aid, a quick-fix solution to our waste problem. The majority of recycling done is actually downcycling, a reduction of materials into a cruder form that can only be used once. Recycled plastic, for instance, is not heated to a high enough temperature in the melting process to meet sanitation standards for new beverage containers. Only a minority of plastics can actually be recycled, and those that can are only used for crude applications such as park benches. Recycled paper needs to be bleached with toxic chemicals and mixed with virgin pulp in order to meet business brightness standards, and demand for recycled paper products - tissue, toilet paper, etc.- is so low that the majority of our paper waste designated for recycling is shipped to Japan or dumped in a landfill. While recycling may be better than throwing a way, it is a temporary solution that encourages complacency and discourages the reduction of waste.

Reinventing our society based on a sustainable model will not be easy, but it is possible and imperative. It will require a close look at each and every facet of our current system: a re-evaluation of the inefficiencies of each process, the materials and waste involved, using a paradigm much greener than Taylor's. The undertaking will necessitate collaboration and creativity in finding a natural model for each process, but it can be done. Already, pioneers in sustainable sewage treatment-the process of using natural marshes to filter sewage instead of chemical treatment plants-have found that their treated water is cleaner than tap water, and they are being asked to set up treatment systems all over the world. The success stories of sustainable ventures vastly outnumber those that end in failure. Reconstructing our society using foresight and a new consciousness of the impact of each process on the environment is not a lofty pipe dream or aesthetic ideal; it is vital to our survival as a species.