Wednesday 27 November 2013

A waste-free society

Imagine a waste-free society! A society were individual growth and fulfillment can be sustained not by limiting consumption or access to experience, but by completely eliminating the monstrous waste in our production and delivery processes. 30% of food thrown away. 50% of energy waste. Imagine thriving innovation without so much creative destruction. Imagine cool new products without built-in obsolescence or design flaws.

Twenty years of lean thinking and experiments have taught us that such imaginings are not mere fantasy but a very real possibility if we go beyond spot improvement to intensive collaboration and widespread participation in continuous improvement, and if we learn to draw every one, everywhere, to the cause of complete elimination of waste.

This will not happen by waiting from providential designers to come up with the next best thing. It won't happen by imposing narrow discipline of broken processes. It will happen if we collectively outline an ideal of a waste-less society and encourage every person's contribution to demonstrate, mosaic-like how this ideal can become a reality.

This is what I hope we'll start together, here, just by outlining our thoughts and experiences and exploring the mental space of the "not impossible", just one step beyond the possible. One step at a time. The only question is: have we got enough passion to change the world?

3 comments:



  1. Humanity is growing,
    Economy is based on growth,
    Ressources are limited,
    Declining is not an option,
    If we want an rising future,
    Just one solution, waste reduction!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete