ECO-DESIGN http://mitpress.mit.edu/JIE Journal of Industrial Ecology 9  Copyright 2002 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University Volume 5, Number 3 The collapse of the “eco- efficiency pathway to sus- tainability” is occurring at the same time as an appar- ent shift in the nature of the market and business activ- ity, a shift that values fore- sight, visible engagement with the future, and con- ceptual capital. EcoLab, Part I A Jump toward Sustainability Chris Ryan T he recent republication of two articles, one by McDonough and Braungart (1998)— “The Next Industrial Revolution”—and the other by Manzini (2001)—“Leap-Frog: Short- Term Strategies for Sustainability”—should give needed impetus to a reevaluation of the rate and direction of change toward a sustainable indus- trial ecology. Both articles were written about five years ago, addressing the prospects for a tran- sition to sustainability and placing (eco)design at the center of such change. In common with many people who are associ- ated with industrial ecology, McDonough, Braungart, and Manzini are convinced that sustainability implies major in- dustrial and social transforma- tion—the creation of radically new systems of production and consumption. Rereading these articles re- minds us that the critical ques- tion has not changed over the intervening time: How can we find strategies for improvement that, to use Manzini’s neat en- capsulation of the issue, result in a “change in the rules of the game.” He called for strategies that would require “firms . . . to leave their business-as-usual routines; users . . . to modify consolidated behaviors; and institutions . . . to revise their roles and policies.” McDonough and Braungart talked in similar terms of the need to find ways to ground production and the economy in a new sense of “eco-effectiveness”—as a basis for the next industrial revolution. The excitement and power that both these articles first conveyed rested not so much on their arguments but on the examples, the quick sketches of possible new systems of production that they used to illustrate the power of their ideas. McDonough and Braungart talked of re- defining—and redesigning—upholstery fabrics to be beautiful, desirable, practical, and, ulti- mately, biological nutrients. In their new indus- trial revolution, chemical sales would have given way to pest-management services. Manzini de- scribed case studies that pointed to developments in products and services that held a promise of triggering “leap- frog” changes in the rules of the game. (Such changes are essen- tially nonlinear jumps from one system of production and con- sumption to another, with fun- damentally different sets of technical and economic rela- tionships.) He concluded that “by taking seriously the theme of a transition towards sustain- ability it is possible . . . to spark new and hitherto unthinkable opportunities” [em- phasis added]. Five years later, you could reasonably con- clude that for Europe at least, the theme of a transition to sustainability is being taken seri- ously, by governments and industry. The Euro- pean Union is working on a set of EU-wide in- tegrated product policies (IPP) to drive product design and reduce the life-cycle impacts of pro- duction. This reflects a broadening of political support for intervention for more sustainable outcomes and a sense that product eco-design provides a successful (and acceptable) market- based mechanism for change. Within many