In December 2012 I had an idea to set up a book club dedicated to sustainability issues. This is partly because I didn’t want to impose these books on my regular book club, and also because I believe the next industrial revolution will revolve around sustainable innovation, new ideas are evolving rapidly, and they are worthy of discussion.
Last night in Newcastle we held our 8th meeting to discuss the Circular Economy, and our core text was the famous “Cradle to Cradle” by Michael Braungart and William McDonough. As always, as well as benefiting from the book, I learned a huge amount as the ideas bounced around the group. For me, the key message from last night was that intelligent design of buildings, products and services is key to driving the Circular Economy, and poor design will always hamper the best attempts at reuse and recycling, as well as potentially harming the users. This of course ties in very well with the increased focus on design in the planned changes to ISO 14001.
The main reason for this post however is to share an exciting development… Green-Thinkers is growing and the first meeting of a group in Nottingham will be held on 27th March – discussing the same topic. So if you missed Newcastle, you can catch Nottingham, or event better contact me if you would like to start a Green-Thinkers where you live.
To learn more see www.green-thinkers.org
