[MUSIC] Hello. My name is Don Huisingh. I'm from Lund University and the University of Tennessee. I am also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cleaner Production, and in this respect today, I'm going to be talking with you about the historical development of our attitudes and technologies in interacting with the ecosystem and human health. So, what is meant by cleaner production? Fundamentally, it says that the way we have been producing isn't as good as it should be, whether from a design of the product's point of view, management or whatever. So that we need increasingly to find ways to prevent the problems rather than only treat the symptoms of the problems. Well, let's take a look at it. What are the surrounding principles to the concept of cleaner production? Well, first of all, there is the polluter pays principle, which basically says if I'm a corporation, I'm polluting the river, I have to pay for the consequences. But cleaner production says, look, we may be able to prevent that problem at the source. So there's where the polluter pays principle and cleaner production can tie together. The other side of it is the precautionary principle. Let's say I come up with a new product or a new technology. I need to test it cautiously in a small scale before spreading it throughout the world because there may be unintended consequences. And there's where the precaution part of cleaner production fit together with the polluter pays principle. Well, the next question is, in the history of our awareness and changes in attitudes, who were some of the leaders? Perhaps one of the best leader helping us to look from the prevention point of view was J.T. Ling, who, as Vice President of 3M, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, was looking at the increasing cost of pollution controls for his company. And he began to say, there must be a better way. So, he experimented with some of his workers and their products and their production, and they came up with the phrase to describe their new approach, Pollution Prevention Pays. And of course, most people thought he was crazy, but when in subsequent years, 3M continued to follow the Pollution Prevention Pays motto in all of their new designs of products, et cetera, and they saved more than $30 billion in costs and improved productivity, they weren't laughing so much at him. So, how was it that I got involved in this? I was the governor's science policy adviser in the state of North Carolina from 80 to 83, and having learned from J. T. Lang of their successes, we set up a conference in May of 82 titled Pollution Prevention Pays, Ecology with the Economy as Policy. The results of that were so enthusiastically received that these concepts quickly spread. And based on early successes of this approach in the U.S. and Canada, I was invited to come to Lund University in 1987 to work with seven companies in Landskrona together with other faculty to see how we could adapt these approaches to the Swedish context. We were elated to see that it really worked well in those companies. And based on that, people in other parts of Europe, as well as other parts of the world, began also to take notice and began to implement it in their companies. Let's take an example of pollution prevention in action. A Norwegian pulp and paper company on a small river had a serious problem of pollution and it killed all of the fish in the river. It was no longer swimmable. One solution was let's build a pipe. Let's get our waste out to the ocean and dilute it. Would cost 100 million Norwegian krones. A wastewater treatment facility to treat the symptoms would have cost 32 million to build and 8 million per year to operate. Both of them were too expensive for the company. We were invited to work with them and their employees to find ways to prevent the problems. We found many ways which were implemented at 10 million, but saved 20 million in the first year. The company was better. The river was now healthy. The fish were back and the kids were swimming in it. Not only did companies in other parts of the world begin to do this kind of change, various universities set up courses to teach people how to do this better. Governments develop policies to promote preventative approaches. A number of journals were formed to help have an academic context and one of those journals, which I set up 23 years ago, is the Journal of Cleaner Production. Within which we published documents that show that these approaches work in real-life world companies, and at the same that there are ways through policy, through education, and through the economic system to help bring about the changes so that prevention will increasingly play an important role. Why the enthusiasm about pollution prevention? Fundamentally, it's a change from the attitude that dilution is the solution to pollution, or pollution control is a solution to pollution, to pollution prevention, looking at the source of the problem and seeing how can I prevent those problems from occurring in the first place. Among the overall lessons, we realize that to make these changes, first of all, it's an attitudinal change. I need to find the problems at the source. I need to prevent them at the source. One of the best ways to do that is to then look at product design. Can I design these products to be less toxic, more functional, safer for the workers, safer for the ecosystem? Can I change my management style? Can I change how I monitor and control? What about better training of my workers to engage them in being helpful and finding the prevention approaches rather than only being part of the problem? Those kinds of lessons, we realized, were important and how important it is for corporate leaders and others to be facilitators of change, changes in attitude, changes in procedures, changes in products. [MUSIC]
