Wanna change the world?

I've recently become aware of a conundrum I'm sure we've all experienced in this contemporary society, but have just been unable to place exactly what that is.  It has to do with the products we use in our everyday lives.   When we wash something, or rinse off a dish, where does that go?  My immediate response was that it goes away.  And at first, that is pretty reassuring, but then once I thought about it for a little bit I realized how silly that sounded.  What is "away"?  Where is this "away"?  When I'm done using something, anything, maybe an empty shampoo bottle, or the water I used to wash the dishes, or my laundry, where does that go?
Of course, now that the thought is in the forefront of our minds, we know where that water goes.  It goes to the local sewage drains, and eventually into the waterways which eventually lead to the Mississippi River and then into the Gulf of Mexico.  Or if you're on the west coast of the United states, it leads to the Pacific Ocean.  What's that you say?  That sewage eventually leads to a larger body of water, big whoop.  We've been doing that for years, what's my point?  My point is that despite all our society's growing environmental awareness these past few years none of industry has thought about changing the way we design these products we love and use so much so that it doesn't have an environmental impact at all.  Redesigning them from the ground up.

Recently when I was walking to the student union after class I was having a little monologue with myself.  I was thinking about the nature of time, something I have been pondering for quite a few years now.  What is time?  Why do we only perceive time in one direction?  Many astronomers and physicists also ask similar questions, and can probably give you a better answer than the one I'm about to give.  Well, the most simple answer I can come up with, is because we know our own life-cycles' as birth, life, death.  So I considered a very extreme and morbid scenario where one is stranded in the northern woods in the dead of winter, with no food, no shelter, no warmth.  One would surely die, and does.  I would like to believe (and do) that the soul leaves the body upon death of the body.  Even though your soul is saved (according to which ever religious beliefs you adhere), the body which was once yours is still upon this earth, frozen solid.  Once the spring thaw arrives however, that body becomes a host for millions of organisms.  All of its parts are recycled and used again to allow other living things life, and these millions of organisms flourish!  Fungi, insects, bacteria, coyotes, ravens, and many, many other living creatures survive and thrive from the flesh that was once called you (like I said, morbid, but allegorically true).  Moral of this story, from every ending comes a new beginning.  The problem I spoke of at the beginning is this; We think that because our bodies have a beginning and an end, so does everything else in nature.  But is nature based upon a linear temporal framework (birth, life, death), or a cyclical temporal framework (from endings come beginnings, which come endings, which come beginnings . . . etc.)?

So back to this "away" I was saying earlier.  When we wash our hair, we all know the drill.  Wet, lather, rinse, repeat if desired.  We have such an out-of-sight-out of mind mentality that we don't know or care what happens to the wastes we produce.  In fact we're encouraged not to care!  There's a common practice among consumer-goods manufacturers, since the early fifties, called "planned-obsolescence".  For those who don't know what I mean, planned-obsolescence is the reason why you have to get a new car every few years, or a new toaster, or a new dining set, or a new whatever.  Planned-obsolescence is an industry practice where a product is purposely designed to lose functionality over a period of time so that you HAVE to buy a new product.  Ultimately to drive up revenue for whichever manufacturer.  Honestly I think it's a brilliant idea, but they forgot one thing when they came up with the concept, what happens to the old one?  This concept NEEDS to be completely redesigned so that products are made out of a set of materials that are 100% recyclable and reusable without any reprocessing what-so-ever.  So that, whenever the product's "usable period" were up, it could be completely recycled into a new product, without any additional material.  The company would make soooooo much more money, save the environment (and I mean COMPLETELY save the environment since no new material was used in the re-creation of the product), and ultimately sway the consumer base to desire this product more than any other because it is 100% recyclable.

What I propose is a radical new way of designing our goods, and products, and cities, in that they are 100% biodegradable, provide the nutrients back to the environment that were depleted in the first place, and are non-toxic and healthy for human, and all life, to live in and around.  I challenge industry to build  factories in this new century which will have run-off that is cleaner than the water coming in.  I challenge civil engineers to build cities which will replenish the nutrients extracted to feed the people living within, and that the cities themselves will more closely resemble the local flora than resemble cities as we know them.  Completely self-sustaining, completely safe to live within, and completely at one with nature.  2012 is not the year of world ending, but of world ending as we-have-known-it.  Now is the time for change, now is the time to embrace nature again, and we honestly can do it without giving up our standard of living.  Human ingenuity trumps all, we just need to stop thinking of ourselves as separate from nature, but instead, just as much a part of nature as we've always been!