Greening Of Technology And Ecotechnology Research Paper

1. ‘Green’ And ‘Ecological’

‘Greening’ and the prefix ‘eco’ refer to technology’s association with environmental processes and to its role, and thus humankind’s, as a cause of environmental change, from pollution to global climate change. Greening of technology and ecotechnology call for more environmentally benign technology, including systems that operate with a minimum impact on species and habitat. So both terms define a vision for change and refer to a set of criteria to be taken into account when evaluating the qualities of given technologies in terms of their impact on the natural environment, ranging from wastes and emissions to the consumption of non-renewable resources. They call for intentional technological designs to achieve the goals in question. Also in other fields these terms are used to pinpoint intended changes and policy needs, as exemplified by ‘greening of industry,’ ‘ecotourism,’ ‘greening of consumption,’ ‘eco-efficiency,’ and ‘green accounting,’ each pointing to specific areas of socioeconomic activity.

Although the term ‘green’ is used as a synonym for nature and natural in a number of situations, the close link to environmental problems is rather new and follows from the systematic and public recognition of pollution impacts in the 1960s and subsequently. In this sense, the term differs from that used in, for example, the ‘green revolution’ and its emphasis on increasing crop production from improved varieties and petro-chemical inputs. Indeed, some of the impacts following from the green revolution and identified by Rachel Carson (1962) in Silent Spring are precisely those illustrative of the double-edged character of technology and the impetus for green technology. The origins of the new uses of ‘green’ and ‘eco-’ in regard to technology have not been adequately addressed. The linkages between technology and environmental damage, however, were highlighted in the Club of Rome report Limits to Growth: ‘For the first time, it has become vital to inquire into the cost of unrestricted material growth and to consider alternatives to its continuation’ (1972, p. 191) and brought to the international policy discussions in 1972 at the United Nations’ first global environment conference in Stockholm.

2. ‘Technology’

Technology is at the same time the engine of economic growth and human well-being and the immediate cause of environmental degradation. Technologies as machine embedded or enacted processes are the basis for transforming materials using energy. Industrial mass production and transport technology extract and concentrate materials, increasing energy demands and amounts of waste, both from the industrial process and from the ‘throwaway culture’ it supports. This waste includes materials that cannot be reused or recycled but remain concentrated and combined in ways that cause health hazards and reduce the stock of raw materials accessible for future generations. Such resource consumption is accompanied by impacts on the structure and function of the biosphere, be it increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide or the extinction of species.

The definition of ‘technology’ is important for the scope of its impact on nature. Technology does not only cover machines and other artifacts, but also includes processes and procedures, like the methods used in rural agrarian production and in the structure of settlements (e.g., contemporary continued urbanization leading to mega-city societies). The question extends beyond the domains covered by the notion of ‘technology,’ however, to the sociology of its use and the organization of economic processes. These systemic uses of technology are registered in such terms as technological system, or socio-technical ensemble. Through these broader uses of the term, technology addresses such human activities as the movement, transformation, and consumption of materials and energy. Many environmental impacts from technology are not only linked to the production of technology per se or its basic function, but also to how production and consumption are connected.

3. Is ‘Green’ An Attribute Or A Process?

The labels ‘ecotechnology’ and ‘green technology’ are commonly applied to environmentally friendly production technologies and/or products, such as wind turbines and solar cells for renewable energy, natural textiles, and/organic farming reducing, for example, the use of inputs from petrochemical industries. This use has been contested on the grounds that, in absolute terms, no technology is truly green and, in some cases, green and technological risks (or perception of risks) are confused. This is the case for genetically modified crops, for example. They are usually labeled as ‘non-green,’ in public debate. But from a different perspective, it can be argued that such hybrid crops could produce more food on less land. It is, however, not questioned that specific technologies can be less polluting and greener than others, in relative terms.

What is identified as environmentally friendly, green, or ecological is dependent on how the environmental problems and risks are perceived and prioritized. Every technology has an impact on the environment, and the choice between technologies must be assessed in terms of these impacts and the risks involved when recognizing the limits to existing knowledge. This leads the decision in the direction of a political process that has to deal with uncertainties as well as conflicting interests in the outcome.

Consequently in more sophisticated uses of the notions of ‘green’ or ‘ecological,’ they are used to characterize the direction of change based on selected measures referring to environmental performance of technologies. The notions are thereby used to establish distinctions between the outcome of different change processes and their focus.

4. Promotions And Problems

While traditional environmental policies developed and installed in the 1970s focused on the discharge of pollutants from production, the growing awareness for a need to engage industry in a constructive way resulted in new policy strategies in the later part of the 1980s. Here the strategy was to engage companies in environmental protection measures by introducing the concept of cleaner technologies and industrial ecology. The cleaner technology (could also read ‘greener’) approach value materials and energy reductions based on improved design and production as the highest priority, followed by substitution of nonrenewable materials, recycling, and ending with filtering and waste handling as the absolute lowest priority.

These new policies were supported by the introduction of environmental management as a new subdiscipline and the implementation of new management standards like the international ISO 14000 series and EMAS in the EU together with economic fees on pollution and waste. By focusing their interest on waste and the inefficient use of materials and energy, many companies improved their environmental performance. Again the ambiguous character of technology is illustrated: cleaner is not a simple quality of technology, but a product of a specific direction in industrial transformation.

Following these insights, environmental regulation has also changed from a focus on industrial point sources as the object of regulation (e.g., smokestack emissions) to broader aspects of societal production and consumption, such as the impacts from product use and disposal (e.g., recycling). Product lifecycle and eco-design approaches have begun to be implemented by companies and supported by government environmental policies, especially in the developed world. The lifecycle approach addresses environmental impacts from the perspective of the complete cycle of a product’s life: the production of raw materials, the transport of materials and products, the production process, the use of the product, and the final recycling or disposal of the product as waste. Consequently it introduces a rather extended obligation for companies in managing not only their own pollution and resource consumption but in being responsible for the complete chain of supplies and for the minimization of environmental impacts and resource consumption through consumption and disposal. Procedures for eco-design have as their main focus the translation of environmental impacts within the design phase and the reorganization of innovative processes to include both environmental concerns but also user perspectives and new types of expertise (Mitch and Jørgensen 1989).

The problems from which green and ecotechnology have evolved are now also registered in the term ‘sustainable development,’ signifying the dual needs of providing improved human well being with less environmental impacts. This idea was officially recognized in the World Commission on Environment and Development’s report Our Common Future (The Brundtland Report), which stated that ‘When the century began neither human numbers nor technology had the power to radically alter planetary systems. As the century closes, not only do vastly increased human numbers and their activities have that power, but major, unintended changes are occurring in the atmosphere, in soils, in waters, among plants and animals, and in the relationships among all of these’ (1987, p. 343).

The introduction of cleaner technologies has in principle shown results in reducing waste and the discharge of pollutants in quite substantial ways. But voluntary actions in industry do not guarantee the introduction of these green technologies (Kemp 1997). And these results do not satisfy those needed for a future whose material and energy demands appear to be enormous. Rather radical reductions in materials and energy consumption and also the reduction of the ‘ecological footprint’ of individual consumers are required. Phrased as the ‘factor 4’ and ‘factor 10’ strategies for reductions in materials and energy use, a new agenda for technological change has been outlined, including also the need for increased global wealth. This agenda will influence product designs, work organization, transport, and culture in radical ways in order to reach the result: a radical reduction in the amount of materials and energy circulated and used per produced unit of good or service (Weizsacker et al. 1997). Such changes cannot be reached in business and industry alone, but will have to include behavioral changes of consumers as well. This strategy is not seen as different from or in competition with strategies focusing on industrial performance and ecodesign, but as supplementary to them (Fisher and Schot 1993).

5. Involved Actors

Such greening and ecological concerns engage a large part of industry. This engagement is partly a response fueled by industrial interests in promoting and marketing their green improvements, and partly a response to pressures from governments and consumers to reduce environmental impacts. During the 1980s a number of new national and international organizations and networks were established in response to these challenges. These included cooperating networks as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the European Roundtable for Cleaner Production, the American Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economics, and many others established on both regional and global levels. Consumers and environmental grassroots movements also took part in the construction of new agendas for green technologies and greener products, some even becoming involved in innovations, for example, Greenpeace’s development of a low-energy refrigerator and cooperation with an industrial company about its manufacture, and other organizations’ contribution to innovation in the wind turbine. The ‘green’ impact is also seen in the commercial use of environmental qualities in marketing products, ironically termed ‘green speak’ and ‘green wash’ when not based on substantiated environmental performance improvements.

6. Academic And Disciplinary Context

The study of ‘greening’ and ‘ecotechnology’ is not the subject of one specialist discipline but involves a large number of academic disciplines, ranging from engineering and design to social perception and innovation management. Specific subfields in the technical sciences advance green or ecological technologies, including energy-efficient cars, urban ecology, ecotextiles, organic farming, and energy efficient household equipment. Special attention has been given to methodologies assessing the impact of a product during its complete lifecycle (in short: LCA for life cycle assessment) and in searching for tools to be used as a basis for environmental prioritization. Design procedures and ways of translating and integrating environmental concerns into design practices have escalated as research interest lately showing both in the design journals and in new design manuals (Ecological Engineering is an example). New inter-disciplinary research centers have also been established.

Technology studies, drawing on the experiences from the STS (Science Technology Society) field, and the studies of innovation in both management and evolutionary economics also sometimes include studies of the environmental dimensions of technology. The technology studies field, in particular, has developed a special interest in studying green technologies. But in the mainstream academic social science disciplines, as in the mainstream technology design fields, environmental concerns are often not explicitly mentioned or even left aside. Researchers have therefore built their own networks and journals and/organize special sessions within the meetings of other formal organizations. One example, however, of a cross or interdisciplinary organization, is the ‘Greening of Industry’ Network, established in 1990.

Among the mainstream social sciences, political science and economics have been active in regard to environmental regulation and politics lately. The interest in ‘green industrial policies,’ ‘greening of business activities,’ and ‘green tax reforms’ has been growing. So has the support for ‘environmental economics’ focusing on how to make external impacts visible in the economic system (i.e., the costs and problems caused by the economic system, but not accounted for in the price and market mechanism). Although ‘technology’ is often referred to in this context, in most studies both the environmental problems and the technologies stay in the ‘black box,’ and are not analyzed in detail.

7. Future Directions Of Research

The rather dispersed character of research in ‘greening of technology’ illustrates two fundamental problems: the need for an interdisciplinary approach to tackle the problems, and the need for an integration of environmental concerns into a number of technical and social science disciplines. The need for interdisciplinary approaches is obvious in design and in management, where the traditional focus has been on economic priorities and organization rather than environment matters. These priorities have less to do with the character of the field of research than with the tradition of disciplines. The need for integration among disciplines is obvious, given the range of linked issues, from specific technologies, to business management, to government policy.

The complexity of the problems and interested communities is confounded by the juxtaposition of policymakers’ and managers’ desire for simple solutions. Such solutions are problematic, of course, especially when they are not measured by assessments of knowledge limitations and uncertainty. More generally, in studies of innovation and technological design there is a need to develop methodologies to cope with integrating environmental concerns into design and management of processes and to deal with the conditions for use and consumption.

The development of greener technologies is not simply a question of improvements and integrations in the technical sciences and in design practices, though we should not underestimate the importance of these areas. A change in the dominant priorities for technological development is dependent on priorities set in the business sector, and changes therefore must address both management practices and societal governance. Likewise, since business is not unresponsive to public pressures and consumer actions these concerns must be addressed as well. In short, the greening of technology is a multi-sectoral and multidisciplinary subject which is likely to increase in importance as future generations cope with increasing demands to meet human needs, needs that are being redefined to include environmental quality (IHDP 2000).

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