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[MUSIC PLAYING]
I work in a variety of areas in the environmental field,
but I'm a chemical engineer.
I was a professor at North Carolina State University.
And one of the first issues that we want to talk about today
is sustainability.
As you have heard lots of definitions but, for me,
it's a fairly simple definition, which
is that sustainability is a step or a change that
moves towards improvement.
And we will see that in a variety of dimensions,
but it is this concept of moving forward.
And so whenever we say that, the next question that
should come to your mind is, well, how do you know,
it's forward or backwards?
How do we measure this?
Because sustainability comes in a variety of forms.
We have environmental sustainability
which people, generally, believe is probably the most important,
because it's the planet.
We also have similar sorts of evaluations referred
to as social life cycles and others that are
called economic life cycles.
So you have to, obviously, figure out which of those three
you might be interested in.
But the whole concept of change then
is this concept of stepping forward.
So life cycle is the way in which we measure change.
So, obviously, it's a very important tool
because it's what tells us whether we're moving forward.
Now, as you can imagine in any measurement technique,
and life cycle is one of those, the concept
that we most are concerned about is, is it fair?
Is it rigorous?
Is it transparent?
Do we believe that we've included all of the factors
in order to say that where we are today and where we want
to change to-- whether it's a product,
whether it's an entire social system--
is it better?
And if so, how do we measure it, and how do we define that?
So an analogy to that I'd like to share
with you is imagine you're on a soccer team,
you're playing on a soccer match.
You expect the referee to know the rules and to be fair.
And that's what life cycle is trying
to do in the field of sustainability,
is to have rigorous rules, to have complete rules,
and to be fair, meaning that I include everything
that might be of concern.
Now, life cycle is divided into two parts.
The most critical part is referred to
as life cycle inventory.
So that's the core data that we use
to evaluate, from an environmental point of view,
whether or not we're using more energy.
Whether we're distributing more emissions
into the environment--
a variety of things which are critical pieces.
The second piece is what's referred to as life cycle
impact assessment.
So these emissions and the use of energy
are translated in the things that you read about
in the newspaper.
What's our carbon footprint?
What's our water footprint?
How much solid waste do we make?
And so keep those two separate in your own mind
because life cycle inventory, if you
don't get that right, everything else you do
is probably not correct.
The last element of what we would like to concern ourselves
with is what are the barriers to using these tools.
Let's call them scorecards.
It's the way in which you look at the two results
that you're trying to compare.
What are some of the barriers?
And I think probably in simple terms, in my experience,
if you would, the major barrier is transparency.
The ability to take what has been done in the study
and put it forward in a way that everybody can look at it
critically.
Sometimes that's a little hard for you
who generate a life cycle, but it's a very important step.
So transparency defines what rules
did you use, what calculations did you use,
what other elements did you use in making-- and is it
big enough?
Does it include all the pieces?
It turns out that if it doesn't include all the pieces,
it still can be an important contribution to our knowledge.
It's just we have to know that it's
not as big as it should be.
And so I'll leave you with a classic example of why
transparency is important.
In our astronaut programme, we had a rocket ship called
the Challenger.
And the Challenger took off and blew up in flight.
Before that, the very complex elements
that went into making this thing work
were all done by separate people not talking to each other.
Each one was responsible for their job,
but they weren't very transparent.
So nobody could have ever figured out what was wrong
and what made it blow up.
It's only when it was finished that you went back and looked
at it and said, oh, that was what the problem was.
So life cycle transparency is both a barrier and, in a sense,
an opportunity to make the tools that we use better
because the overall concept of improvement includes
not only our tools but sustainability.
So I appreciate you listening to these comments
and certainly, as Dr Kara has indicated,
will try to respond to any questions you
have in the future.
Thank you.