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Business Leaders Embrace Nutrient Certificates as Counterparts to Emissions Trading

Business Leaders Embrace Nutrient Certificates as Counterparts to Emissions Trading 

A new value paradigm for materials as a counterpart to emissions trading is being embraced by business leaders in response to a landmark approach being published next month in the Springer Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology.  

The approach known as Nutrient Certificates was developed at the Academic Chair, Cradle to Cradle for Innovation and Quality, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). It describes a Resource Repletion paradigm for business to redesign, use, recover, and recycle materials at high quality.

"Most recycling is downcycling, which blocks high-quality re-use of materials," explains co-author and Founder of the Cradle to Cradle^® approach, Professor Michael Braungart from RSM. "Nutrient Certificates are a new quality paradigm for a profitable way out of that downward spiral. They add a value dimension to materials in products, buildings and ships."

Prof. Braungart holds the Academic Chair where the Nutrient Certificate concept was developed by Senior Researcher Katja Hansen. 

"The issue is especially relevant now that a backlash is developing against emissions trading and regulation. For example China blocked its airlines from participating in the EU tax on emissions."

"Nutrient Certificates are the materials counterpart to emissions certificates. They are easier to implement because materials can be easily tracked and their value more reliably calculated. 

"Emissions credit schemes do not account for the role of materials in energy generation or in products, but Nutrient Certificates do." 

"Materials Data Safety Sheets and other environmental certificates tell us what is wrong with products but not what is right. None of them describes how to design and reuse materials beneficially so they can be recovered at a high quality level. Nutrient Certificates fill that gap."

The concept is being welcomed across the board by business leaders as an intellectual and practical breakthrough.

Stef Kranendijk, Chairman-elect of Desso, one of the leading flooring manufacturers, remarks, "This is the type of innovation our company requires for its product development. 

"I am pleased that Desso via its support along with many other companies and agencies of the Cradle to Cradle Chair at Rotterdam School of Management was able to support this important work, because for manufacturers it fills an important gap in measuring the positive added value of materials in products."

Frans Beckers, Materials, Concepts and Infrastructure Director of the recycling company Van Gansewinkel, which has strongly embraced the Cradle to Cradle approach, remarks; "This is an important development for the recycling industry. Our company will use this as a basis for continuing its frontrunner approach to recovering and recycling valuable materials for our customers. Nutrient Certificates are exactly what our customers require to improve the value chain."

The shipping company Maersk in 2011 announced it would use Cradle to Cradle® defined Passports to design every part for its ships. Nutrient Certificates will be a basis for those passports.

The Springer Encyclopaedia of Sustainability Science and Technology is a new peer reviewed encyclopaedia containing contributions by hundreds of leading experts globally.

Publishing of the concept coincides with the 20th anniversary of the first nutrient recycling pilot project used as a basis for Cradle to Cradle criteria. Known as the Bionutrient Recycling Project, it was launched at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. 

"The Bionutrient Recycling project has been remarkably successful and for example is used today to protect victims of the Haiti earthquake from a cholera epidemic," remarks Prof. Braungart.

"I want to congratulate my colleague and principle author of the concept Katja Hansen for formulating this concept," Prof. Braungart adds, "She was scientific director of the Rio Bionutrient Recycling Project for our non-profit Hamburg Environmental Institute, so is eminently qualified to develop this concept."

"I would like to invite the Cradle to Cradle community internationally as well as government regulatory agencies to critically examine this approach and tell us if it might work for them or how it might be optimised," he concludes.

Reference; Resource Repletion, Katja Hansen, Michael Braungart, Douglas Mulhall, The Springer Encyclopaedia of Sustainability Science and Technology, 2012. 

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University is consistently ranked amongst the top 10 business schools in Europe. It is located in the international port city of Rotterdam where core Dutch values of openness, flexibility and acceptance of diversity have attracted businesses on a global scale. Our emphasis is on groundbreaking research and practices relevant to business; our primary focus is on developing business leaders who carry their innovative ideas into a sustainable future. Our portfolio includes a broad array of bachelor, master, doctoral, MBA and executive education programmes. www.rsm.nl

For more information on RSM or on this release, please contact Marianne Schouten, Media & Public Relations Manager for RSM, on +31 10 408 2877 or by email at mschouten@remove-this.rsm.nl.