Health and Happiness

PETAL INTENT The intent of the Health + Happiness Petal is to focus on the most important conditions that must be present to create products and materials that truly benefit consumers. The Petal is not designed to address all potential ways that goods can compromise society. Instead, it aims to encourage the creation of items whose purpose is to holistically protect and enhance the physical and emotional wellness of the people who manufacture, install and use them. This Petal focuses in particular on the toxicological impact of materials on both human and environmental health. Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxic chemicals from product manufacturing, use and disposal are building up in our environment with significant consequences for human and ecosystem health. Many of the goods we use in our daily lives are harmful to our health and well-being, and some goods greatly diminish human potential. It is crucial for manufacturers of all products to first identify what is in their products, remove the most harmful materials and then look more carefully at chemical and material alternatives to continually raise the bar until we reach a materials economy where healthy materials are the only option. Materials used in products have health implications not only for consumers, but also for the people who manufacture these products, their parts and contractors who install them. Materials considerations take all of these stakeholders into account. Additionally, many manufacturing facilities have substandard conditions for the health and productivity of workers. It is rare for a manufacturing facility to prioritizes health-and-wellness as we are starting to expect in homes and offices. By focusing on the major pathways where manufacturing can impact health—the materials used in products, the spaces in which they are made, and the surrounding communities—we can create a consumer society that is designed to optimize the human condition. IDEAL CONDITIONS + CURRENT LIMITATIONS The Living Product Challenge envisions a nourishing, highly productive and healthy modern world with consumer products that enrich our daily lives. However, even the most restorative products require acceptance by their users and engagement from their makers. It is difficult to ensure that goods will continue to optimally enhance health and happiness over time since available technologies and consumer preferences change quickly. It can also be complicated to ensure optimal use of products over their complete life cycles due to the unpredictable ways in which people use and maintain them. Finally, it will always be challenging to predict the unintended consequences from the use of any product, as almost anything created can be used in unforeseen ways. Those impacts may be unknown for many decades. The precautionary principle10 guides all materials decisions when impacts are unclear. There are significant limitations to achieving the ideal for the materials realm. Although consumers and product buyers are starting to weigh social and environmental impacts in parallel with other more conventional considerations, such as aesthetics, function and cost, the biggest shortcoming is due to the market itself. While there are a huge number of “green” products for sale, there is also a shortage of good, publicly available data that backs up manufacturer claims and provides consumers with the ability to make conscious, informed choices. Transparency is vital; as a global community, the only way we can transform into a truly sustainable society is through open communication and honest information sharing. However, many manufacturers are wary of sharing trade secrets that they believe afford them a competitive advantage, and instead make proprietary claims about specific product contents.