Ideas for eco-design market development: a new evaluation methodology

Abstract

Since the early 1960's the environmental movement has included the concept of "sustainability". Yet in over forty years little progress has been made to make the world sustainable. Recently a number of Japanese and some Americans decided to develop a new and more effective process to help promote a sustainable world. Central to our process is the recognition that organizations must change in order for sustainable practices to broaden. Changing organizations is however always a challenge, particularly in Japan. We therefore have developed an original philosophy surrounding our process. We call it "Applied Philosophy" and it leverages traditional Japanese concepts of Complexity, Taoism, Eastern medical philosophy and Bushido. We have called our process the "Mita-Model" and if implemented in a corporation it simplifies the process of change, enabling a corporation to introduce sustainable practices more easily. The "Mita-Model" could be used to rate the sustainability of all kinds of organizations.