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© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
J. Cays, An Environmental Life Cycle Approach to Design,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63802-3_4
Chapter 4
Do Something: Mid-twentieth Century
Developments
Abstract Life cycle thinking as it pertains to cost through time is developed for the
US military industrial complex. An analyst working in the late 1950s for the military contractor, RAND, introduces and applies the life cycle concept and term to
nonliving things. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, popular sentiment, science, and
government (EPA) use it as a structure in the modern environmental movement.
Increased awareness of solid waste’s many negative and invisible health and
environmental impacts and the problem of its persistent physical presence in the
landscape spurred people to action. Less visible than solid waste but equally critical,
air- and water-quality problems require increased government regulation to monitor
pollution and create policy to hold industry accountable. By the end of the decade,
corporations began to formally self-assess their role in the problem and tie improvements in environmental performance to operational efficiency and build the precursors to today’s LCA models.
Homo faber as environmentalist emerges in the twentieth century able to take
action to effect limited positive change in large-scale resource management. PostWorld War II responses to a growing solid waste crisis were blunted throughout the
twentieth century by institutionalized programs of planned obsolescence and a
growing consumer class.
4.1 Purpose-Driven Managed Resources
Most remarkable stories of benefits realized through doing something have a clear
goal driving the action. One example comes from popular reduction, reuse, and
recycling of resources to support wars backed by overwhelming popular support.
Some people still remember the practice of stockpiling materials that were in high
demand and short supply during World War I and World War II. From carefully
keeping and turning in everything from peach pits to be processed into carbon filter
material for gas masks to tin cans to be used to manufacture weapons for the fighting troops throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the practice was tied to
patriotism and a collective goal to win two World Wars. A clear and present danger
in the form of a foreign enemy gave purpose to the immediate task at hand and
engendered focus and discipline on a mass scale. It’s an example of how a compelling common purpose can coalesce millions of separate actions into a collective
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
J. Cays, An Environmental Life Cycle Approach to Design,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63802-3_4
Chapter 4
Do Something: Mid-twentieth Century
Developments
Abstract Life cycle thinking as it pertains to cost through time is developed for the
US military industrial complex. An analyst working in the late 1950s for the military contractor, RAND, introduces and applies the life cycle concept and term to
nonliving things. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, popular sentiment, science, and
government (EPA) use it as a structure in the modern environmental movement.
Increased awareness of solid waste’s many negative and invisible health and
environmental impacts and the problem of its persistent physical presence in the
landscape spurred people to action. Less visible than solid waste but equally critical,
air- and water-quality problems require increased government regulation to monitor
pollution and create policy to hold industry accountable. By the end of the decade,
corporations began to formally self-assess their role in the problem and tie improvements in environmental performance to operational efficiency and build the precursors to today’s LCA models.
Homo faber as environmentalist emerges in the twentieth century able to take
action to effect limited positive change in large-scale resource management. PostWorld War II responses to a growing solid waste crisis were blunted throughout the
twentieth century by institutionalized programs of planned obsolescence and a
growing consumer class.
4.1 Purpose-Driven Managed Resources
Most remarkable stories of benefits realized through doing something have a clear
goal driving the action. One example comes from popular reduction, reuse, and
recycling of resources to support wars backed by overwhelming popular support.
Some people still remember the practice of stockpiling materials that were in high
demand and short supply during World War I and World War II. From carefully
keeping and turning in everything from peach pits to be processed into carbon filter
material for gas masks to tin cans to be used to manufacture weapons for the fighting troops throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the practice was tied to
patriotism and a collective goal to win two World Wars. A clear and present danger
in the form of a foreign enemy gave purpose to the immediate task at hand and
engendered focus and discipline on a mass scale. It’s an example of how a compelling common purpose can coalesce millions of separate actions into a collective