Taking a Natural Step
By Lily Auliff

In the early 1990s, the University of Texas Houston Health Science Center was looking for ways to reinvigorate itself. Government funding for higher education was cut, and competition was high. Administrators investigated various options – personnel changes, operational strategies – to make the institution stand out. During this trying time, John Porretto, executive vice president of Administration and Finance, and Brian Yeoman, chief facilities officer, attended a talk by Karl-Henrik Robèrt, founder of The Natural Step (TNS), a systematic framework for organizational sustainability. They were moved by the presentation’s environmental message, and saw TNS as a way in an unstable market to define and ground their facility.

The Health Science Center brought TNS in through the Support Services department, which is charged with campus maintenance and capital projects. The environmental benefits have been phenomenal. Between 1991 and 1999 the campus increased recycling by more than 775,000 pounds annually. Between 1993 and 1999, they reduced water consumption by more than 8 million gallons. The amount of pesticides applied is down from 6,000 gallons in 1997 to 198 gallons in 1999. Plans are in the works for construction of a new nursing and biomedical training building that administrators envision as a model for sustainable design.

The Health Science Center also offers one-day public TNS training sessions every other month led by Carol Misseldine, former director of the The Natural Step’s Great Lakes Program. Through the training, Health Science Center employees, vendors, and the general public learn about TNS and how to weave sustainability into their work.

The Natural Step
Dr. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, a Swedish oncologist, founded TNS in 1989. Robèrt had noticed a significant increase in childhood leukemia cases and suspected a connection to toxins in the environment. With the help of 50 Swedish scientists, he created a consensus document reviewing basic knowledge of the biosphere’s functions, and the ways in which, by subverting the functions of nature, people threaten themselves. From that document, Robèrt and Swedish physicist John Holmberg abstracted four system conditions for sustainability that organizations and individuals might use to guide their work. These became the foundation of TNS.

The System Conditions
The four system conditions are not hard and fast laws, but rather offer a “common language” in which leaders can frame decisions. “Together they describe all of the environmental problems that we face, and they imply the solutions,” says Misseldine.

System Condition 1. Substances from the Earth’s crust must not systematically increase in nature. In other words, fossil fuels and minerals must not be extracted at a faster rate than their slow redeposit into the Earth’s crust. Organizations and individuals can work toward this system condition by reducing dependence on fossil fuels and using mined materials efficiently.

System Condition 2. Substances produced by society must not systematically increase in nature. This implies that human-made materials must not be produced at a faster rate than they can be broken down and reintegrated into the cycles of nature or deposited in the Earth’s crust. Meeting this goal requires substituting renewable resources for synthetic compounds and using all substances produced by society efficiently.

System Condition 3. The physical basis for the productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically deteriorated. This system condition implies that we must protect natural spaces, wildlife habitat, and other species.

System Condition 4. There must be fair and efficient use of resources with respect to meeting human needs. To achieve this fourth condition, the affluent must live using fewer resources, and humanity must strive to improve technical and organizational efficiency around the globe.

To sum it up, a sustainable organization uses renewable energy sources and recycled metal, uses non-toxic materials, protects and restores earth’s natural surfaces, and is efficient and equitable, says Misseldine.

For more information on sustainability and the Natural Step Training at the Health Science Center, visit www.uth.tmc.edu/sustainability or www.naturalstep.org.