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. Post-World 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.