Industrial Environmental Management

Appendix HThe Hannover Principles

Developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002), the Hannover Principles were among the first to comprehensively address the fundamental ideas of sustainability and the built environment, recognizing our interdependence with nature and proposing a new relationship that includes our responsibilities to protect it. The Principles encourage all of us – you, your organization, your suppliers and customers – to link long‐term sustainable considerations with ethical responsibility, and to reestablish the integral relationship between natural processes and human activity. When you make decisions in your organization, remember these essential principles:

• Recognize interdependence. Simply put: everything you do personally, in your organization and through your work interacts with and depends upon the natural world, at every scale, both locally and across the globe.
• Eliminate the concept of waste. Are you considering the full, life‐cycle consequences of what you create or buy?
• Understand the limitations of design. Treat nature as a model, not as an inconvenience to be evaded or controlled.

1. Insist on rights of humanity and nature to coexist in a healthy, supportive, diverse and sustainable condition.
2. Recognize interdependence. The elements of human design interact with and depend upon the natural world, with broad and diverse implications at every scale. Expand design considerations to recognizing even distant effects.
3. Respect relationships ...