How we rate: The logic

Quantifying vs. Qualifying

Quantifying Sustainability: Too Many Decimals

Precisely quantifying the greenness of materials and products is a valuable science – but it is one that requires intensive time and resource inputs. It is thus accessible to overwhelmingly few materials.

Consider a standard system that exactly rates the greenness of materials and products on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the greenest.

After extensive (= time and money) analysis, two similar products would score:
Product A: 3.27536 out of 10.
Product B: 3.77193 out of 10.

According to this approach, Product B would be the one to use.
GIGA disagrees.

Most materials are still so far away from 10 that such precision is irrelevant. What matters is an order of magnitude that allows us to understand how much these products need to improve in order to get to 10.
Only until products achieve 9 out of 10 is precision worth considering. Until then, we need to be able to assess all materials, not just a few them. The environment won’t wait.

Qualifying Sustainability: Simplifying the Decimals

The best designers excel at taking an enormously complex set of information and extracting the essential components: creating simple designs that function and inspire.

GIGA has applied this approach to material assessment and development, creating a fast, effective and meaningful system. The system evaluates sustainability on a scale of fundamental impact and focuses on large orders of magnitude: the giga-scale. Instead of asking how toxic materials are, GIGA simply asks if they are toxic. Instead of measuring pollution levels, GIGA evaluates the presence of pollution.

This qualitative approach allows GIGA to assess the entire life-cycle of a material in a matter of days as opposed to years. Hence, each material or product is evaluated throughout the Production, Usage, and Renewal stages of its life while considering fundamental issues - embodied energy, toxicity, water, resource extraction and harvesting, waste and pollution generation, etc.

As an example, for the same two materials above, GIGA's analysis would yield:
Product A: 3.3 out of 10.
Product B: 3.8 out of 10.

For all intents and purposes, these materials are the same: they are both in the 3-4 range and both have a long way to go before they reach 10. GIGA's analysis requires a fraction of the resources and provides the information we need to know, now.

This allows thousands of products and materials to quickly be evaluated and improved upon. In turn, this allows designers to compare materials immediately and effectively... and drive industry competition.

The Impact of Designers:

When designers start choosing materials based on their environmental impact , two things start to happen. First, it puts tremendous pressure on destructive manufacturers to improve, forcing them to evolve or shut-down. Second, it directly supports constructive manufacturers and allows them to develop even faster. This makes designers powerful partners in helping manufacturers develop sustainable materials.

For this reason, GIGAbase and its rating system is designed as an active tool: use it to rate products and materials common to your own practice. Recognize that your choices have power. Upload your results. Drive competition.

Critical Mass and Critical Importance:

The gap between where materials currently are and where they need to be is far, far too great. GIGA's purpose is to introduce a critical mass of manufacturers to a common goal: creating materials that have a positive impact on the environment.

GIGA achieves this by dramatically lowering the barrier to entry to Life-Cycle Assessment. This is of critical importance to China where many manufacturers live and die on extremely narrow margins of profit: most could never afford an expensive assessment. GIGA gives manufacturers access to this information: allowing them to understand their products and set achievable goals. Furthermore, the database allows manufacturers to market their improvements and hence increase their speed of development. The goal is not to reach international standards but rather to go far beyond. Combined with the involvement of designers and the creation of green industry competition, GIGA serves as a powerful tool to accelerate change.

However, there comes a time when certain considerations can only be evaluated through a quantitative assessment. The precise calculation of carbon footprints is an example. GIGA serves as a critical stepping stone for manufacturers to first address 80% of their issues in order to then shift to a quantitative assessment. Under a quantitative system, the critical criterion as identified by GIGA are evaluated with greater specificity to understand exact levels of energy consumption, waste generation, toxicity levels, etc.