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Main Menu Session 3561

Teaching Strategic Security Using A Case Study of Environmentally Sustainable Design

Matthew M. Mehalik University of Virginia

I. Abstract

I present a case of a practitioner network that invented a secure environmentally sustainable textile product and production system. Once the practitioners created such a network, they struggled with how it would be possible to ensure that others external to the network, such as customers, were not able to dilute the very specific and documented accomplishments of their environmental analysis through their unintended introduction of less environmentally sound chemicals and processes. In this instance, the network practitioners struggled to protect an ethic of sustainable design from attempts at confusing its articulation and implementation. The practitioners also struggled with constructing a security system to ensure that undesired chemicals would not accidentally enter the manufacturing and logistical supply chain. The paper raises the question of how a sociotechnical network can be strategic in constructing what it deems as necessary security measures and why such issues should be taught to engineering students.

II. Case1

In August 1998, Albin Kälin, Managing Director of a Rohner Textil AG, a Swiss textile dye and weaving manufacturing facility, received an alarming phone call from one of his customers. This customer reported that he detected traces of permethrin, a moderately toxic pesticide, in tests he had run on samples of Climatex Lifecycle, Rohner Textil’s flagship contract interior textile product that had won numerous environmental and interior design awards since 1995. Climatex Lifecycle had been certified by the independent consulting company, Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA), based in Hamburg, Germany to be free from all pesticides, herbicides, carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, and biologically persistent toxic chemicals. The EPEA founders and scientists consisted largely of staff members formerly associated with Greenpeace Germany’s Chemistry Division. They used this expertise to ensure that Rohner Textil’s products and manufacturing operations were a model to the world in how it was possible to be economically successful and environmentally responsible (stories of the development of Climatex Lifecycle, the history of Rohner Textil AG, and the EPEA have been documented elsewhere). 2,3,4

Kälin was stunned by this report. He had spent the previous five years assembling an international network 5 of experts and checking systems, such as quality and environmental management, continuous improvement, and outside review systems under the ISO 9001 and ISO Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ã 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Mehalik, M. (2002, June), Teaching Strategic Security Using A Case Study Of Environmentally Sustainable Design Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10708