Beyond transparency: collective engagement in sustainable design

For a timely answer to the question of sustainability, or how to provide for future generations, there needs to be shared accounting of our social and physical resources. Supply chain transparency makes it possible to map resource flows and ensure dependable production while avoiding social and environmental problems. Open channels of communications can support a collective effort to account for the impacts of supply chains and engage more people in the invention of long-term solutions, or sustainable design . This thesis proposes a crowd-sourced approach to resource accounting through the democratization of sustainable design. A web-based social network called Sourcemap was built to link diverse stakeholders through an open forum for supply chain transparency and environmental assessment. The scalable system points the way towards comprehensive sustainability accounting through the distributed verification of industrial practices. Sourcemap was developed over a two-year period in partnership with regional organizations, large businesses and SME's. Small business case studies show that an open social media platform can motivate sustainable practices at an enterprise level and on a regional scale. The public-facing supply chain publishing platform actively engages communities of producers, experts, consumers and oversight groups. Thousands of user-generated contributions point towards the need to improve the quality of transparency to form a broadly accessible resource for sustainability accounting. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)