‘This is a wonderful book that should be on the desk of every architect and planner. It shows how

How can a flows analysis help to create innovation in a supply chain?
Let’s use timber as an example. Historically, environmental managers tended to focus on the extraction 
of timber at one end of the supply chain, or construction waste at the other. Thus, there was less 
attention to innovation, or potential value-adding along the various stages of a log’s life-cycle through 

---

139
Regional Sustainability Audits
new design and construction practices. The total waste of timber in building construction is generally 
increased by things like standardized timber lengths and surfacing dimensions [Figure 6]. Designers 
(as specifiers), builders (as customers) and society as a whole are all effectively paying for the wasted 
offcuts and so on. Designers can, of course, increase project savings by:
•
Developing plans that employ standard timber lengths
• 
Specifying and ordering exact lengths
• 
Designing more timber-efficient framing systems
• 
Considering the replacement of some timber with earth wall and/or bio-based materials
However, it is important that designers do not just adjust to an inherently wasteful system by working 
within industry conventions. As interested parties, they could influence the suppliers’ practices 
upstream and encourage cooperative behaviour downstream. For example, agreements can be sought 
between all key participants in the construction process to identify and to reduce all sources of waste 
collectively (ie ‘partnering’). In other words, to design optimal solutions, MFA can help us find out 
where
and 
how much
waste occurs. Of course, we also need to discover 
why
it occurs, and whether 
this is due to consumer behaviour, management failure, institutional structures, or physical and 
intellectual infrastructures. This is what we will call institutional design (ID) analysis, which will be 
introduced later.