Capitalism and the preservation of the environment are two opposing concepts which cannot coexist because capitalism is inherently damaging to the environment:
Natural Resource Consumption
The manufacturing of goods and the delivery of services requires that we use our natural resources. Consuming natural resources means that natural habitats are destroyed as we strip land to make way for mining operations or we clear forests for lumber and prepare fields for agriculture. There is no consideration for the consequences of such actions, including loss of biodiversity, or the impact on climate change due to the loss of photosynthesizing plants and trees, or the fact that tree populations are massively declining. To consume natural resources in a way that preserves the environment has a cost associated with it, for example by using less destructive methods of tree removal to prevent forests and rain forests from disappearing, or by replanting trees to offset the loss of trees cut for lumber. Capitalism places no value on the environment so the additional cost simply cannot be justified when profit is the only goal.
Competition
Capitalism is all about competition, which is all about winners and losers, so when businesses close because they lose to the competition, then everything in their operation goes with it. Inventory of products which nobody wants are thrown away, factories with rusting equipment are abandoned, and the doors are shut on office buildings full of furniture, equipment, and supplies which are no longer needed and which have no significant value as used items.
There is no business sector in Nutopia where people come up with new ideas for products and services because they have to figure out how to make a living in order to survive, so they start new businesses, some of which succeed but many of which fail. Instead the Guardian System allows people to submit ideas for new goods and services they feel are needed to solve problems or to improve the lives of people or animals, which are then carefully reviewed to see if they are valid and credible. New items are then manufactured in the Central Production Facility.
Manufacturing
Decades ago products were designed and manufactured with the goals of quality and longevity. Today, price (and therefore cost) trumps everything else in order to satisfy the needs of a price-focused population, because over the last few decades their cost of living has steadily gone up, and wage increases have been nonexistent or extremely low. It is a race to the bottom so that anything that reduces the cost of production is used. This includes outsourcing manufacturing to parts of the world with relaxed or nonexistent protections for workers or the environment. The vast majority of Western corporations use manufacturing operations in Asia with essentially slave labor and no laws to protect the environment.
In Nutopia all new items are manufactured in the Central Production Facility. Every item is carefully designed so that its production does not have a negative effect on the environment, and the natural resources consumed are immediately replaced.
Planned Obsolescence
Capitalism depends on continual economic growth, so a product which is designed to last forever, or satisfies the needs of its owner indefinitely, is bad for capitalism because if the consumer is not frequently changing, updating, or upgrading the products they own, then economic growth will be stifled. Planned obsolescence is a well known strategy to prevent this, where products are carefully designed so that they work sufficiently to make the consumer believe that they have not been duped or conned, but then they fail, break, or degrade after not too long so that they must be replaced. Modular design was abandoned years ago which allowed individual components of an overall product to be easily and inexpensively replaced, whereas today, it is cost prohibitive to try to repair them so the entire product is discarded and sent to a landfill for burial.
Every manufactured item in Nutopia is carefully designed so that it is built with a modular design so that it can be fixed easily if it fails, and it is built with the utmost attention to quality so that it will last for a very long time. All buildings, and manufactured items in Nutopia are immediately entered in to the Guardian System so that they are automatically scheduled for regular and continual maintenance.
Design
We have all been conditioned over many years through incessant advertising, to believe that we should always have the latest and greatest version of a product regardless of whether the old one is functioning quite adequately or not. Every 12 to 18 months the latest consumer gadgets start to appear with minor improvements over the last version, causing droves of mindless consumers to hit the stores to make sure that they have the latest design of product.
Citizens of Nutopia do not own any possessions and they aren't part of a consumer culture where continually wanting new products when there is no need for them is encouraged. Goods and services are manufactured based on the actual needs of the community and the size of the population only.
Style
Style is another one of those clever concepts to keep the economic growth machine running. Whether it is gadgets, clothes, shoes, furniture, kitchen appliances, carpets, jewelry, or ladies handbags, we have been trained to make sure that we are never "out of style". We don't want to be embarrassed when others find out that we still have last year's style, so we head to the stores and make sure that our homes and our closets are properly filled with the very latest style of products, and we are wearing the latest clothes and accessories.
In Nutopia all goods and services are improved over time only if there is a tangible benefit of changing them, not just for the sake of change, and the Guardian System ensures that people share them equally.
