ABSTRACT
Designers have profound power to change the world with their actions. This power manifests especially when the results of their design actions scale. The increase or decrease in the scale of physical goods, including the number of units of finished products produced, materials which went into making the product, the waste left over after manufacturing, and physical waste remaining once the product no longer has utility for the consumer. The life span of the designed product, including the resources needed to use and maintain the product over time, and what second lives, or expanded utility, the product might serve. The scaled dissemination of information, often brought about through the design of new communications technologies and services, such as through mass production of books. Limits of exhaustion result from the depletion of renewable and nonrenewable resources to levels beyond where the resource can be replenished. Whereas limits of exhaustion are complete depletion of resource, limits by saturation are effectively the opposite.
