The Missing Link Technologies

I analysed over 2000 existing semi-sustainable products. But while a handful have been close, I have not yet come across a 100% sustainable one. This prompted a small exercise where I designed some rough concepts for a wide range of blue-sky, 100% sustainable products. Each of these trial designs was thwarted by a missing technology. But in every case, the product could become 100% sustainable with the application of just one or two magic bullets, or missing-link technologies:

Switchable Additives, such as pigments, preservatives and flame retardants, which would perform their function while the product was in use, but then could be deactivated to allow for composting (usually hindered by preservatives e.g. in tanned leather) or recycling (usually hindered by additives such as colours, which contaminate batches of recyclate).
Sensing RFIDs, that contain both the designer's details of product composition, but also which sense and memorise what has happened to the material during the complex path of manufacture and assembly, all to tell the right story to the disassembler when the product is eventually recycled.
Solar factories and solar logistics (such as biodiesel lorries) to ensure that all the energy and embergy used in a product's lifetime is solar or renewable.

These three magic bullets solved a lot of problems when designing rough concepts -- an extended study would reveal more directions and consolidate or disprove the assumption that we are very close, that we just need a few nudges to precipitate these things into existence.

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