Small is Beautiful is the name of a book written by Fritz Schumacher (first published in 1973). The phrase became an environmental slogan and a rallying cry against the inhumanity of modern industrial technologies and the techniques of mass production.

Schumacher wanted what he called “intermediate technology” - technology that people could control, understand and fix themselves.

He argued for human scale development and economics that kept the profit of work within the community, and that the gigantic size of the multinational company was fundamentally flawed because it was out of proportion to the human scale. The only way to solve the environmental crisis was to go small.

Working big vs. working small

Thirty years on, the world has changed. And this new world has created a dilemma amongst some environmentalists