Well if you call it that, then yes i guess. My personal feelings agree with this definition that taking a step back, NOT doing things, and actively improving existing things is some kind of innovation. But it does not really fit into the narrative of progress that sustainability is just one form of innovation among others. I mean i do believe millions of scientists around the planet would be happy to be working full-time on durable/ecological alternatives to existing solutions (most scientists/engineers are depressed about their dayjob), but i don’t believe there’s going to be a planet-wide green new deal, and even if there were it would certainly be just a marketing stunt to pour public money into private pockets with very little concern for actual ecology.

Also, most times interoperable-recyclable solutions are not “innovations” per se but refinements of common popular wisdom. If you take agriculture, architecture, plumbing, cooking… We had very inteoperable-recyclable-efficient-durable-whatever solutions for thousands of years, although sometimes lacking scientific expertise to understand the why’s and how’s. For example permaculture is by far the best agricultural method we found so far, is based on very ancient traditions we had no clue why they were so good, and to which we applied modern scientific methods to learn new stuff. So that kind of critical look at existing technology/knowledge i don’t call so much “innovation”. I prefer the “low-tech” label for that.