Cradle to Cradle design

Our family will be on vacation Tuesday afternoon through next Monday.  We’ll be staying in cabins in New Hampshire near where my aunt and her partner live, gathering with the extended family on my mom’s side.  Thus the earlier Musing.

One of the books I’ll be taking with me on the trip (no guarantee I’ll get to read much of it) is called Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.  These guys have done a lot of work in re-imagining the necessary future of how we produce, use, and dispose of things, arguing that the “cradle to grave” model of industry must soon come to an end.  They look to the wisdom of the biological processes of evolution where “waste = food” and are designing technical solutions that use that same model.  Since recycling is really just “downcycling,” (Microsoft Word spell check doesn’t yet know that’s a word), rehashing products to a lower state before they eventually move to the landfill, this firm is working with material and design that is infinitely recyclable. 

The opening chapter is called “This book is not a tree.”  The book itself is made from a polymer and can be recycle/reused for another purpose with no net loss of material integrity.  The firm that these men run has had contracts with Nike, Ford, the Gap, and other US corporations and is currently designing and building 12 new cities in China to help with their population explosion, each city energy and food independent (the farms are on top of their roofs, all connected with bridges from building to building).

I learned of the book while watching a 20 minute speech by William McDonough on the very cool website www.TED.com.  A link to that speech is HERE.