Were they on the menu when you ordered that chair? Did you know that the fabric contains mutagenic materials, heavy metals, dangerous chemicals, and dyes that are often labeled hazardous by regulators-except when they are presented and sold to a customer? As you shift in your seat, particles of the fabric abrade and are taken up by your nose, mouth, and lungs, hazardous materials and all. First, that comfortable chair you are sitting on. Could there be a more compelling picture of peace, comfort, and safety? It certainly feels, at this moment, as if all is well. Your daughter uses a computer in the next room while the baby crawls on the carpet and plays with a pile of colorful plastic toys. You have finally found the time to sink into your favorite armchair, relax, and pick up a book. Products might be designed so that, after their useful life, they provide nourishment for something new-either as 'biological nutrients' that safely re-enter the environment or as 'technical nutrients' that circulate within closed-loop industrial cycles, without being 'downcycled' into low-grade uses (as most 'recyclables' now are).Įlaborating their principles from experience (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, William McDonough and Michael Braungart make an exciting and viable case for change. In fact, why not take nature itself as our model? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we do not consider its abundance wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective hence, 'waste equals food' is the first principle the book sets forth. Why not challenge the notion that human industry must inevitably damage the natural world?

But as this provocative, visionary book argues, this approach perpetuates a one-way, 'cradle to grave' manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial Revolution and casts off as much as 90 percent of the materials it uses as waste, much of it toxic. 'Reduce, reuse, recycle' urge environmentalists in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism

Braungart cradle to cradle