cradle to cradle remaking the way we make

“A readable provocative treatise that 'gets outside the box' in a huge way. the authors' original concepts are an inspiring reminder that humans are capable to much more elegant environmental solutions than the ones we've settled for in the last half-century.” - Publishers Weekly “ ideas are bold, imaginative, and deserving of serious attention.” -Ben Ehrenreich, Mother Jones magazine This enlightened and enlightening book shows us how-and indeed, that 'God is in the details.' A must for every library and every concerned citizen.” - Hazel Henderson, author of Building a Win-Win World and Beyond Globalization: Shaping a Sustainable Global Economy “Achieving the great economic transition to more equitable, ecologically sustainable societies requires nothing less than a design revolution-beyond today's fossilized industrialism. This book will give you renewed hope that, indeed, 'it is darkest before the dawn'.” - Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club Asking how a cherry tree would design an energy efficient building is only one of the creative 'practices' that McDonough and Braungart spread, like a field of wild flowers, before their readers. “Environmentalists too rarely apply the ecological wisdom of life to our problems. 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

Cradle to cradle remaking the way we make