"And all that [recycling] effort has only succeeded in postponing the usual fate of products by a life cycle or two. The rug is still on its way to a landfill; it's just stopping off in your house en route."

Last summer, I picked up the book Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart, an architect and a chemist. What initially caught my attention wasn't the cover or the title, but the weight of the book. It was heavy.

As it turns out, "this book is not a tree!" As explained in the first chapter, its printed on a synthetic "paper." It's waterproof, very durable (seemed pretty tear-proof to me), and recyclable. It was designed with the ability to be infinitely circulated, remade as books or other products.

I finally found time to start reading and things get interesting from the get-go. From what I've gathered so far, the book aims to dispel conventional ideas of "green" design. Recycling can only get us so far:

"You care about the environment. In fact, when you went shopping for a carpet recently, you deliberately chose one made from recycled polyester soda bottles. Recycled? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say downcycled. Good intentions aside, your rug is made of things that were never designed with this further use in mind, and wrestling them into this form has required as much energy — and generated as much waste — as producing a new carpet. And all that effort has only succeeded in postponing the usual fate of products by a life cycle or two. The rug is still on its way to a landfill; it's just stopping off in your house en route."

The authors seek more effective solutions — solutions that model the design principles found in nature. Productiveness that have served the earth and kept it industrious for millions of years. They hope to eliminate the idea of waste altogether.

Photo via David Diez on Amazon.com.

Back to Blog