cradle to cradle remaking the way we make things 2002

The power plant in turn releases a smaller amount of pollutants into the environment, and whoever foots the electric bill spends less money. (The windows do not open.) It lowers solar income with dark-tinted glass, diminishing the cooling load on the building’s air-conditioning system and thereby cutting the amount of fossil-fuel energy used. It minimizes air infiltration by sealing places that might leak.

We know what an eco-efficient building looks like. What might the human-built world look like if a cherry tree had produced it? In fact, the tree’s fecundity nourishes just about everything around it. Although the tree actually makes more of its “product” than it needs for its own success in an ecosystem, this abundance has evolved (through millions of years of success and failure or, in business terms, R&D), to serve rich and varied purposes. Once they fall on the ground, their materials decompose and break down into nutrients that nourish microorganisms, insects, plants, animals, and soil.

Who would look at the ground littered with cherry blossoms and complain, “How inefficient and wasteful!” The tree makes copious blossoms and fruit without depleting its environment. The following is an excerpt from the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make ThingsĬonsider the cherry tree: thousands of blossoms create fruit for birds, humans, and other animals, in order that one pit might eventually fall onto the ground, take root, and grow. It's a handbook for 21st-century innovation and should be required reading for business hotshots and environmental activists. Cradle to Cradle is a refreshing change from the intractable environmental conflicts that dominate headlines. They offer several compelling examples of corporations that are not just doing less harm-they're actually doing some good for the environment and their neighborhoods, and making more money in the process. The authors, an architect and a chemist, want to eliminate the concept of waste altogether, while preserving commerce and allowing for human nature. Recycling, for instance, is actually 'downcycling,' creating hybrids of biological and technical 'nutrients' which are then unrecoverable and unusable. Why settle for the least harmful alternative when we could have something that is better-say, edible grocery bags! In Cradle to Cradle, the authors present a manifesto calling for a new industrial revolution, one that would render both traditional manufacturing and traditional environmentalism obsolete. Paper or plastic? Neither, say William McDonough and Michael Braungart.

Cradle to cradle remaking the way we make things 2002