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Corporatism is a cultural paradigm that the authors never truly challenge; instead, they praise commerce for its ability to find efficient solutions and harness human ingenuity. The authors, Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart, invoke a change in design paradigm centered on one aphorism--"waste is food." The authors contrast natural systems, which evolved to continually cycle limiting nutrients, to our industrial system, which creates products without regard for the retrieval of "technical nutrients" that they contain. It shifts the focus away from problems that designers must work against and onto goals that designers must work towards. It's hard to see where eco-effectiveness fits into an industrial model that defines objectives in terms of "consumer value," or the illusion thereof. Economic downturns, however, have the potential to challenge even those businesses that "understand and prepare for the learning curve" that accompanies the transition to cradle-to-cradle design. One of the most compelling presentations in this book occurs when the author asks the reader, rhetorically, to design a "system of production" that pollutes, erodes cultures, results in massive waste, and so on. Reframing the relationship between the economy and the environment allows problematic interactions between the two to be understood as consequences of poor industrial design.
By re-casting industry's results as objectives, the authors indicate how unintentional our current environmental problems are. The contrast between unintended consequence and positive objective imparts hope. "Cradle to Cradle" reads quickly, and is worthwhile if you're interested in environmental design because it presents an essentially optimistic message: environmental problems can be reduced to (soluble) design problems. Human beings may genuinely care for the earth they inhabit, but industrial systems are also governed by global capital and complex financial rules that seem to operate in a world all their own. While it is refreshing to view industry in terms of what it actually produces, designers have to defend their plans in front of board members for whom "capital flow" and "shareholder equity" are real concerns. In flush economic times, companies may have resources to invest in innovation that confers a marketing and public relations advantage. In proposing a re-designed, "good" system, the authors imply that change must come from within industry, discounting the efforts of activists who strive to put social pressure on industry from the outside. In particular, the authors insist on repeatedly attacking "earth first" environmentalism as a shortsighted approach to limit a fundamentally "bad" industrial system.
Hence a new type of design--"cradle to cradle," which conceives objects both in terms of their present utility and their future re-use.McDonough and Braungart view the economy as a physical, metabolic cycle--a view at odds with contemporary economics, in which "the economy" is an abstraction. The inoffensive message that companies can, and should, continue to pursue profits while revolutionizing their product design strikes me as overly apologetic during a time when federal bailouts and corporate bankruptcy make headlines. Overall, the book empowers both designers specifically and human ingenuity more generally. If our current problems arise out of carelessness, the argument implies, then careful design must be able to solve them.In approaching such broad social and ecological ambitions from a design perspective, however, McDonough and Braungart tend to idealize the businesses upon which designers' jobs depend. Cradle to Cradle will only have a lasting impact if its ideas succeed in generating a wholesale cultural transformation--something that must, necessarily, begin with a "seed." McDonough and Braungart try to present this book as that seed; while their approach justifies, to an extent, the omission of detailed implementation strategies, they nevertheless manage to wrangle about forty pages of dull, ideological repetition into the book. Their basic message remains positive and powerful, however, and contains an empowering set of guidelines by which industry can do its own part to move towards a "restorative economy."
If you are unfamiliar with his work, I recommend checking out the author's website to see some of the amazing buildings he's created and their system of investigating materials and the subsequent selection criteria that goes into a project. This is one of my favorite books. His work with top Fortune-500 companies is amazing, and offers a glimmer of hope for the future. Anyone interested in sustainable design be it architectural, personal, or from a business perspective will benefit from this visionary author's work. McDonough has been the principle architect of numerous cutting edge designs. This book is printed on actual 100% recyclable material, and its waterproof to boot.bonus. A very enjoyable read, I highly recommend it.
I really think this is the way to follow: It talks about changing the T of technology for the S of sustainable technology in the famous I=PAT formula being P population, A afluece and I Environmental Impact. I am an engineer, IT consultant and MBA and this book just gave me something I was looking for so long: It gave an answer about how to solve current time issues of overpopulation, natural resources depletion and pollution. It gave me hope because the alternative of going back to the wild or to the ideallized living of farmers 100 years ago was never realistic to me. Inspiring, realistic and knowledgeable.William McDonough, are you hiring.
Cradle to Cradle is great. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with any interest in the environment. It's an easy read, not very comlicated, and extremely effective at painting a picture of most any environmental issue. This book is very motivational. I wish I could find the words to say more good things about this book. Read it.
It really opens your eyes to a different way of looking at design and sustainability. First of all, I was completely amazed by the materials that the book was made out of. My only complaint is that I wish it discussed costs more. It really showed that there are alternatives to what we're currently using. Second, the book was just fascinating. The only mention I can recall is that they said an eco-effective building that they created cost 10% more than the alternative. There should have been at least a chapter focused on how much would it cost companies to create products in these new ways.
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