Cradle to Cradle

I found this book incredibly inspiring after an entire semester of depressingly realistic authors. While, rather idealistic, it is nice to read someone proposing actual changes and following them through. The other authors we have read have proposed solutions, but mostly called for an entire societal change, which, lets be honest, is not probable in our current society anytime in the near future.

McDonough and Braungart have created a economically friendly system, embracing the ideas “waste=food” and “income from solar energy.” They embrace the sun, as it is the only resource we have that is given to us naturally, and without any real effort or strain on the economy. They believe that the sun can power buildings through electricity, and grows our food and building materials, so we are pretty much completely dependent on the sun.

The idea that I particularly liked was the idea of “waste=food” and the two cycles that the authors have created: the Technological Cycle and the Biological Cycle. The biological cycle combines the environment and the economy, and has them working in tandem rather than separately. McDonough believes that waste, in particular waste that has come from the ground should not end up in a landfill, but be returned back to the earth to create more food and products for animals and humans. The technological cycle is one that transforms parts of technology so that they can be completely recycled and reused for the same product. An example of this was the actual book “Cradle to Cradle.” This book was made from a polymer that can be broken down and made into a completely new form of paper, having lost none of its value or wear. The idea behind these two cycles is to completely eliminate waste, and create a society that reuses every product that is made, and works in harmony the environment while doing it.

An idea that was sparked in my head from watching the movie about Bill McDonough’s architecture was how companies can still gain profit while recycling and reusing products. Many argue that capitalist companies will not be on board with transforming into a waste-free society, because it would lose them money. When the part in the movie came on about Nike trying to make their products reusable and someone said the line “shouldn’t we be in the business of shoe-ing people’s feet,” I thought of a system that could potentially work. Any kind of clothing or shoe store could work as a cell phone service does, and create contracts with customers. Customers could get deals and discounts on new clothes if they brought their old, worn-out ones back, fostering a system where companies could use reusable materials and customers would have incentives to bring their clothes back.