Cradle to Cradle

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Reduce, reuse, recycle, urge environmentalists in other words, do with less in order to minimize damage But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this provocative, visionary book, such an approach only perpetuates the one way, cradle to grave manufacturing model, dating to the Industrial Revolution, that creates such fantastic amounts of waste and pollution in the first place Why not challenge the belief that human industry must damage the natural world In fact, why not take nature itself as our model for making things A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we consider its abundance not wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective.Waste equals food.Guided by this principle, McDonough and Braungart explain how products can be designed from the outset so that, after their useful lives, they will provide nourishment for something new They can be conceived as biological nutrients that will easily reenter the water or soil without depositing synthetic materials and toxins Or they can be technical nutrients that will continually circulate as pure and valuable materials within closed loop industrial cycles, rather than being recycled really, downcycled into low grade materials and uses Drawing on their experience in re designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make an exciting and viable case for putting eco effectiveness into practice, and show how anyone involved with making anything can begin to do as well William McDonough is an architect and the founding principal of William McDonough Partners, Architecture and Community Design, based in Charlottesville, Virginia From 1994 to 1999 he served as dean of the school of architecture at the University of Virginia In 1999 Time magazine recognized him as a Hero for the Planet, stating that his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that in demonstrable and practical ways is changing the design of the world In 1996, he received the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development, the highest environmental honor given by the United States.Michael Braungart is a chemist and the founder of the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency EPEA in Hamburg, Germany Prior to starting EPEA, he was the director of the chemistry section for Greenpeace Since 1984 he has been lecturing at universities, businesses, and institutions around the world on critical new concepts for ecological chemistry and materials flow management Dr Braungart is the recipient of numerous honors, awards, and fellowships from the Heinz Endowment, the W Alton Jones Foundation, and other organizations.In 1995 the authors created McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, a product and systems development firm assisting client companies in implementing their unique sustaining design protocol Their clients include Ford Motor Company, Nike, Herman Miller, BASF, DesignTex, Pendleton, Volvo, and the city of Chicago. Download Cradle to Cradle By William McDonough – kino-fada.fr Three stars doesn t quite do justice to this book Its ideas merit five stars, but the text sags a bit and tends to repeat itself a lot, thereby losing some power What the text lacks in eloquence, however, it makes up for in tactility I couldn t stop petting this book Its synthetic paper pages felt so resilient and smooth and sleek The authors chose to make a recyclable, treeless book from from plastic resins and inorganic fillers It is waterproof and with a certain treatment its pages Three stars doesn t quite do justice to this book Its ideas merit five stars, but the text sags a bit and tends to repeat itself a lot, thereby losing some power What the text lacks in eloquence, however, it makes up for in tactility I couldn t stop petting this book Its ...The central issue in this book is the notion that we can manufacture products and infrastructure that are really, actually good for the environment instead of simply being less bad.Here s an example of what on Earth that could possibly mean In making paper, you have two options 1 You can cut down a tree to make clean, high quality paper, but on a large scale this involves massive deforestation and the annihilation of ecosystems 2 You can recycle old paper However, paper fibers get shor The central issue in this book is the notion that we can manufacture products and infrastructure that are really, actually good for the environment instead of simply being less bad.Here s an example of what on Earth that could possibly mean In making paper, you have two options 1 You can cut down a tree to make clean, high quality paper, but on a large scale this involves massive deforestation and the annihilation of ecosystems 2 You can recycle old paper However, paper fibers get shorter and shorter thethey re recycled, requiringandenvironmentally questionable chemicals bleaches, stabilizers, etc to produce a product of less quality than the original The authors call this downcycling , which means just what it sounds like it means Finally, the chemicals involved in the creation of either kind of paper remain in the environment long after the paper fibers themselves decompose.So option 1 above is clearly bad, and option 2 is what they call less bad As an actually good alternative, they m...TL DR Defines an obvious problem and then offers no realistic solution to address it.I enjoyed the first half of this book, which was a staggering indictment of the industrialized consumer economy The authors then offer a manifesto for reshaping it so that growth could be positive For example, if cars cleaned the air instead of polluting it, we would seecars as a positive outcome, not something to lament Despite the authors working in this field for decades, there weren t a lot of case TL DR Defines an obvious problem and then offers no realistic solution to address it.I enjoyed the first half of this book, which was a staggering indictment of the industrialized consumer economy The authors then offer a manifesto for reshaping it so that growth could be positive For example, if cars cleaned the air instead of polluting it, we would seecars as a positive outcome, not some...Did you know that before the Industrial Revolution, everyone grew their own food That it was only during the Industrial Revolution that factory workers no longer had enough time to farm and were forced to move to the city and depend on others for it That banks and stock markets and what have you all came into existence only during the Industrial Revolution, to support the new born Capitalist Machine Oh, how na ve you were to think non agrarian middle classes and banks were around for millennia Did you know that before the Industrial Revolution, everyone grew their own food That it was only during the Industrial Revolution that factory workers no longer had enough time to farm and were forced to move to the city and depend on others for it That banks and stock markets and what have you all came into existence only during the Industrial Revolution, to support the new born Capitalist Machine Oh, how na ve you were to think non agrarian middle classes and banks were around for millennia before the Industrial Revolution, and that stock markets date back to the 12th or 13th century Alright, so the book s central thesis is straightforward and relatively uncontroversial and completely apparent from the title the incredible amount of bullshit it s draped in gets on my nerves.This nonsense about the Industrial Revolution is only the tip of the iceberg w...Everyone on the planet should read this book The authors, one a chemist, and the other an architect, have thoughtdeeply about what green truly means in terms of the environment than anybody else What they say will surprise you They are not big fans of recycling, for example, because most things that are recycled were not designed for same, and it takes a lot of energy to cycle them down to a...Belike ants and cherry trees I just saved you the trouble of reading this repetitive bore.Other than that, be prepared for rhetorical questions basically the same one using a different example or with slight variations in phrasing What would have happened, we sometimes wonder, if the Industrial Revolution had taken place in societies that emphasize the community over the individual, and where people believed not in a cradle to grave life cycle but in reincarnation Seriously, I just sa Belike ants and cherry trees I just saved you the trouble of reading this repetitive bore.Other than that, be prepared for rhetorical questions basically the same one using a diffe...Pretty much as advertised a screed in a good way against the normal cradle to grave paradigm of consumerism and short sighted product design For instance Isn t it funny that in, say, apple juice boxes, the product inside has a shorter shelf life than the packaging Why would the packaging bedurable than its product Wouldn t it be cool if packaging was designed to be tossed into your yard, decompose in weeks, and maybe even contain a wildflower seed that would germinate Cradle to Cr Pretty much as advertised a screed in a good way against the normal cradle to grave paradigm of consumerism and short sighted product design For instance Isn t it funny that in, say, apple juice boxes, the product inside has a shorter shelf life than the packaging Why would the packaging bedurable than its product Wouldn t it be cool if packaging was designed to be tossed into your yard, decompose in weeks, and maybe even contain a wildflower seed that would germinate Cradle to Cradle is also a scary book in a good way about all the chemicals that go into everything we buy There s th...Cradle to Cradle is a essentially book of questions, and a calling for people to not only re think the way we make things, but to re think the way we perceive ourselves as pitted against the natural world, rather than working with the natural world The age old paradigm of conquering nature and bend or in many cases break it to fit our needs is outmoded,short sighted, and, in fac...This is an excellent and inspiring account of flourishing, ecologically minded design At the core of the book is a paradigm shift from eco efficient design that focuses on simply using less materials that is, being less bad to instead eco effective design that reimagines products that do not simply use less material, but might actually productively contribute to the lives of other persons and the natural world Thus, instead of designing products that are destined eventually for the landfill, This is an excellent and inspiring account of flourishing, ecologically minded design At the core of the book is a paradigm shift from eco efficient design that fo...The authors tell an encouraging and interesting story about our approach to product development and use today One where the product lifecycle is from cradle to grave a product is made and when it dies it goes away They give lots of good examples of a why that is a bad thing and b how we can do it better by opting for a cradle to cradle mentality.What I liked most about this book was how they peeled apart the subtle metaphors that strongly affect our outlook today for products Thin The authors tell an encouraging and interesting story about our approach to product development and use today One where the product lifecycle is from cradle to grave a product is made and when it dies it goes away They give lots of good examples of...

Cradle to Cradle
  • English
  • 09 March 2018
  • Paperback
  • 193 pages
  • 0865475873
  • William McDonough
  • Cradle to Cradle