Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

I highly recommend this read. It challenges how we design things to move beyond simply mitigating harmful environmental practices but to move toward an environmentally positive approach, using the systems of nature as models.

This book is really very interesting and clear. Three years ago I attended a lecture by one of the authors, and I found this upcycling idea really brilliant and reading the book only confirmed my original idea. I share only slightly less their optimistic view, but still, I'm a bit too cynical by nature.

Veramente molto interessante e chiaro questo libro. Tre anni fa avevo assistito ad una conferenza di uno degli autori e avevo trovato questa idea dell'upcycling veramente geniale e leggere il libro non ha fatto che confermare la mia idea di partenza. Condivido solo leggermente di meno l'ottimismo, ma insomma, io sono un po' troppo cinica per natura.

I was assigned this book as a text book 5 years ago and never read it lmao, but I'm glad I came back and finally did. Cradle to Cradle is hopeful and paradigm-shaking look at the way materials are made and used, that goes beyond sustainability. Sustainability is really about being "less bad", as Cradle to Cradle puts it. Pollute less, waste less, etc. From the Cradle to Cradle perspective, the focus switches from a design framework that works to build things that are "less bad", to just designing things that are good from the start. It really got me thinking about how I use materials in daily life, and has already encouraged lots of changes that help me feel "good", not "less bad". I wish there had been a focus on some more actionable things for the average person, because while the book is so hopeful about the way material flows can look, it's very big-picture, and describes a system that is so distant from reality. But that being said, recommend to anyone interested in materials science, engineering, and sustainability, for some perspective-expanding goodness.

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 be more durable 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 this thing called "off-gassing" where they test what chemicals a normal product (a spatula, an iPod speaker, a sneaker sole) gives off as it's used and knocked around. Turns out that as products decompose a bit, their chemicals get into our food and indoor air, and that kind of poisoning generally isn't prohibited or regulated. Or if it is, it's at the chemical level -- there's a "bad list" of proven carcinogens, instead of a good list of chemicals known to be safe.

I agree now: Every product should come with an ingredients list -- so you know if you're buying toxic and carcinogenic chemicals when you buy, say, an extension cord. The more you know.

Read this book, if only to freak you out (in a good way).

Useful book from the early 2000s, expanding the awareness of what and why ecology should be embedded in our current living and future solutions.

An enlightening read, combining ecology with economy and ethics (the "triple top line" ), yet with some questionable passages, interpretable as "finding the most general solution, the silver bullet that applies to the widest possible number of scenarios": a risky venture, considering the harmful and still not fully studied effect of, let's say, polymeric biodegradation and microplastics.

7.5/10 - At the center of this book is a very important challenge to a widely held assumption: that nature and industry are inherently at odds to one another. Environmentalists and industrialists under this assumption play a zero sum game where progress must be achieved through concessions of the warring party.

Cradle to cradle convincingly dismantles it, but at the same time it would have been helpful to have more history on this book with perhaps a second edition update to trace the proliferation of these ideas and large scale adoption beyond the work of the authors. That said, it seems hardly any good books exist on related concepts (how I found this), so it deserves extra recognition for its uniqueness.

I started reading this randomly cause I have a course on Sustainable Development in this semester of my higher education, but I am left spellbound by this book.

It shaped the way I used to think about Sustainability and is really an amazing icebreaker for anyone who might be thinking to start reading about Sustainability. So, if anyone wanting to know or to start knowing about the term "Sustainability", this book might be a good start.

Really compelling book for anyone who designs products, buildings, or cities: anything that requires intake of natural resources. The idea is to not just think about what happens in the manufacture and use of the product, but also design for a useful disposal. Design so that the end-of-life for your product adds value to the world instead of ending in a landfill. The book is full of real world examples of sustainable and unsustainable designs, as well as a history of how we got to where we are today, and data on how much we've already destroyed.

McDonough suggests several solutions, but the one that sounded most immediately relevant was the concept of a "product of service". Instead of having all products be disposed of by consumers, you effectively rent out the product service, and the manufacturer repairs it as needed, and takes it back and pulls out the valuable metals and recycles it at the end of use. (p. 111) This could work for chemicals that need proper disposal, or iPhones that can be disassembled by a robot at Apple, or cars that get upgraded over time. This kind of model also means manufacturers get maximum revenue by adopting cradle-to-cradle design.

He also proposes a design guide that considers three factors and their intersections: Ecology, Economy, and Equity. Are you going to make money (economy)? Will your employees be paid fairly (equity)? Will your employees have a healthy work environment (equity/ecology)? Is this product sustainable in the long-term (ecology)?

This book will definitely make you more aware of all the chemicals in your daily environment, from the new carpet outgassing into your home, to the effect of detergents and flushed medications on aquatic life, to the tiny synthetic particles your shoes leave on the sidewalk that get washed onto the plants growing in soil nearby.
This book also questions economic simplifications. For example, the use of GDP as a measure of "progress". For example, the 1991 Exxon Valdez oil spill resulted in an increase in Alaska's GDP, because, in the short-term, the people involved in the cleanup spent money in local businesses. But the loss of wildlife, wildlife habitats, decimation of certain species, and loss of income of local fishermen - the GDP didn't adequately reflect those long-term losses at all.
Related to over-simplification, one might also expand the definition of "efficiency". If a design increases energy efficiency but as a side effect exposes people to more toxins, that's not a long-term solution. If a solar panel saves energy but requires rare metals for manufacturing, "an energy problem has been traded for a materials problem."

It can be demoralizing to realize how every single little action we do as humans can be destroying the world that we're trying to protect. There is no way, short of not having humans, to have zero ecological footprint. McDonough's answer? "The key is not to make human industries and systems smaller, as efficiency advocates propound, but to design them to get bigger and better in a way that replenishes, restores, and nourishes the rest of the world."

"Instead of fine-tuning the existing destructive framework, why don't people and industries set out to create ... products that, when their useful life is over, do not become useless waste but can be tossed onto the ground to decompose and become food for plants and animals and nutrients for soil; or alternately, that can return to industrial cycles to supply high-quality raw materials for new products."

p. 97 History lesson: "In preindustrial culture, people did consume things. Most products would safely biodegrade once they were thrown away, buried, or burned. Metals were the exception: these were seen as highly valuable and were melted down and reused. ... In times of scarcity, a recognition of the value of technical materials would flare up; people who grew up during the Great Depression, for example, were careful about reusing jars, jugs, and aluminum foil, and during World War II, people saved rubber bands, aluminum foil, steel, and other materials to feed industrial needs. ... Similarly, in the early decades of industrialization, people might pass down, repair, or sell old service products like ovens, refrigerators, and phones to junk dealers. Today most so-called durables are tossed."

"How can we support and perpetuate the rights of all living things to share in a world of abundance?"