Good to read for more background on the cradle to cradle approach, it is both hopeful and daunting

It took me a little while to really get what this book was about. Once I realized it was about how we make things rather than how we can responsibly consume them - well, ok, primarily about - I enjoyed it a great deal more.

McDonough and Braungart draw on years of experience as designers, chemists, and generally eco-minded sorts to present a really compelling argument as to why the way we currently make things is 1) not sustainable and 2) in basically every way bad for us and the environment. The book is sobering but also hopeful - I was reading it on the bus the other morning and found myself daydreaming about how the environment in my library could be improved by putting a garden on the roof which would help regulate the building temperature while also giving us a place to go that is green...and then I got to work and the elevators were broken and the AC wasn't working again, and I realized I needed to set my sights a little lower.

I think what's really challenging about this book is that it presents a lot of solutions - or at least ideas - but very few that are actionable for your Average Joe Consumer. I can't change the way my plastic yogurt container was produced, and I try to do my best by recycling the container, but now I feel doubly guilty for consuming something in a disposable container since the container that I dutifully wash and put in the recycling bin will likely be downcycled rather than recycled. Sigh.

3.25 stars

The authors are an architect and a chemist who work together to make/create more environmentally-friendly/sustainable items. They actually start off by saying that what we mostly do now is not good enough; that is, there are still issues with trying to be not “as bad” vs. all-out bad. They want to make things “good” (for human health, for the environment, and even for company’s/industry’s bottom lines, economically. They say it can be done (and they have examples of things they’ve done working with various companies to do those things).

It’s probably something we need to hear, but it’s new, and so for some things, I had a hard time wrapping my head around the ideas: eco-effective vs eco-efficient, upcycling vs downcycling, biological nutrients and technical nutrients, and more. I think I figured out downcycling -- when we currently recycle, this is what happens. This means that the items we recycle are being reused/remade, but they are of lower quality. Because they are of lower quality, more potential toxins/chemicals need to be added to “shore things up”, so to speak. I’m probably not explaining that well.

They did have some good examples and I think they are probably correct in what they are suggesting, but it was hard for me to figure all of it out. Maybe there needs to be more written on this, as the more I read, I’ll likely clue in a bit better. But what’s unfortunate (and I hadn’t realized) is that this book was published 20 years ago, in 2002. Without having heard much more about these concepts, I’m concerned that they haven’t really taken root, still.

Inspiring, prescient introduction to closed loop systems, written by an architect and a chemist (in 2002!). In short summary, nature has no waste, all waste = food, and monster hybrids are bad, every material should belong to either technological or biological nutrient streams.

This book has inspired me to be a better engineer. Not just less bad, but actually good.

Great way to re-think pretty much everything. Super educational and information, if a little specific sometimes (which is to be expected given that its two guys talking about their own experiences). Really enjoyed all the possible solutions, whether theoretical or anecdotal. Some definitely seemed a little idealistic, but I am excited to look more into the examples and find out more!

I enjoyed listening to the audiobook however I didn't hesitate to do so at x1.4 speed, which usually means I'm not getting too much out of it either in aesthetic or information wise.

That said, I really appreciate the concepts behind the cradle to cradle ideas, pushing the envelope.

3 1/2 stars

One of Cambridge Sustainability's Top 50 Books for Sustainability, as voted for by our alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. To find out more, click here.

Cradle to Cradle begins where eco-efficiency ends. Eco-efficiency, according to McDonough and Braungart, is just about making a bad system a little less bad. Eco-effectiveness, on the other hand, is about redesigning products and services to make them good - bigger and better in a way that replenishes, restores and nourishes the rest of the world. Hence, industry can have a positive impact on the environment, provided it is designed with that positive impact in mind.

Cradle-to-cradle goes beyond 'cradle-to-grave' thinking; rather than simply considering impacts across the life-cycle of a product and trying to minimise waste, the authors argue for closed-loop production, where waste is acceptable only if it is entirely re-used by the system.

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 see more cars as a positive outcome, not something to lament. Despite the authors working in this field for decades, there weren't a lot of case studies and they all were quite superficial. They helped transform a furniture factory in Germany to produce clean water as its waste output, but didn't explain how.

Like many of these books, when it gets to the practical section, it completely breaks down into blue sky hand-waving. They pretend to be pragmatic and define five compounding steps (177) for a company to take on the path to their ideal of product design and production, but the steps glaze over why a company would care about any of this to begin with. They condemn eco-effectiveness without acknowledging that the only reason it even exists is because it saves money. Who is going to invest in making a car that, instead of having many negative outputs, has positive ones, when our economic system is defined to its very core by rewarding bad behaviors?

The book pretty much devolved into this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkGMY...

If you want more practical solutions to this problem, I suggest Fight Club.

PT: sustainability books, books that set my brain to galaxy mode, books that kind of destroyed me, books recommended by BAC staff (thanks Michael!)/books recommended by a prof, books I'm reading as fast as I possibly can to prepare for grad school, books that changed the way I see the world

EDIT, AUGUST 7, 2021: I'd like to revise my original 5-star review to 4.2 stars simply because this book has kind of ruined my life. This, in combination with several other readings, has made me QUITE uncomfortably aware of how bad things really are. I've had so many breakdowns!! So many!! I can barely look at this book without wanting to throw up now, so visceral is my fear and GUILT over the excesses of the American lifestyle. Please for the love of god can someone invent a time machine and destroy the earliest notions of plastic and urban sprawl. I am in tears. WHAT HAVE WE DONE

holy smokes. I believe my reaction to this is best represented in three (3) Oh my gods from Chandler Bing:

  
(Horrified at how terrible humans have been to the environment)


  
(distressed and angry at how much we've got to fix)

  
(in awe of how well this was written/how well it connects seemingly disparate ideas)



WIL
1) it's got,, everything? The breadth of information in this thing is wild. Everything from endocrine disruptors to how to make shoes. but somehow?? it all still flows???

2)THIS IS NOT A BOOK AHH SOHGOAIJOGS. This book isn't made of conventional materials!! I noticed it the second I picked it up and instantly loved it, and McDonough and Braungart's explanation of the how/why of the materials science behind this book made it even better.

3) Sustainability crash course: I already knew a lot of the concepts in this book, but I didn't know them nearly well enough. It provides a logically tracking explanation of SO many sustainable design concepts, and it's highly *readable.*

4) Other works/referenced works. Bibliographies, my beloved. MORE BOOKS TO READ. SO EXCITING

5) (as a continuation of WIDL 4) BUUUUT... the authors did make it clear that there IS hope if only we're clever enough to think up creative solutions.

WIDL
1) a little overwhelming. This can be a little dense at times, both physically and in content. Like, okay, yea I'm a sustainability student so I know I should EXPECT to hear those classic tales of woe about how we're basically doomed, but oof. It was a little too much. Connect to WIL 5)


Neutral Ground:
1) Digging out of a hole by digging down? McDonough and Braungart seem to have the right idea- a return to nature is the wisest choice we can make for our psychology, health, and the ecology of our world, but their approach... they think the solution is building, but making it more sustainable by the principles they've newly established. Which, yea, I mean, cool, but that seems pretty counterintuitive? They spent a large portion of the book explaining how the practices of the past were destructive to our future simply because the people of the past didn't have all the information tey needed to make the most sustainable choices. But THEN the authors propose their oWN solutions. Who's to say those won't be outdated in 30 years? or 10? I mean, it's a start, but it's just a bit concerning thinking of it on the grand scale yknow? I personally think their mission does make sense and SEEMS like the best solution for now, but what do I know? I don't know what I don't know, and a little part of me fears maybe McDonough and Braungart are the same way.

The main theme of this book is that rather than deplete fresh natural capital to do things with, and then throw away waste products, we should consider tapping waste products for materials of value - and that we should design things in order to better facilitate such circularity. The book is very (very) repetitive. It is also overly simplistic. I am wondering, for example, what to do with mine, now that I have read it. Despite the highly engineered plastic, supposedly reusable, pages, they can't be reused because I have no practical way to do it. On the other hand it will be super easy to throw it in the plastic recycling bin (which will lead to incineration with energy generation in my city). Practical problems don't lend themselves to philosophising, but to real world challenges and solutions. Basically, the philosophising here is fine. Just too long and a bit trite. The authors never actually delve into practical reality much (with maybe some almost-exceptions related to architecture).