Table Of Content(cid:36)(cid:51)(cid:50)(cid:47)(cid:50)
WlWam lloDonoqb • lllobael BraUDpl"t
Nor1h Point Press
A division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
Copyright© 2002 by William McDonough and Michad llraungart
AI I rights reserved
DistributPd in Canada by Douglas & Mcintyre l.td.
Prin~t>d in China
First edition, 2002
DuraBookTM, patent no. G,77:3,0:l4. is a trademark of Mdchcr Media, Inc.,
124 West 13th Street, Nt·w York, Y I 0011, www.nwlc·h!'r.com.
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and is complf't~>ly waterproof and highly durable.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McDonough, William.
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Cradle to cradle: remaking tlw way we make things I William McDonough
and Michael Braungar1.
p. ('Ill.
ISB -13: 978-0-86.517-5H7-H
ISB -10: 0-86.547-.587-3 (lrt-.: alk. ))aper)
I. Hecycling (Waste. etc.) 2. Industrial managenwnt-l•:nvirnnnwntal
aspects. I. Brauugar1, Mif'hac·l, )<);}fl.- II. Title.
'1'1)794.5 .M395 2002
745.2- d!'21
2001044245
ncsigncd by Junine James I ThP ~luriNnS
www.fsgbooks.com
I I I~ 15 17 16 l4 12
To our families,
and to all of the children of
all species for all time
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The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same
thinking that created the situation.
- ALBERT EINSTEIN
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Glance at the sun.
See the moon and the stars.
Gaze at the beauty of earth's greenings.
Now, think.
- HILDEGARD VON BINGEN
What you people call your natural resources our people call our relatives.
- OREN LYONS, faith keeper of the Onondaga
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Contents
lntr·oduclion 3
This Book Is Not a Tree
Chapl<'t' One 17
A Question of Design
Chaplet' Two 45
Why Being "Less Bad"
Is No Good
Chaplet' Tht·ce 68
Eco-Effectiveness
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Chaplf'l' F'our 92
Waste Equals Food
Chaple•· F'iv(' 118
Respect Diversity
Chaplet' Six 157
Putting Eco-Effectiveness
into Practice
Noh·s 1!17
ArknowiNignwnts 193
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lntrorlu('lion
This Book Is Not a Tree
Atlasl. You have finally found the Lime to sink into your favorite
armchair, relax, and pick up a book. Your daughter uses a com
puter in the next room while the baby crawls on the carpel ancl
plays with a pile of colorful plastic toys. lt certainly feels, at this
moment, as if all is well. Could there be a more compelling pic
ture of peace, comfort, and safety?
Let's take a closer look. First, that comfortable chair you
are sitting on. Did you know that the fabric contains mutagenic
materials, heavy metals, clangerous chemicals, and dyes that
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are often lahelecl hazardous by regulators-except when they
are presentee! and sold to a customer? As you shift in your seat,
particles of the fabric abrade and are taken up by your nose,
mouth, and lungs, hazardous materials and all. Were they on
the menu when you ordered that chair?
That computer your child is using-did you know that it.
contains more than a thousand different kinds of materials, in
cluding toxic gases, toxic metals (sueh as cadmium, lead, and
mercury). acids, plastics, chlorinated and brominated sub
stances, and other additives? The dust from some printP.r· tnnP.r
cartridges has been found to contain nickel, cobalt, and mer
cury, substances harmful to humans that your child may be in
haling as you read. Is t.his sensible? Is it neeessary? Obviously,
some of those thousanJ materials are essential to the function
ing of the computer itself. What will happen to them when your
family outgrows the computer in a few years? You will have lit-
3
CHAIJI.f: TO CRADLE
tie choice but to dispose of it, <tnd both its valuable and it haz
ardous materials will be thrown "away." You wanted to use a
computer, but somehow you have unwittingly become par1y to a
proeess of waste and destruction.
But wait a minute- you care about the environmenl. ln
fact, when you went shopping for a carpel recently, you del iber
ately chose one made from recycled polyester soda boll les. Re
cycled? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say downcycled.
Good intentions aside, your rug is made of things that were
never designed with this further use in mind, and wrestling
them into this form has required as much energy-and gener
ated as much waste-as producing a new carpel. And all that
eff011 has only succeeded in postponing the usual fate of prod
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ucts by a life cycle or two. The rug is still on its way to a land
fill; it's just stopping off in your house en route. Moreover, the
recycling process may have introduced even more harmful ad
ditives than a conventional product contains, and it might be
off-gassing and abrading them into your home at an even higher
rate.
The shoes you've kicked off on that carpet look innocuous
enough. But chances are, they were manufactured in a develop
ing country where oc-cupational health standards-regulations
that determine how much workers can be exposed lo (•ertain
chemicals- are probably less stringent than in Western F:urope
or the United States, perhaps even nonexistent. The workers
who rnade them wear masks that provide insuffrcient protection
against the dangerous fumes. How did you end up bringing
home social inequity and feelings of guilt when all you wanted
was new fool wear"?
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