Personally, Cradle to Cradle was a starting point from which to create my own value system in regards to sustainable design. Unfortunately, I am not as optimistic about the future of green and sustainable design as the authors. I worry that there is too much to redesign, rethink, and refurbish within or eliminate from both our production system and consumption system to even start to comprehend how it can all happen. That being said I have incorporated a lot of McDonough and Braungartʻs big ideas into my own thinking, especially design thinking, and I have a lot more to learn from adapting them more fully.
1. Cradle to Cradle asks what progress is and why we measure productivity by how few people are working in a given system. Clearly, efficient mechanization allows for the people at the top to make the most money at the fastest rate possible. Yet the expense progress when it is defined as increased manufacturing and mechanization is clearly visible in pollution. How can we measure progress to value workers and to benefit a broader base of people without damaging the environment with waste from our production or “progress” processes?
2. Universal design solutions were once thought to be a worthy design goal. But universal design has often been equated with brute force, rather than the most elegant and beneficial solution to a specific problem. One example that M. and B. give is that soap manufacturers design one detergent with the same chemical components for all the parts of the US and Europe despite varying water qualities and consumer needs. Essentially, these detergents bulldoze through the cleaning process with added and often unnecessary chemicals. When the runoff from these detergents reaches wildlife, it kills. This “worst case scenario” design process has led to many inefficient products or solutions with many adverse effects.
3. M. and B. talk about the concept of “Products Plus” – consumers buy a product, they get that product and the use of that product but in addition they also get additives they didn’t ask for, like teratogens, carcinogens, endocrine disrupters, etc. Our deadliest chemicals not only damage cells, they also destroy our immune systems making us unable to fix or fight that damage. This is one of the scariest facts in the book: There are over 80,000 defined chemical susbstances and technical mixes used in industry today BUT only about 3,000 of them have been studied for their health effects on humans, flora, fauna, and ecosystems.
4. “Why being “less bad” is no good” is the title of the second chapter. It says that the concept of less bad evolved during the Industrial Revolution to prevent immediate and severe illness and death. A slower death from toxic chemicals shouldn’t count as a good solution to a poison problem. They argue that reduce, reuse, recycle, and regulate as answers to problems of pollution and climate control are just not enough, and further that the need for regulations is a sign of design failure. They see design as the most important answer to all of our problems. But although I believe that they are right, we need to do more than redesign specific products – we need to redesign the whole economic and manufacturing system within which these products are created. It’s so disheartening to know that organic farming just isn’t feasible for most small farmers because it costs more to produce their vegetable but most consumers will not pay more for them just because they’re organic. One of my greatest worries about the success of the green movement is that the economics of green just don’t make it competitive. Unaccounted for externalities like damage to soil and water from monocrop farming or chemical accumulation down stream from factories or environmental damage from metal mining make products cheap. And green products that are made with integrity don’t leave anything unaccounted for – they pay for everything and need to rely on being able to pass those costs on to customers to stay afloat. My favorite quote from this section: “In a philosophical sense, efficiency has no independent value: it depnds on the vlue of the larger system of which it is a part.” (pg. 65)
5. Waste equals food. Here’s where the cradle to cradle concept really comes in, but since we’ve already talked about biological and technical ingredients and closed loop systems in class, I’m going to skip over this one.
6. Back to the universal solution problem. As humans, M. and B. argue that we simplify nature’s diversity on a mass scale and attack it with a one-size-fits all ideology. M. and B. argue that design solutions are only effective if they’re local – sort of like what Heather talked about in our class on Sustainable Design for the Developing World. In the developing world it’s an even more obvious problem because people won’t use things that don’t fit with their lifestyles (which are not as adaptable to new technologies because they do not have the luxury of the infrastructure of technology and production systems that guarantee food, water, and shelter on a daily basis as long as you do your job and make some money).
7. Then there’s the Triple Top Line idea that’s just like the triple bottom line idea we’ve all heard: weighing ecology with equity and with economy. They use a cool pyramid/fractal tool to make the concept clearer…
8. The last bit of the book talks about how designers can design for sustainability in the future. If you don’t read any other part of the book, read the last chapter.
Like Matt, I fully and totally recommend this book. I learned so much, both about the real problems of our current situation but also about the hope that good design can provide for the future!
Posted by Zuzanna Drozdz 
