William McDonough on Cradle to Cradle, the Importance of Delight and Celebration in Design

Andrew Michler of Inhabitat recently caught up with green architect and materials life-cycle guru William McDonough at Greenbuild 2010. My first exposure to McDonough came in the spring of 2009 when I read his acclaimed book, Cradle to Cradle, in one of my environmental studies courses. In the book, McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart advocate for a "transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design," or reimagining our current system of cradle-to-grave production into one where "waste equals food" and materials are upcycled to maintain their chemical integrity.



Michler and McDonough touch on many topics covered in Cradle to Cradle in the interview, and I've included some of the highlights below.

When asked about the difference between recycling (read downcycling) and upcycling, McDonough said that traditional recycling techniques not only take a tremendous amount of energy to operate but also degrade the material inputs into inferior accessory products. There can be tremendous value in keeping materials in their current form:

It’s like a Herman Miller chair that ends up in Mexico City fifteen years from now, if somebody throws it out the back and into the dumpster. Well, the scavengers will just come and grab it. It’s worth something. The reason it’s worth something is that’s steel, and that’s aluminum, and that’s polycarbonates, and that polyethylenes. It’s no longer a chair, it’s part of the materials intelligent pool. So the design is that aluminum can come off and go back to aluminum, the steel goes back to steel. They’re not monstrous hybrids that can’t be separated.

He also explained how these principles and the Cradle to Cradle product certification system he's developed are about more than solving environmental problems:

To me this is also a stewardship issue, but the great part is that it reaches beyond the construction site – it touches on health care, education and wanting to make buildings better.

Howard Williams, VP of Construction Specialties, agreed with McDonough and offered the following insight: "Ten years from now, this may still be GreenBuild because it’s going to be the original name, but no one is going to be talking about green. The reality is that it’s going to be either good design or bad design."

There are a lot of other interesting tidbits covered in the interview - including how McDonough has incorporated a butterfly sanctuary into a recent building design in Barcelona - that I don't cover in my synopsis above. McDonough is one of the most captivating environment thinkers of our time and recommends some pretty straightforward but radical changes to our current way of doing things, so click here if you're interested in learning more.

Collaborative Consumption

I just came across a link to the following video on Colin Beavan's (aka No Impact Man's) Twitter. Made by the folks at Collaborative Consumption, it depicts the growing support for sharing programs like Zipcar and CouchSurfing, founded on the principle that use of a product does not have to be dependent on ownership of it. I think the essence of the movement can be summed up by this quote from the clip: "To reinvent not just what we consume, but how we consume."

Enjoy:



This video reminds me pretty distinctly of the book Cradle to Cradle in which designer William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart advocate for a "transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design," or a shift away from our current cycle of cradle-to-grave disposable culture. They devote an entire section to examples of manufacturers who lease the use of their products to their customers instead of selling it to them, thereby assuming full responsibility for the product and it's eventual disposal or recommissioning. We don't need a chair or a car, they argue, we simply need the services they provide: a place to sit and a way to travel from point A to point B. If the movement documented and promoted by Collaborative Consumption is any indication, the seeds planted in McDonough and Braungart's 2002 book may finally be taking root.

From Oil to Plastic (and Back Again?)

In a recent post on Green Inc., the environmental blog of the New York Times (feed available to the right), Matthew Wald describes how one entrepreneur has found a niche in the market for disposed plastics and is closing the production loop of this petroleum-based waste. After years of research and testing, a Washington DC based sustainable waste management company called Envion has developed a way to return plastic to its original form - crude oil (or at least something resembling oil). Wald explains the significance of this technological breakthrough:

"Entrepreneurs have been trying for years to turn low-value wastes into high-value products. Waste plastic is among the lowest in value, and gasoline or diesel fuel the highest, but machines that carry out that conversion usually consume a lot of energy and get gummed-up by leftover material that they cannot convert."

Using a new technique - heating the plastic with infrared energy - the team at Envion has made it feasible to extend the life cycle of plastics. This reduction process produces a murky, yellowish fluid which can be mixed with additional components and sold as gasoline (see image below).


This innovation has significant implications for the world of plastic consumption. As I wrote in a previous post entitled Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, disposable plastic water bottles are a considerable contributor to carbon dioxide emissions. I also referenced William McDonough's book Cradle to Cradle, in which he advises altering the traditional production process from a manufacturer --> consumer --> landfill (or cradle to grave) system to a manufacturer --> consumer --> manufacturer (or cradle to cradle) system. With the invention of its new plastics converter, Envion has done just that. As Todd Makurath, the company's director of global brand management explains, “This could be transformational in how we handle plastics."

Of course this new technology is not a perfect solution. As Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace accurately points out in this Washington Post article: "To make it big, this company needs people to waste plastic." He adds, "We need to question whether we should be using plastic at all to begin with."

Even though Davies has a valid argument about the fundamental fault of plastic consumption, it is unrealistic to disregard initiatives such as this one on a matter of principle. The fact is, even without Envion's prodding, people are discarding plastic products at an alarming rate (roughly 50 million tons of plastic waste are generated annually in the US). By taking on the task of reforming this deeply flawed and broken system, Envion provides a creative short-term solution to a very systemic problem. It is obviously not the only piece of the puzzle, but it's nevertheless an important one.