What I’m Reading

Cradle to Cradle (Vintage 2002 - new edition 2008)

It seems strange that Michael Braungart and William McDonough’s Cradle to Cradle was written as long ago as 2002 as so much of its ‘big idea’ is still so current. Maybe that’s an indictment of how far we’ve moved sinced then.

The central theme is that rather than trying to make the best of a bad job by recycling products that were never designed to be recycled, we’d be far better off redesigning products from scratch so that they can be recycled more efficiently.

The downside for the conscientious consumer is that if you thought recycling was a good thing to do then you’re kidding yourself. Cradle to Cradle argues that we need to literally go back to the drawing board to redesign products that can be recycled over and over again.

My favourite practical example in the book is carpets. Currently most carpet is made by sticking a fabric such as wool onto a heavy plastic backing or underlay. The problem comes when you chuck out your old carpet, the wool and the plastic can’t be separated and therefore can’t be recycled. BUT what if you redesigned the carpet so that the wool could be detached from the underlay? Then you could simply leave the underlay down, recycle the wool separately and put down a new new wool top layer. Bingo.

This seems to me to be the genius of the book. Business and Environmentalism are not mutually exclusive but can be married long term if only more thought was put in at the design stage of the manufacturing process. Recycling is just patching up the hole, Cradle to Cradle wants to plug it forever.