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Cradle to Cradle
'Reduce, reuse, recycle' urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this provocative, visionary book, this approach only perpetuates the one-way, 'cradle to grave' manufacturing model, dating to the Industrial Revolution, that creates such fantastic amounts of waste and pollution in the first place. Why not challenge the belief that human industry must damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model for making things? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we consider its abundance not wasteful but safe, beautiful and highly effective.
Waste equals food.
Guided by this principle, McDonough and Braungart explain how products can be designed from the outset so that, after their useful lives, they will provide nourishment for something new - continually circulating as pure and viable materials within a 'cradle to cradle' model. Drawing on their experience in redesigning everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make an exciting and viable case for putting eco-effectiveness into practice, and show how anyone involved in making anything can begin to do so as well.
Waste equals food.
Guided by this principle, McDonough and Braungart explain how products can be designed from the outset so that, after their useful lives, they will provide nourishment for something new - continually circulating as pure and viable materials within a 'cradle to cradle' model. Drawing on their experience in redesigning everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make an exciting and viable case for putting eco-effectiveness into practice, and show how anyone involved in making anything can begin to do so as well.
- GenresDesign
208 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2008
About the author
Michael Braungart
9 books23 followersMichael Braungart is a German chemist who advocates that humans can make a positive instead of a negative environmental impact by redesigning industrial production and therefore that dissipation is not waste. A former Greenpeace activist who once lived in a tree as protest, he is now considered to be a visionary environmental thinker.
Founder of EPEA International Umweltforschung GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, and co-founder of MBDC McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in Charlottesville, Virginia, Dr. Braungart is currently a professor for Eco-Design at Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
He currently holds the Cradle-to-Cradle chair at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Founder of EPEA International Umweltforschung GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, and co-founder of MBDC McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in Charlottesville, Virginia, Dr. Braungart is currently a professor for Eco-Design at Leuphana University of Lüneburg.
He currently holds the Cradle-to-Cradle chair at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 15, 2026
My expectations were for a book about efficient design and manufacture but it was actually about so much more. I had a real aha moment when I realised that the potential answers to many of the world's sustainability problems were written in this unassuming little book.
It started by explaining why eco efficiency, which covers most product's that we refer to today as 'sustainable', is so bad for the planet. Despite striving to be recyclable or biodegradable, they usually don't do either very well with biodegradable product's being full of chemicals that pollute the environment and recyclable products only actually being downcycled in a way that demands the use new virgin materials to make them usable.
The book suggests another way where all products are designed to separate materials at the end of life to do one of 2 things properly, to be fed to the land where they biodegrade properly replenishing nutrients or to be reclaimed completely and reused in a properly circular system. This approach would not just apply to products but also , building and development, water, sewage and anything that uses resources or creates waste therefore solving issues of landfill, pollution, toxin exposure and materials shortages.
The bit I really enjoyed about this book was how it compared product manufacture to nature including cherry trees and ant colonies explaining how to be really sustainable our consumption needs to return what it has taken out in terms of resources and nutrients. It also explained how nature designs things cleverly, utilising diversity, local suitability and interdependance with different aspects playing different roles..
A really interesting book, however after the aha moment of realising that the answer to so many of the world's problems are not as difficult design wise as I thought, I also had another realisation.
If we know the answers or they are potentially within our grasp, why aren't we applying them. The book was published in 2002 and whilst I am sure that there has been some progress since then, lots hasn't changed, supermarkets are still selling fruit and veg that will degrade within weeks in plastic that will pollute the environment for many years to come.
The only conclusion I could come too that individuals, companies and governments generally have short term and individualist agendas that prevent them from working towards the greater good that a cradle to cradle system would be. So much of decision making is based on money with financial systems based on short term growth which makes it difficult to take a step back and rethink what we are doing and the systems of consumption we have created.
It started by explaining why eco efficiency, which covers most product's that we refer to today as 'sustainable', is so bad for the planet. Despite striving to be recyclable or biodegradable, they usually don't do either very well with biodegradable product's being full of chemicals that pollute the environment and recyclable products only actually being downcycled in a way that demands the use new virgin materials to make them usable.
The book suggests another way where all products are designed to separate materials at the end of life to do one of 2 things properly, to be fed to the land where they biodegrade properly replenishing nutrients or to be reclaimed completely and reused in a properly circular system. This approach would not just apply to products but also , building and development, water, sewage and anything that uses resources or creates waste therefore solving issues of landfill, pollution, toxin exposure and materials shortages.
The bit I really enjoyed about this book was how it compared product manufacture to nature including cherry trees and ant colonies explaining how to be really sustainable our consumption needs to return what it has taken out in terms of resources and nutrients. It also explained how nature designs things cleverly, utilising diversity, local suitability and interdependance with different aspects playing different roles..
A really interesting book, however after the aha moment of realising that the answer to so many of the world's problems are not as difficult design wise as I thought, I also had another realisation.
If we know the answers or they are potentially within our grasp, why aren't we applying them. The book was published in 2002 and whilst I am sure that there has been some progress since then, lots hasn't changed, supermarkets are still selling fruit and veg that will degrade within weeks in plastic that will pollute the environment for many years to come.
The only conclusion I could come too that individuals, companies and governments generally have short term and individualist agendas that prevent them from working towards the greater good that a cradle to cradle system would be. So much of decision making is based on money with financial systems based on short term growth which makes it difficult to take a step back and rethink what we are doing and the systems of consumption we have created.
July 2, 2020
Struggled for the second time to get through the pompousness of the narrators. 10% of the book is worth reading.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews