Book Review: Cradle to Cradle

     The book sat on my shelf for a few years before I finally got around to cracking it open. (I've been busy). I have a known bookstore-addiction, where I must go into any book store I happen to pass regardless of what I am doing at the time. It is my greatest guilty pleasure. I walk the aisles, looking thru sections that promise to reveal a hidden treasure I was meant to hold in my hands. And I always buy a book. One of those times, I picked up "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. I wish I had read it the day I brought it home, but I have accumulated quite a stack of unread books from my bookstore dalliances.

(Click image to visit the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute)

     McDonough and Braungart...
...turn the widely accepted model of "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" on its head. They suggest that while the Reduce, Reuse Recycle philosophy reduces waste consumption, it does not stop it; it has just slowed down our inevitable slog toward overconsumption. We are guilty of the creation of huge amounts of waste, with little use for it once it hits the land fill. They detail how most of the products we use on a daily basis contain harmful synthetic chemicals and toxic substances that not only poison our bodies and the environment we live in, they also are unable to be reused once we are done with them. Braungart and McDonough reveal that most of the things we use everyday are made from unrecyclable materials, and those that can be recycled require large amounts of water, power and resources, many times more than they needed to be manufactured in the first place.

     "Cradle to Cradle"outlines an alternative close-looped resource manufacturing system that would develop non-toxic 100% reusable materials. When the life of the product a product reaches its end, its constituent materials become the "technical nutrients" for new products, as McDonough and Braungart describe it. Your old laptop becomes the ingredients for a new computer; your carpet becomes the materials to make new textiles. Even the "Cradle to Cradle" book itself is made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers, which can be easily recycled into something else useful after the book's life cycle is complete. These synthetics can be recycled again and again, drastically reducing the amount of energy and resources needed. In many cases, according to the book, the water released during the recycling process is cleaner going out of the plant than it was coming in.

     As someone who tries to push the envelope and find new ways to reduce their impact on the world's eco-systems, "Cradle to Cradle" hit me like a ton of plastic soda bottles. The logic of it was undeniable. The logistics of it easy enough to put into effect. However, the probability of our global society switching to these revolutionary and far less damaging practices any time soon? That's the tough part. The world we live in is completely dependent on Oil and Coal all of their wonderful by products. Synthetic pesticides, food dyes, vinyl seat covers, the plastic in your laptop, the rubber in your tires, the fuel you heat your home with and use to create turn your TV on to watch football on Sunday's. Fossil Fuels have cornered the market, and I doubt they will willing just give up massive profits in order to make what we need out of materials that can be reused and recycled indefinitely.

     Many would want you to believe that by switching from the materials and processes we use to support our lifestyles today we would have to give up our way of life. That, the human race must be consumer of vast amounts of natural resources in order to survive and flourish. Not so, my friends. If you look around at nature, very few organisms just devour their environments unabated, and all who do eventually perish in their own poisonous wastes. The realty is, we could improve out way of life and still be able to upgrade to better phones or the increasingly spectacular flatscreen that make football games look better then real life. Not to mention, stop those nasty byproducts from being dumped into our water, land and air.

     I highly recommend "Cradle to Cradle". See what Braungart and McDonough propose. Realizing that our current way of life on this planet is unsustainable can be depressing. Many think that there is no hope. But there is. There are alternatives to how we do things, alternatives with much more promising outcomes. As someone who must re-evaluate my book fetish, knowing there is a sustainable alternative to tree-made-books is a win win for me.  I would still be able to satisfy my craving for new books. And continue my quest to step inside every book store on the planet. The planet would just be a lot cleaner.