This book was in perfect condition when I received it and the really cool thing about it is that its WATERPROOF which means you can read it pretty much anywhere-in the shower, underwater, at the beach or even in a fish tank! The book gives you scary insight on how we are destroying our earth and killing ourselves slowly and simultaneously!!!

Apparently corporations are all going green. Even Ford will become perfectly sustainable. Now they abuse their employees & produce thousands of fossil-fuel-burning cars out of a "green" facility built with materials extracted from where, a green, sustainable mining operation?

This book has some good points & quotes, but in the end it's another propaganda piece for greenwashing corporations.

Such an inspiring book! McDonough and Braungart offer much more than just passion for creating a green world--they tell us how to do it. Through their experience innovating new systems with companies like Ford, Herman Miller, DuPont, and many more, they bring serious intelligence to a movement that often feels like another fad. Current enthusiasm aside, Green is here to stay, and we need to start understanding the things we talk about.

Put on your creativity hat and prepare to be dazzled.

The book was delivered in good condition and in a timely fashion. I am very pleased with your services.

this was a fascinating book with a great amount of real life examples and how their theories actually apply to real life and how their design plan of "upcycling" (opposed to recycling) is actually do-able. Even this book is made of materials that fit into their design plans. I've read some books that have great ideas but no way of implementing them, the two authors are already succeeded. it is well written and a good read.

This was an interesting book to read and an important one. Is has not used paper as its format. It offers a slightly different take on the ecology problems. It focuses on creating products that are designed at the onset to be environmentally sound and completely recyclable. It is well written, easy to read and offers a bit of hope. Although at times I felt it was perhaps a bit idealistic, since completing it I have read about 2-3 businesses that have been started using these principles. Numi tea one.

This was a great introduction to so many key, elementary principles in sustainable thinking/living/product design. I learned a lot! I hope enough people are informed and inspired by it to create the kind of real change that is being discussed in this book in terms of truly ecological product designs in everyday things (e.g., cars, homes, and other "products" that incorporate biomimicry, etc).

this book introduces one to a new way of making things and eliminating the worry about pollution and garbage. It should be read by every manufacturer, politician, teacher, parent... in short by everyone who lives on this planet!!!!!
it shows the right approach to production and consumption ....cradle to cradle, where waste becomes food or is comletely reused by the industry without leaving toxins behind. A fabulous and quite obviously a doable concept. Therefore animals, plants, water, air and soil can recover from the effects of our past practices.

Terrific book. Easy to read and the topic is absolutely relevant to the times. This should be required reading in Architectural schools, Engineering schools, Technical schools, Scientific studies and in our middle and high schools for sure but also in any studies done on the environment. The ideas put forth in this book are only the beginning I am sure but I believe they offer the only salvation for our beleaguered Earth. What a pair these two authors make. I look forward to anything they may have to say in the future.

This book is a compilation of research from two renowned professionals- biologist and architect- who seek to make us aware of what our senses are exposed to due to the use of and effects of toxic/chemical substances, unsustainable measures and detrimental environmental processes in the production of basically everything down to our basic survival need items. A persuasive voice calls for action against and change in current methods of production and localization of the same with no weak fundamentals. After reading this book I pictured myself stranded in an island [earth] with just what I needed to survive or even more;actually having caught the attention of a rescue team but unfortunately and surprisengly still dying right when the rescue team came due to the poor quality of materials/substances in my survival kit! Then you wonder if that's possible; if -assuming a non-stress life-you can still die while trying to eat healthy, excercising, etc. only because of the effects of the bad chemicals inherit in the very things you need to lead such a life what should be done? Certainly the authors desire that we be aware [very detailed information and examples are given], cautious [effects/cons, statistics revealed per example], demand better products [possibilities/solutions already in prog

There has a lot of good ideas for our earth.
Something you never think about it.
Trust me, you must read it "cradle to cradle"!

Living in France for the past 20 years, since 2005 I've been reading everything I can on man's negative impact on the planet. This book is one of the most complete works on how we can make a difference to modify our thinking and our acts. Many other books, however necessary for general awareness, just relate all of the catastrophes we've created, and how long we should hold out. Every factory owner, small and large business leaders should consider this mandatory reading for themselves and their staff. (Being an architect myself, I am ashamed to admit that I don't know how to find "true" south. However, my search has begun.)

This is such a wonderful, enlightening, and self-reflective book! It was reccomended to me by a good friend, and boy was he dead on with this one. "Cradle-to-Cradle" thoroughly outlines the essential flaws within the current industrial process in which we make and consume everyday products, and the resulting affect of what a faulty industry structure and overconsumption has on the environment and sunsequently the problem with global warming.

With an immense depth of coverage, yet well-written and easy to digest, I was able to gain a full understanding of WHY our current industrial cycle is outdated, how it got to be in the first place, and how we may be able to take the steps torward the next industrial revolution with the implementation of a more environmental economic approach, in contrast to an outdated, bottom-line-only strategy. Phenominal read, easy to stay with, and borderline addicting. Has encouraged me to reflect upon my own personal consumption and how I can go about pursuing products or services that are more sustainable in their production and reproduction.

Cradle to Cradle is a must read. The information is critical to the future of our little blue planet. I gained many wonderful ideas as to how to make my stay here on earth less damaging. While many of the concepts would be difficult to institute at a personal level, industry should be taking heed! Wonderful!

The concept behind this book is very important. It is an overview of a thoroughgoing design process that has, at its root, a deep commitment to biomimcry and essentialism in the creation of new things. To boot is a thoughtful (and I think accurate) criticism of the current state of the environmental movement.

The writers believe that if we're to succeed in harmonizing our existence with the planet's biosphere on which we depend, we're going to have to rethink how we make things profoundly, and sustainability alone is not going to cut it.

That said, the book is preachy, self indulgent in a way that academicians are great at doing so that it seems politically correct -- at one point I felt like the entire book was nothing more than an advertisement for the authors' design firm. Don't let that throw you off. It's an important book waiting for a new generation to pick it up and turn it into something with real grit, leveraging unorthodox creativity and a love for our pale blue dot in the universe for its own sake; to wrest it away from the marketing-communications-speak of a corporation. Alas, time is not on our side.

GET EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO READ THIS BOOK.

Should be required reading for every elementary school, then again in high school, and again at university.

The desire for a better world has always been there. This is the leadership we need: How to go about it, and why, but ultimately a decision left up to you.

Some of the less than 5 star reviews are so nit-picky that they are laughable. This is the definitive green book of solutions around. It actually gives all of us, and most especially industry, a productive way out of our ignorant, polluting, plutocratic, plundering, of natural resources. This book was written in 2002 and has slowly become the industry standard for how to design product, buildings, and infrastructure responsibly. If we actually listen to Braungart, and McDonough our planet and us will actually begin to turn recover and our children will have a future.Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

Some of the less than 5 star reviews are so nit-picky that they are laughable. This is the definitive green book of solutions around. It actually gives all of us, and most especially industry, a productive way out of our ignorant, polluting, plutocratic, plundering, of natural resources. This book was written in 2002 and has slowly become the industry standard for how to design product, buildings, and infrastructure responsibly. If we actually listen to Braungart, and McDonough our planet and us will actually begin to turn recover and our children will have a future.Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

I SINCERELY regret to say I couldn't have disliked this book more. The chapter on food -which discussed fabric and carpets more than calories- was particularly disappointing. If a sustainability expert cannot or will not admit that a meat based diet is the single most ecologically devastating habit of US citizens, how can one take them seriously? Eliminating animal proteins from one's diet is more ecologically beneficial to the planet than driving a hybrid or any other combination of factors but this book pandered to comfort minded consumers who wish to believe they can spend their way into sustainability by buying reusable grocery bags or "organic" products. Not that it doesn't help but true sustainability is about conserving, not spending. Sustainability requires painful changes; it's not something you can push off to the government to regulate or boycott businesses to comply; it starts with YOU. I doubt this book would have been as popular had it dared discomfit the average person by speaking the truth.

Lastly, I found the whole discussion of the book material selection to be ridiculous. Why would the authors believe their book is so wonderful that it should have the durability to out last all life forms? After we're gone, you'll find it in landfills next to the pampers. Worse though is the energy load. Aside from the other egregious fallacious presumptions about the text's ecological burden, it weighs three times what a normal book does. I am aghast at how the authors managed to justify the expenditure of the greater requirement of fossil fuels to pack and ship this book around.

I must admit the book changed me, raising the bar of my expectations. Henceforth if someone starts waxing eloquent about their commitments to sustainability, my first question is going to be, "are you a vegetarian"? Anything they say will be filtered through that sieve.

its one thing to talk about a problem, its quit another thing to do something about it. I am glad to see the authors not only introducing a new angle to an ever growing problem i.e. the trouble with down-cycling, but also providing an alternative. This book is certainly ahead of its time.

A book about innovators who were working on the green revolution before the rest of the world caught on. This book will have value for generations to come. It is written for all of those who love our planet. Examples of how the commercial and industrial world can still thrive and prosper while we make the Earth a better place.

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is SO important that every single person on earth should read it. The authors, McDonough & Braungart, have researched so extensively and present the material so intelligently, it is truly a Text Book For Humans!

possible book themes

- negligence starts tomorrow :: once you've been informed, your responsibility is heightened.

- waste equals food :: right now, waste is waste. because earth's resources are finite, this will inevitably end either because we run out of resources or we choose to start using our waste in the idea of 'waste-to-food' (where waste can be used as raw materials for new goods beyond that of conventional recycling).

- outside the box :: research and development are necessary to recreate the current products by using new materials and/or rethinking the products altogether.

what this book is not

- a handbook on the products that will improve people's health, the economy, or the environment (although, examples are mentioned that do all of these and may inspire).

- a designers guide to saving the world. this book is a primer for this change, making the solid argument that change is necessary and offering examples of how this may be done, however, it does not offer a cut-and-dry method to how to make these improvements. that is where R&D and innovation come in. each problem may have a unique solution.

- a numbers book. instead, this is an 'ideas book'.

what the book is

- responsible :: working on the principle that there are finite physical goods that humanity has to work with, the authors make the simple and convincing argument that the throw-away (cradle-to-grave) economy cannot go on forever. goods are being lost for future generations. society will inevitably have to come to grips with this reality and become responsible with natural resources, creating a 'cradle-to-cradle' economy with no (ie, negligible) waste. the authors suggest that we aren't in balance with regeneration of natural resources (which is indisputable) and that we must reach this balance and in the process we should (ideally) become symbiotic with the earth. [this sounds more fluffy than how it reads.]

- practical & innovative :: this book discusses a new approach to design and suggests new ways to think about products and consumption/destruction (consumption does not need incorporate destruction). this is why i would call this book a design primer. the authors are not about condemnation. they instead want designers to rethink products that hurt people and the environment and they look to inspire innovation. some questions now seem so obvious that the reader is left to wonder why so many products are created the way they are. what about product A hurts the consumer? (ex, it 'off-gases' chemicals the consumer inhales without knowing it.) what about product A hurts the environment and future generations? (ex, in production it contaminates the land around the product factory.) how can we get rid of these bad characteristics and/or create good characteristics in product A? (ex, the problem of sewage. instead of sending it 'away', prevent sewage from being contaminated by chemicals and then use it as a very rich fertilizer like has been done for centuries/millenniums in some other cultures.) the authors do not propose going to all means necessary to eliminate all bad product characteristics tomorrow but advise the reader/designers to look beyond basic 'improvements' such as using additional dangerous chemicals to counteract the other dangerous chemicals or substituting dangerous chemical C for dangerous chemical B since B is well known but the public hasn't caught onto C yet. instead the authors ask designers, engineers, and anyone else listening to rethink the problem from more perspectives and actually try to improve the product for both public and environmental health. [the authors give several examples where this unconventional thinking is economical.]

- realistic :: the authors propose that society shifts from products made to be thrown away (lots of products are currently like this) to products that do less harm (some products are in this stage), then to products that do little or no harm (very few products in this stage), and finally to products that do no harm or are actually good for environment in production and use (any products in this stage?). never do they give a time line for how long this will take. that's left for the product designers, engineers, chemists, and all the rest of us to realize... how long will it take for us to catch on?

- well designed :: the book itself is a book rethought. it seems to be somewhere between stage 2 and 3 (my stages 2 and 3 differ slightly from the book's... they have 5 stages). it is not paper but plastic that may be recycled (in some areas) and reused as high-quality material. it is durable, well designed, and waterproof. the authors are careful to note that this book design isn't yet in stage 4 [this review's description of stage 4] but is an intermediary. it is better than paper books in that it can be 'upcycled' (used as quality recycling as opposed to 'downcycled' or conventional recycling) but is not yet the ideal book (it gives off chemicals in the air like all other books, which is something to improve upon).

the ideas expressed in the masterpiece well get us through the next trails that our planet is going through

Is the title of my review hyperbole? I would submit that it is not. What this book represents is, in my opinion, the first clear articulation of the fundamental reason why humankind has reached an environmental crisis point where we either adapt, change, and flourish; or are swept clean (or at best decimated and reduced to barbarism) from this world as a failed species.

However, this book is not about deprivation; its not about returning to 'Walden Pond' and renouncing growth, innovation, technology, and an advanced (and advancing) civilization. William McDonough and Michael Braungart's articulated vision is that through elegant, effective, integral, and enlightened design, we can fundamentally change the underlying paradigm via which the material objects of civilization are created; that through such a paradigm shift we can abolish *waste* by designing all systems whereby 'waste equals food' in all systems of civilization.

To date, mankind has operated within a design paradigm whereby designers of systems, products, and materials, assumed that we could "throw something AWAY"; and were the forces of time and nature, at those places which they consider to be *AWAY* enough, would prove capable of rendering the undesirable byproducts of our creation and consumption back into a 'natural', safe, and again desirable, state. Such design assumptions may have been viable until the advent of the industrial age, but are no longer valid. Since we discovered how to burn coal, forge steel, concentrate heavy metals, and synthesize plastics, we have been inexorably moving towards this point in time and this crisis.

This book drives home the point that there is no longer any viable *AWAY* towards which mankind might, in place of adequate design, throw away the ever increasing quantities of undesirable byproducts of the 'metabolism' of our civilization. Moreover, the authors point out that these 'metabolites' of civilization are such that there must be a differentiation, and separation, between a 'natural cycle of reuse' (which consists of materials and objects that can be naturally broken down into safe components through time, sunlight, oxidation, etc.) and a 'technical cycle of reuse' (which includes materials and objects which cannot, through being concentrated and/or synthesized by mankind, be safely broken down by natural processes and must therefore be technically reprocessed). It is this very mixing of component cycles that has yielded so much disease and suffering in the world; the dioxins, the mercury levels, the myriad mutagens and toxins now pervading our environment.

This book is not a work of pessimism and "we are doomed" extremism; it is a book filled with an honest faith in Mankind's ability blaze a new path towards the reconciliation, through design excellence, of environmental stewardship and a high technical, and economically vibrant, civilization. However, it is not by any means, a pollyanna of unfounded optimism and the authors pull no punches regarding what's broken, the seriousness of the problems we face, and a path towards recovery.

In closing, this book is tremendously important because it represents a manifesto for a movement to revolutionize design and inspire designers and empower entrepreneurs who see opportunity in the advent of this design paradigm shift. I must say, that it is one of the most encouraging books I have read in recent memory and it has galvanized me into becoming an activist and evangelist of the Cradle-to-Cradle Movement. I hope, and pray, that this book, and the movement that it has spawned, continues to take hold, gains critical mass, and acts to help pull us from the brink of the tragic disaster that we face should we continue as we have to date.

I heard one of the authors, William McDonough speak before. He wasn't alarmist the way many "environmentalists" are these days, and yet what he had to say was a more fundamental change than anything else I've heard. He pushes the statement so far as to make the book out of plastic.

I highly recommmend this book.

This book gaves you a complete different way to see things. I really like it, anjoy reading and it's make me think in a complete new way.
If you think recicling its the best you can do it, then read this great book and you will see the true.

McDonough's and Braungart's point is most succinctly summarized in one of their chapter titles: "Why Being `Less Bad' Is No Good." Recycling, they say, just postpones the inevitable resource depletion. Plus, recycling normally only takes you one step through the cycle, or less: recycled paper is substantially less strong than new paper, so it needs to be fortified with chemical additives. They give countless examples of processes that seem good but are in fact just less evil. We're making ourselves less bad by recycling, but we're not actually solving the larger ecological problem.

The big way to solve it, they say, is for products to assume from the start that they will be thrown away, and embrace that fact. Paper doesn't recycle well because it wasn't designed to be recycled; hence it becomes worse with every generation. So Cradle to Cradle is printed on non-paper; it's recycled plastic. Subject it to a simple chemical process, or to extremely high heat, and the ink detaches to form completely reusable pages. Products need to be infinitely reusable with limited additional processing. People need to be thinking about their products in perfectly closed ecological loops.

The authors envision a day when products will be gleefully thrown on the side of the road as soon-to-be-decomposed litter. Why not build your plastic containers with a little seed inside, so that when they're thrown overboard they add something to the environment rather than taking away from it? This may sound pie-in-the-sky, but one of this book's great joys -- which keeps it from flying off into Liberal Fairy-Land -- is that the authors are architects and industrial designers who've spent 20 years designing eco-friendly products and buildings. They impressively helped re-architect the River Rouge factory for the 21st century. Their hopes are quite a bit grander, though: a day when cars themselves will be perfectly recyclable, when their parts can be disassembled, melted down and built into a new, equally high quality car with minimal labor.

The authors' natural next step is to develop an environmental certification process by which products would be labeled "cradle to cradle" if they're designed to be environmentally beneficial even when thrown away. This, it seems, is exactly what they've done. (Those of my friends who've bought environmentally friendly carpeting because they're concerned about outgassing might look, for instance, at cradle-to-cradle carpet fiber.)

The larger message is that you can't just look at a product in isolation, or even at a process like recycling in isolation. Look at whole ecosystems, instead. Celebrate organic diversity. Don't see the world like a corporation, growing one kind of vegetable because it's cheaper and believing that your responsibility ends at the factory door.

But again, this would be too pie-in-the-sky for the authors' purposes, not only because they want to make money, but because they need to enlist corporate support if they're going to get anywhere with their hopes for social improvement. So a good chunk of the book is given over to showing that corporations actually save money in the not-very-long run if they design cradle-to-cradle products. Not least among the savings is avoiding regulation: if your product is only "less bad," in that it contains (for instance) less mercury, you'll still have to submit to a government review to make sure you're being good enough. But if your product is designed from the ground up to help the environment -- or even to be edible -- you skirt around these environmental problems by design. Just the cost of avoiding regulation, they say, often pays for the re-engineering.

This book makes you re-think ideas of environmentalism and how we can really make a difference without making life less pleasant. It isn't all about endless recycling, stopping buying new things or walking around in hemp clothing. This book challenges us to think up new ways of designing everything and truly making no bad impact on the earth.

This book is a must-read because of how many thoughtful ideas the authors present. It's a real eye-opener in terms of the direction industry and technology are going. This isn't a book only for tree-huggers, so to speak, but for everyone who is a consumer. The book at times made me feel depressed and guilty over the over-consumption we've become accustomed to. Everything we consume comes in a package that we throw away, and eventually we even throw away the product it came in. Why read a book that makes one feel this way? Well, out of the frustrating realization of the facts (such as that there are 22 ingredients in shower gel but many of them are to counteract the other ingredients!) are glimmers of hope for the future (such as the fact that the shower gel was reconfigured with only 9 ingredients that appeared at first to cost the producer more money but in the long run saved them 15%).

The authors have taken some of their case studies and expanded them to fill a good portion of this book. The brief versions of those are available on their website at http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/projects.shtm. There's great insight in this book, along with fascinating challenges. For example, there's the idea that recycling may cause more harm than good because of the amount of energy involved coupled with the fact that original product is actually "downcycled" into something less durable. For example, recycled paper needs chlorine added to it, so you end up with chemically-soaked paper to use. It's a trade-off, therefore: your original nearly-chlorine-free paper or the recycled version?

Challenges such as these abound throughout the book. For example, there's excessive littering in China with the wrappers from fast-food products. The authors challenge those fast-food makers to use biodegradable food wrappers from rice husks which are abundant (and therefore cheap) as well as biodegradable. Those food wrappers could then me laced with a tiny bit of nitrogen and have seeds embedded in them. At that point, you might see signs in China that actually say "Please Litter". It's stories like these that litter (ha!) this book and make it a quick but worthwhile read. Oh, and the book itself is not printer on paper, but instead on waterproof recycled materials.

I consider this one of the best books around. Saving the planet, you betcha! It's very well written and clear on concepts. Full of sensible and practical information. I keep it out on the coffee table so friends who visit will catch on.

Some books in this genre can be a bit too full of themselves - this one offers a lot of intelligent thinking, examples of the authors' experience, and not too much else.

This book should be required reading by all CEOs, and all engineering, architecture and design students. (I read it as a class assignment in Sustainable Interior Design). The author dismisses the idea that "ecological" has to equal "sacrifice" and points out that our problems will require more than band-aid type fixes. He proposes a radical rethinking of the way we approach design and manufacturing and backs it up with rational thought and real world examples. Despite its heft (literally, it weighs a ton because of the unusual paper stock), it's not a "heavy" read. It's very engaging and thought provoking. Highly recommended.

Additional recommendations: watch the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car"

I'm a student so it's really hard for me to find time to read books that aren't required for a class. No time! Anyway, great book, easy to read and compelling ideas. Definitely recommended.

Definitely would recommend this to anyone who would like to learn about how societies will/should change to conform to the processes of nature. Significant change need to occur to shape a planet where humans can survive for a longer duration (than the current forecast). This means alleviating environmental threats that were initially caused by our own doing.

This book put a new light on the manufacturing process. I am currently studying to be an engineer, and upon reading this book, I feel I have gained important insight into how to ethically create products. The focus of the book is to show that being "less bad", as the current way of thinking promotes, is not the right mentality to have. Instead the book proposes that products need to be looked at in a renewable sense, that is, how can it be completely reused to make something new when its useful life has been spent (hence Cradle to Cradle and not Cradle to Grave). I found the book to be very inspirational and look forward to applying its ideas in my career.

One hundred years isn't a long time. Yet, in the last one hundred years we can account for radical changes in the expectations that we - in the West at least - have concerning the standards of the food we eat and the conditions that we live in. We readily expect that our waste will neatly leave our homes, our malls, our schools, workplaces, and public spots en route to some place where it disappears from sight and smell forever. In fact, we rarely think about whether our waste ends up burnt, buried, or recycled, nor whether the food we dine on is thoroughly inspected and safe. We can think back to 1907 as a period in which there was nothing in the way of food safety standards (though a movement in that direction was initiated as a result of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, which was published that same year). Nor was there any notion of labor rights, environmental protection, and many of the sanitation procedures that we often take for granted nowadays.

Looking back through history ever further, to the crowded city streets of Paris, London, or Rome in the 17th and 18th century, reveals a more distasteful reality of how people lived. The blood of slaughtered animals, along with human excrement and other waste flowed through the sewers of these magnificent cities. "How did people live like this?" we might wonder. We shutter to think about living in such conditions, which allowed for the rapid spread of pestilence and sickness, not to mention unthinkable stench. While this may still be the experience of too many in the developing world, a signal of the progress and greatness of the modernized West has been our ability to escape the condition of living in our own waste.

Yet I've wondered recently how those living in 2107 will look upon the collective condition of the world as it stands today? Will they think that we live in filth? Despite the fact that we can split atoms, fly space crafts around the solar system, cure many illnesses, make electricity from the sun's rays, and communicate with each other in a myriad of digital ways, I wonder if they will ask why we still chose to live in our waste? I think that they will find it extremely perplexing that a society as developed as ours, who has the self awareness and knowledge about the harm that we inflict on ourselves and for posterity - not to mention the multitude of living systems that we are embedded in - refused to develop a different course for humanity.

When I say that we live in filth I mean that we continue to choke on unsafe air from the cars we drive and the outdated and dangerous ways that we engage in mass industrialization. I mean that we continue to produce millions and millions of consumable products made from an array of unsafe chemicals that we know little about and which we simply burn or bury after we use them one or two times. I find it so perplexing that industry continues to spends so much time and energy developing products that will only be used for a small fraction of time by consumers, yet will spend hundreds of years in landfills (I'm thinking especially of the enormous amount of plastic packaging that most products come in, only to be discarded immediately).

We dump many of the items that we have no more use for into ever expanding landfills that are getting closer and closer to the places we live and the sources of water we eventually come to drink. We are, in effect, living in our own waste. We put zero amount of effort into thinking of ways to design the same products that we rely on daily so that they are not harmful for humans or the environments in which we live. Scratch that, we have the technology and the know how for making safer and better products, however we lack leaders (both political & business) with the will, courage, and vision to bring humanity into the next industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution centered on extracting resources from the Earth (with little thought of replacing them) and putting these resources through production processes that have amounted to harming both human and non-human life for many years to come. The next industrial revolution will be about reengineering the production of consumer goods so that the stuff we make is in accordance with our natural environment. It will be about plastics that are biodegradable and the eradication of materials that are not. It will be about more intelligent approaches to designing buildings, which will utilize natural light, wind patterns, and the surrounding ecosphere to produce happier places to work and live, and which no longer rely on burning fossil fuels for cooling, heating, and sanitation. It will be about re-conceptualizing how we design, plan, and imagine the cities that most of humanity has come to chose to live in.

I'm currently drinking a soda out of a plastic bottle made from polymers derived from petroleum. This bottle, which not only is derived from the most contested resource of our time (though clean water is quickly taking its place) will be intact for those living in 2107 to view and touch as an artifact of an era which may be known in the future as one of reckless disregard, ignorance, and waste. Even the popular notion of recycling many of the products that we use only serves to slow down the rate in which we are harming ourselves. Recycling for many products is really a process of downcycling - a term coined by Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle. The process of recycling a product essentially causes it to loose its quality each time it is put through the recycling process (assuming that individuals keep recycling each new plastic reincarnate). Even though I will recycle this bottle, and it will become another plastic product again, it will eventually have to be disregarded after going through a few recycles. Alas, we are really just slowing down the rate by which synthetics eventually reach our waste graveyards or incinerators. In addition, while it is thought to be a socially responsible activity, the process of recycling releases into the atmosphere dangerous toxins emitted by the burning of plastics during the recycling process.

What is radically different about the world from 1907, or 17th century European cities, is that we fully understand the consequences of continuing down the path we are on. Furthermore, we have the knowledge and creative ideas of how to alter that path. What we lack, sadly, is the will to cause massive social change in how we consume and live. McDonough and Braungart's text urges product designers, city planners, and architects to approach their designs with the future of humanity in mind. Interestingly, they are not saying that we need to save the planet, for the planet will still be here long after homo sapiens has expired. Their message is that we need to save ourselves from the harm we are inflicting on ourselves. Their cradle-to-cradle philosophy urges designers to make products that can easily be disassembled after their use and put back into the production cycle as something else. In this sense, products should have an immense shelf life, being able to become that same product again or easily transformed into some other consumer product. The idea is to rid ourselves of the current approach to production which is based on a cradle-to-grave approach: extract resources from the Earth to make consumer products which are then discarded (thrown away) into landfills or burnt up in incinerators, expelling unknown synthetic chemicals into the ecosphere which we rely on for life.

It's time for us to recognize that the approach to mass production and living brought on by the industrial revolution is antiquated. If anything, it's insulting that humanity has yet to update itself from what seems to be such an archaic paradigm of not only how we make things, but what are relationship ought to be with the multitude of living systems that we are embedded in. All other living species exist in an interdependent cyclical system in which their "wastes equals food" for some other set of beings. It's high time that we apply this age old and ubiquitous principle to how we manufacture and produce all the things that we need to live as well.

One hundred years isn't a long time. Yet, in the last one hundred years we can account for radical changes in the expectations that we - in the West at least - have concerning the standards of the food we eat and the conditions that we live in. We readily expect that our waste will neatly leave our homes, our malls, our schools, workplaces, and public spots en route to some place where it disappears from sight and smell forever. In fact, we rarely think about whether our waste ends up burnt, buried, or recycled, nor whether the food we dine on is thoroughly inspected and safe. We can think back to 1907 as a period in which there was nothing in the way of food safety standards (though a movement in that direction was initiated as a result of Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, which was published that same year). Nor was there any notion of labor rights, environmental protection, and many of the sanitation procedures that we often take for granted nowadays.

Looking back through history ever further, to the crowded city streets of Paris, London, or Rome in the 17th and 18th century, reveals a more distasteful reality of how people lived. The blood of slaughtered animals, along with human excrement and other waste flowed through the sewers of these magnificent cities. "How did people live like this?" we might wonder. We shutter to think about living in such conditions, which allowed for the rapid spread of pestilence and sickness, not to mention unthinkable stench. While this may still be the experience of too many in the developing world, a signal of the progress and greatness of the modernized West has been our ability to escape the condition of living in our own waste.

Yet I've wondered recently how those living in 2107 will look upon the collective condition of the world as it stands today? Will they think that we live in filth? Despite the fact that we can split atoms, fly space crafts around the solar system, cure many illnesses, make electricity from the sun's rays, and communicate with each other in a myriad of digital ways, I wonder if they will ask why we still chose to live in our waste? I think that they will find it extremely perplexing that a society as developed as ours, who has the self awareness and knowledge about the harm that we inflict on ourselves and for posterity - not to mention the multitude of living systems that we are embedded in - refused to develop a different course for humanity.

When I say that we live in filth I mean that we continue to choke on unsafe air from the cars we drive and the outdated and dangerous ways that we engage in mass industrialization. I mean that we continue to produce millions and millions of consumable products made from an array of unsafe chemicals that we know little about and which we simply burn or bury after we use them one or two times. I find it so perplexing that industry continues to spends so much time and energy developing products that will only be used for a small fraction of time by consumers, yet will spend hundreds of years in landfills (I'm thinking especially of the enormous amount of plastic packaging that most products come in, only to be discarded immediately).

We dump many of the items that we have no more use for into ever expanding landfills that are getting closer and closer to the places we live and the sources of water we eventually come to drink. We are, in effect, living in our own waste. We put zero amount of effort into thinking of ways to design the same products that we rely on daily so that they are not harmful for humans or the environments in which we live. Scratch that, we have the technology and the know how for making safer and better products, however we lack leaders (both political & business) with the will, courage, and vision to bring humanity into the next industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution centered on extracting resources from the Earth (with little thought of replacing them) and putting these resources through production processes that have amounted to harming both human and non-human life for many years to come. The next industrial revolution will be about reengineering the production of consumer goods so that the stuff we make is in accordance with our natural environment. It will be about plastics that are biodegradable and the eradication of materials that are not. It will be about more intelligent approaches to designing buildings, which will utilize natural light, wind patterns, and the surrounding ecosphere to produce happier places to work and live, and which no longer rely on burning fossil fuels for cooling, heating, and sanitation. It will be about re-conceptualizing how we design, plan, and imagine the cities that most of humanity has come to chose to live in.

I'm currently drinking a soda out of a plastic bottle made from polymers derived from petroleum. This bottle, which not only is derived from the most contested resource of our time (though clean water is quickly taking its place) will be intact for those living in 2107 to view and touch as an artifact of an era which may be known in the future as one of reckless disregard, ignorance, and waste. Even the popular notion of recycling many of the products that we use only serves to slow down the rate in which we are harming ourselves. Recycling for many products is really a process of downcycling - a term coined by Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle. The process of recycling a product essentially causes it to loose its quality each time it is put through the recycling process (assuming that individuals keep recycling each new plastic reincarnate). Even though I will recycle this bottle, and it will become another plastic product again, it will eventually have to be disregarded after going through a few recycles. Alas, we are really just slowing down the rate by which synthetics eventually reach our waste graveyards or incinerators. In addition, while it is thought to be a socially responsible activity, the process of recycling releases into the atmosphere dangerous toxins emitted by the burning of plastics during the recycling process.

What is radically different about the world from 1907, or 17th century European cities, is that we fully understand the consequences of continuing down the path we are on. Furthermore, we have the knowledge and creative ideas of how to alter that path. What we lack, sadly, is the will to cause massive social change in how we consume and live. McDonough and Braungart's text urges product designers, city planners, and architects to approach their designs with the future of humanity in mind. Interestingly, they are not saying that we need to save the planet, for the planet will still be here long after homo sapiens has expired. Their message is that we need to save ourselves from the harm we are inflicting on ourselves. Their cradle-to-cradle philosophy urges designers to make products that can easily be disassembled after their use and put back into the production cycle as something else. In this sense, products should have an immense shelf life, being able to become that same product again or easily transformed into some other consumer product. The idea is to rid ourselves of the current approach to production which is based on a cradle-to-grave approach: extract resources from the Earth to make consumer products which are then discarded (thrown away) into landfills or burnt up in incinerators, expelling unknown synthetic chemicals into the ecosphere which we rely on for life.

It's time for us to recognize that the approach to mass production and living brought on by the industrial revolution is antiquated. If anything, it's insulting that humanity has yet to update itself from what seems to be such an archaic paradigm of not only how we make things, but what are relationship ought to be with the multitude of living systems that we are embedded in. All other living species exist in an interdependent cyclical system in which their "wastes equals food" for some other set of beings. It's high time that we apply this age old and ubiquitous principle to how we manufacture and produce all the things that we need to live as well.

If you care about ecology and if you ever wondered how humanity can live in a harmony with the nature - you must read this book.

Imagine plastic container that you are encouraged to throw away - it contains no toxins, biodegrades and serves as nutrition for soil... Imagine the car you give back to the manufacturer who gives you instead a newer model, then manufacturer takes apart the old car piece by piece and infinitely reuses the parts... And so on... This book is made out of plastic that can be printed on over and over again...

With all the talk these days about Global warming this is a great book to read.
For many, in my opinion including myself, educated in similar thought processes dating back to beginnings of the industrial revolution has created many of the problems, as a world, we now face. The two authors try to break down these barriers and describe ways in which we can all treat the planet with a little more respect and develop new ways of thinking. The idea as they write,"throwing that away." Where are you throwing it away to? It basically ends up in someone else's back yard polluting their environment while delaying the inevitable pollution of your local environment. I hope this book motivates at least a few individuals enough where they do become active or lead them down a path where they develop ways to decrease individuals carbon foot print.
Ideas written about in this book reflects the Sundance Channels: The Green, Bid Ideas for a Small Planet, shows about individuals trying to make an a more sustainable environment. Some of the documentaries related to this series shows areas that have been so heavily polluted and groups trying to remedy them. It was quite alarming to see areas such as this.
Again, a great book with many new ideas and ways to look at things

Excellent book with out-of-the-box and innovative ideas for improving products and the world around us. I think these ideas are interesting to product designers, entrepreneurs, CEO's, managers and consumers.

I truly enjoyed this book as it outlines how humans should behave as part of the natural world. It has a nice blend of history, science, ecology and culture and points out that ancient civilizations weren't so primitive as they lived within the natural world around them. If only the lessons learned would be put into practice today, it would be a much more diverse and interesting planet to live on.

"Cradle to Cradle" has great ideas about the future of recycling and smart design. The book itself is an example of a product that is infinitely recyclable. However effective the authors' examples of redesigning products and changing human behavior were, there were relatively few life examples to draw from. The book left me asking for more instances of smart design, of the effective implementation of infinitely recyclable materials in my daily life, and the collection and reuse of those materials. The book fell short of offering a solution for the over abundance of packaging waist materials while constantly referring to that abundance as an issue requiring attention. I would like to have read policy recommendations and examples social action I could adopt so as to practice what William McDonough and Michael Braungart preach. This book fell short of my expectations.

This is the book about climate change that I have been waiting for. It is without a doubt, the most encouraging and exciting book I have read in years. Bill McDonough has shifted to a new level of thinking, that is both inspired and pragmatic. This is a man who has changed the concept of design, and has the finished products to show for it. As an architect, he decided being "less bad" to the environment was not good enough. Instead, taking nature as a guide, his whole concept of design begins with the intention of using only materials that are safe and healthy and can be totally reused at the end of their cycle. He is doing it. The humble ant, the cherry tree- you will never look at them again in the same way.

Great book to learn more about how we can take care of our planet and ourselves.

Bill McDonough is a winner of three U.S. presidential awards: the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the National Design Award (2004); and the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003). Time magazine recognized him as a "Hero for the Planet" in 1999, stating that "his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that - in demonstrable and practical ways - is changing the design of the world." I had the opportunity to meet him in NYC a few weeks ago - he was the keynote speaker at HSM's World Innovation Forum, and I had the privilege of interviewing him for Total Picture Radio. He started his presentation at HSM with the following statement: "Reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage. How smart are humans?"
Cradle to Cradle is an important contribution, because it has created a certification process as a way to identify products as legitimately "green." The book itself is printed in Durabook, a synthetic "paper" made from plastic resins and inorganic fillers, materials that can be reutilized again and again in industrial processes, what the book calls a "technical nutrient." I encourage you to visit Bill's web site - just Google his name - and also his page on Wikipedia - where you'll find a link to a video from his presentation at TED a couple of years ago. I can't think of a better gift to give anyone - than Cradle to Cradle.

Cradle to Cradle is so thought provoking about how we should be manufacturing our goods, it should probably be required reading for every economist, business person, government policy-maker, etc. Great food for thought. I believe this has become "the book" to read if you want to understand sustainable living and sustainable manufacturing and commerce.

This is a great read, informative without being dry and overwhelming.

Not a depressing warning of the bad things to come.

It provides hope, offers the vision of a better world.

If only all the worlds leaders would read this book and learn from it.

Inspiring and insightful! Definitely a book that makes one evaluate the choices we make as consumers and consumer choice may be the key to achieving some of the eco-effective methods of production, lifestyle etc that were discussed in 'Cradle to Cradle'. Businesses could then be encouraged to fund the necessary research to achieve the desired outcomes outlined in this book. A lot of the science is already in place to be able to start making definitive moves in the right direction. Governments throughout the world need to take heed of the message this book is sending and begin to legislate so the manufacturers, agriculturalists, loggers, home owners/builders etc must make changes to their modes of operation that are truly 'eco-effective' - what a great term.

This book is an excellent template for an ideal industrial, "eco-effective" revolution, one in which twin biological and technological "metabolism" mimic and incorporate themselves into natural systems, leaving nothing to waste and accommodating diversity. The book provides a good picture of the way things ought to be, but, in my view, doesn't really address the considerable economic and political obstacles standing in the way of that utopia. Such as a version of capitalism that continually rewards businesses that push their environmental and social costs onto the public purse and future generations. The lack of infrastructure to handle, and make cost effective, a comprehensive cradle-to-cradle product and energy cycle, which would require large initial investment by government and businesses, investments politicians and many business leaders are dead set against, not when they can make enormous profits leaving things the way things are and passing the costs along to someone else. The authors were obviously going for a relentlessly optimistic tone, using mainly moral arguments, but the book's vision of improved design makes perhaps too much sense for the nonsensical globalized deferred-cost world as it stands, on a large scale, not without fundamental political and social changes.