linedot.ecobee.org - dev

 
From Cradle to Cradle.
 
Over the past few months we have been evolving our approach to improving our design and specifications from a environmental perspective. In their bestselling book Cradle to Cradle. Remaking The Way We Make Things.: Michael Braungart (a material scientist) and William McDonough (an architect) propose a subtle solution to the problem by redesigning our concept and expectations of the industrial processes themselves. In essence the idea is simple. If widgets are to be produced they must not damage anybody or anything in getting the raw materials, making, and using the product. When the product is past its useful life, the widget and any by-product of it must be able to be turned back into its constituent raw materials for reuse in industry or usefully reabsorbed back into beautiful nature.
 
So, for example, down-cycling plastic bottles into bin-liners, that are then buried in the ground, does not make the grade. Such material is downgraded by the recycling process, becoming of lower and lower quality and value until it is useless. This process only delays the plastic ending–up in the ground. But if the product material can be recycled endlessly without ever going to landfill then we begin to approach Cradle to Cradle objectives. The difference between these two examples might seem small, but it is actually profound. As the authors of the book say, being less bad is not the same as being good.
 
What we like about the CtoC approach is that it can address questions that we are only just realising exist. For example, many products release toxic chemicals into the air during their lifetime. Few people have worried about this because it was thought that the dosage was too small to matter. But advances in measurement techniques are beginning to overturn this notion. Nobody fully knows the implications of the chemicals present in our everyday environments, but it is surely common sense to get rid of as many as we can.
 
The CtoC approach is holistic and it does not require government intervention to be effective. In this spirit we have now reviewed our policy on the specification of products to require all suppliers and manufacturers that want their products used by us to state what aspect of CtoC principles they abide by.
 
Initially we found few companies had heard of CtoC principles but this is now changing more rapidly than we could have anticipated with many aspects of their products and manufacturing processes being redesigned to meet CtoC principles. We hope within a year two to be able to exclude from consideration any product or service that does not comply with CtoC principles.
 
For more details on Cradle to Cradle design concepts to please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_to_Cradle