Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough

"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, such an 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. They can be conceived as "biological nutrients" that will easily reenter the water or soil without depositing synthetic materials and toxins. Or they can be "technical nutrients" that will continually circulate as pure and valuable materials within closed-loop industrial cycles, rather than being "recycled"--really, downcycled--into low-grade materials and uses. Drawing on their experience in (re)designing 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 with making anything can begin to do so as well.

I feel like this book will continue changing my life for the better in the future. It argues that products and our actions should bring a nourishing effect instead of a destroying one, and that we set ourselves up for failure when we set absolutes to concepts,that the industries and enviroment can have a mutually beneficial relationship

We should not glorify nature, but seek the benefits it brings, we should not glorify the industry, but seek the benefits it brings- without destruction.

I only learned about upcycling recently, this was a neat introduction to it. Now I wonder how it is in the country I am from Lithuania, it has the highest recycling rate in Europe. Is that good? I couldn't find a word for “Upcycling” in Lithuanian, so I am a bit concerned.

I did enjoy this book and found it quite informative.

There were certain things I wanted to hear about more in the book (especially microplastics!), but after looking at the publication date I can't really hold that against the book itself.

With that said, it was an enjoyable read which was made more enjoyable from my background in art history, oddly enough, since it largely discussed design history which I found rather fascinating. My only complaint is that I didn't feel there was a strong call-to-action for the average person. Of course, production needs to change at the industry level, but I was hoping for a small and more explicit call-to-action for the individual person in addition to the system.