A Shocking View of Our Everyday Lives

It seems that we have created a very hostile environment for ourselves. The house that we live in is filled with materials - carpet, paint, wood finishes - that fill the air with mutagenic materials and toxic gases. The cars that we drive emit noxious fumes and require non-renewable resources for their operation, and even the computer you are reading this on is made with materials that are harmful to the people who manufacture them and use them - not to mention the harm that is done to the environment once it is disposed of.


Many of the things that we take for granted are really quite silly when you look at them closely. We plop down houses, designed and built with no regard for their orientation to the sun, on land that has been stripped of trees that may have shaded the houses, or bodies of water that could be used to guide water runoff. Those houses are then surrounded by a foreign grass species that is forced to grow with dangerous chemicals, and then cut down with polluting machinery.


Many of the ways we impact the environment are more apparent, and attempts to alleviate them have gained in acceptance, but "Cradle to Cradle" argues that many of our "solutions" are simply patches for poorly-designed systems. They argue that recycling is actually "downcycling" - a process that results in a lower quality product with each cycle, that sometimes requires just as many resources as manufacturing a new product. The fact that soda cans are made with two different grades of aluminum, and are coated with paint, are a good example of unconsidered life-cycle.


William McDonough and Michael Braungart uncover many frightening side-effects of the way we live our lives and design our products. Most of the solutions they present for these problems are not currently feasible, but they present steps to take to work towards environmental utopia. The book itself is an example - its not quite the dream book they describe, with inks that wash off in a hot water bath and glues made of materials that can be recycled with the pages of the book, but "Cradle to Cradle" is printed on a very durable, heavy, and waterproof polymer-based paper that can be "upcycled."


There do appear to be some conflicts of interest in this book, however. McDonough and Braungart speak of clients of theirs - companies such as Monsanto, Dow, and Ford - as if they were environmental saints even though these companies have committed atrocious harm to the environment. But, where else do we expect them to provide anecdotes from? Also, it is true that the very power that enables those companies to do harm can enable them to do good.


"Cradle to Cradle" is a thorough survey of the environmental dynamics of the things and practices that make up our everyday lives. It is wrapped around a the framework of a fresh pattern of thinking that will hopefully bring us closer to living in harmony with our environment without abandoning our lives as we know them.

This book is not made from a tree

It's is a very interesting book. Some ideas are ahead of the times. A must read.

Amazing book

If you read it you will get it :) Not like any traditional books on environmental thought! A must have book. It's not made of paper!