Being 'less bad' isn't always good enough
By Dan Swartz
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
By William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Published by North Point Press, 193 pages
By focusing on design, 'Cradle to Cradle' attempts to steer environmental debate about end-of-pipe solutions into a constructive re-conceptualisation of the way we think about the environment, largely by focusing on man-made products and their often destructive interaction with ecosystems.
In a 'Mother Goose and Grimm' cartoon from years ago, Mother Goose is paying for her groceries and is asked if she wants paper or plastic bags. Faced with a choice of killing trees or exploiting oil, and being unable to decide, Mother Goose is finally put into a straightjacket and carried off to the loony bin.
There are, of course, other solutions not illustrated in the cartoon, such as reusable string and textile bags, but resources are also mined and used in their manufacture, and there is still the question of disposal. Nor are so-called 'biodegradable' bags the answer: Today's biodegradable bags comprise a mix of plastic interspersed with cornstarch. When and if the cornstarch biodegrades (which happens only when exposed to sunlight, air and water, none of which are present in a landfill disposal or incinerator), many small plastic bits remain.
'Cradle to Cradle' asks us to look at everything from bags, shoes, carpets and entire buildings, and to contemplate redesigning them in such a way that waste does not equal waste, but equals food. A carrier bag, for example, can mean a fully compostable bag that can re-enter the ecosystem as food for biological processes, or be made from materials that can be re-fed into the bag-manufacturing process. Sports shoes can be made with soles that erode slowly through wear and leave behind material that biodegrades into soil nutrients.
McDonough and Braungart argue that all materials and products should be designed so that they safely feed the biosphere and/or technical processes. For example, car exhaust emissions could be reconceived and the process designed so that positive emissions can either help purify the air or produce drinking water. They add, however, that these types of solutions do not get to the actual root problems of an auto-based culture and infrastructure.
The authors also emphasise the big difference between recycling and down-cycling. Recycling is to make the same product from reclaimed materials. For example, 'Cradle to Cradle' itself is made from non-toxic, 100% recyclable polymer material that can be recycled into a new book. Down-cycling is to make a new but inferior-quality product out of reused materials, such as tennis ball fuzz from old PET bottles or toilet paper from print-quality paper. Recycling might make you feel good, but the authors claim that it does not provide adequate incentives to minimise either the waste or the often-toxic chemicals used in production.
Unless there is a market for recycled materials, the collected materials are still waste. Minimisation is not just about quantity, but about reducing and/or eliminating toxic ingredients in all products and processes. Moreover, making a product that is free of hazardous material — say, chlorine, phosphate or cadmium — does not necessarily mean that the entire product or process is safe.
Energy-efficiency advocates might quarrel with the authors' contention that emission standards, permits, toxic release inventories and carbon trading schemes are just a "license to harm" — that making a destructive system less so is just not good enough. Being 'less bad' or 'sustainable' does not halt depletion, it just slows it down. The authors write, not without humour: "If a man characterised his relationship with his wife as sustainable, you might as well pity them both."
Entire frameworks must be changed so that products and processes should be "all good," the authors write. "Being less bad is a failure of imagination," is their challenging conclusion.
