[Pil-pc-oceania] cradle-to-cradle

[Andrew Leahy]

Hi,
I recently saw the doco "Waste=Food" and have become intrigued by William
McDonough's concept of 'technical nutrition'.

The book 'Cradle-to-Cradle' has been out for over 5 years (which is longer
than I've known about permaculture), so I was wondering if permies on this
list had read the book, and if so, what did they think?

If you not familiar with the concept there is a short cradle-to-cradle talk
at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/104

"Imagine a world in which all the things we make, use, and consume provide
nutrition for nature and industry—a world in which growth is good and human
activity generates a delightful, restorative ecological footprint.

While this may seem like heresy to many in the world of sustainable
development, the destructive qualities of today's cradle-to-grave industrial
system can be seen as the result of a fundamental design problem, not the
inevitable outcome of consumption and economic activity. Indeed, good
design—principled design based on the laws of nature—can transform the
making and consumption of things into a regenerative force.

This new conception of design—known as cradle-to-cradle design—goes beyond
retrofitting industrial systems to reduce their harm. Conventional
approaches to sustainability often make the efficient use of energy and
materials their ultimate goal. While this can be a useful transitional
strategy, it tends to reduce negative impacts without transforming harmful
activity. Recycling carpet, for example, might reduce consumption, but if
the carpet backing contains PVC, which most carpet backing does, the
recycled product is still on a one-way trip to the landfill, where it
becomes hazardous waste.

Cradle-to-cradle design, on the other hand, offers a framework in which the
effective, regenerative cycles of nature provide models for wholly positive
human designs. Within this framework we can create economies that purify
air, land, and water, that rely on current solar income and generate no
toxic waste, that use safe, healthful materials that replenish the earth or
can be perpetually recycled, and that yield benefits that enhance all life.

Over the past decade, the cradle-to-cradle framework has evolved steadily
from theory to practice. In the world of industry it is creating a new
conception of materials and material flows. Just as in the natural world, in
which one organism's "waste" cycles through an ecosystem to provide
nourishment for other living things, cradle-to-cradle materials circulate in
closed-loop cycles, providing nutrients for nature or industry. This model
recognizes two metabolisms within which materials flow as healthy nutrients.

First, nature's nutrient cycles constitute the biological metabolism.
Materials designed to flow optimally in the biological metabolism are
biological nutrients. Products conceived as these nutrients, such as
biodegradable packaging, are designed to be used and safely returned to the
environment to nourish living systems. Second, the technical metabolism,
designed to mirror the earth's cradle-to-cradle cycles, is a closed-loop
system in which valuable, high-tech synthetics and mineral
resources—technical nutrients—circulate in a perpetual cycle of production,
recovery, and remanufacture. Ideally, all the human systems that make up the
technical metabolism are powered by the renewable energy of the sun.
[...]

In a cradle-to-cradle economy, cities are the principal home and source of
technical nutrition—the place where metals are forged, polymers synthesized,
and tractors, computers, and windmills designed and manufactured. Cities
send these materials forth into the world and receive them back as they move
through closed-loop cycles. The countryside, meanwhile, can be seen as the
home of the biological metabolism. Materials generated there—food, wood,
fibers—are created through interactions of solar energy, soil, and water and
are the source of biological nutrition for rural communities and nearby
cities. One of the city's fundamental roles in this metabolism is to return
biological nutrition in a safe, healthy form, say as clean fertilizer, back
to the rural soil. These flows of nutrients and energy are the twin
metabolisms of the living city, the engines of the vibrant economies of the
future.

[...]

The cradle-to-cradle strategy allows us to see our designs as delightful
expressions of creativity, as life-support systems in harmony with energy
flows, human souls, and other living things. When that becomes the hallmark
of productive economies, consumption itself will have been transformed."
(from http://www.mcdonough.com/writings/cradle_to_cradle-alt.htm)

Cheers, Andrew

-- 
Fact: To manufacture a 3 tonne car requires 50 tonnes of raw material.
Fact: In your lifetime you will eat 50 tonnes of food and produce 3 tonnes
of poo :)
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