How can we avoid environmental disaster? Nowadays, in
the home, most of us do our bit: we recycle. But what
about industry, where the real damage is done? The
strategy is the same: 'reduce, resize, reuse' - we try
to minimize the damage. But there is a limitation to
this well-intentioned approach: it maintains the
one-way, 'cradle to grave' manufacturing model of the
Industrial Revolution, the very model that creates
immense amounts of waste and pollution in the first
place.What we need is a major rethink, a new approach
which directly combats the problem rather than slowly
perpetuating it. An exciting, simple and groundbreaking
new vision, ''Cradle to Cradle'' offers this approach.
With clear, accessible - even humorous - arguments,
celebrated chemist Michael Braungart and inspirational
architect Bill McDonough challenge the set-in notion
that human industry must damage the world. They look to
nature and find a production system we can follow, a
system of abundance rather than reduction, in which
waste equals food.They show how we can mimic nature's
model to our commercial and environmental advantage,
demonstrating how products can be designed as biological
and technical nutrients that will continually circulate
as pure and valuable materials, eradicating the need to
'recycle' - really downcycle - products into low-grade
materials and uses.''Cradle to Cradle's'' theories have
been put into practice across the world and will shape
our future - they are implemented by major governments,
big corporations, small, innovative independent
businesses and university science departments, and are
given high-profile backing by environmentalists and
celebrity activists. This updated edition is essential
reading, a bold, practical and overwhelmingly positive
manifesto for an environmentally prosperous future, a
world where we can make maximum profit from nature
without destroying it. |
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