Cradle to Cradle -Remaking the way we make things by: William McDonough & Michael Braungart
Cradle to Cradle is a well written book that inspires you to think very differently about how you use and design products not only at your work but also in your everyday life. To start with, the book itself is not even printed on paper. This serves to illustrate the main concept of the book. How we should design products to not just be recycled ( “downcycled” according to the authors) or reused; instead we should redesign products so that when they become waste they are actually food or raw material for another product.
Needless to say their points are made much more articulately within the book that I shall do in this short book review. The beginning of the book is slightly depressing as your eyes begin to open and you realize that several things we think are good to day are actually just “less bad” and not addresses that actual root problem.
Don’t worry though as you continue to read they talk about solutions and ideas that not only large companies are researching and implementing but even some ideas that you can begin to implement and think about for your everyday life.
The one thing I wish that they expanded upon in the book were even more ways to bring some of their concepts to our homes. Overall though this book really opened my eyes and has started me thinking of many different and easy ways to redefine my life. We are planning on building a new home on some acreage to have more self sufficiency and this book has helped us to re-examine exactly how we want to do this to be more “eco-effiencent.”
All in all I would highly recommend this book. It opened my eyes greatly and now I can start to put into practice ideas that could truly make a difference. So if you haven’t read Cradle to Cradle yet then go and check it out of your library or buy it from Amazon through this link.
“The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.”
-Albert Einstein