By Tyler Moorehead, published in LOFT The Nordic BOOKAZINE Volume #9
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In the world of Cradle-to-Cradle, the right kind of human activity can indeed help the natural and business worlds flourish together. C2C principles are based on maximizing the human footprint, rather than minimizing it, in order to provide resilience for natural systems and fulfill the human need to create. (See ‘Cradle-to-Cradle Design – How to Be Good Instead of Less Bad’, at FOD) At a time when lack of resilience has seen some of the world’s most venerable businesses and financial institutions go bust, Braungart blames the failure to ask the right questions as a key factor in the state of business – and the environment – today.

By way of example the Professor shares a story about a New York designer friend who arranged the gift of a designer suit to help him look smart on speaking engagements. He explains,

– I couldn’t resist then testing all the designer suits to see which was the most toxic, but they are all amazingly toxic, whether it’s Armani or Gucci or Louis Vuitton. I can’t understand why designers are so lacking in ambition. They just ask what it will look like, not what it’s made from. They don’t design textiles for skin contact.

In another sector, a Dutch company who makes printers, inks and paper chemicals invited Braungart to look at a new product. He was told, “This is a new printer, it is twice as fast and takes 20% less energy, isn’t it great?” When he enquired whether the paper that comes out of the machine could be put in his compost or burnt in his fireplace to return to the garden as ash, they replied, “No, of course not.” Braungart says, “What they did was they optimized the wrong thing. The question to ask is, ‘Hey, what is the purpose of this thing?’ But they lack ambition.” And Braungart thinks they need bigger ideas.

– The banking crisis has shown that the old business models do not work. Manufacturers need to become their own banks with their own assets. To do this they need ‘friendly’ relationships with suppliers and customers, which means they need to be interested in making products that don’t fall apart right after the warranty ends. This is operating more like a service business. If companies are selling assurance instead of usage and keeping the materials themselves, then they are building up a raw materials store which becomes more valuable every year. Like a materials bank.

Braungart warns that companies will need to re-think their role in society if economic and environmental recovery are to take place. He explains that companies who have spent the last 20 years trying to be ‘less bad’ will find it very hard to make the switch, but claims that plenty of other companies have taken this step. Chemical giant, Akzo-Nobel, the new owner of ICI, is one example of a company that hasn’t shied away from the challenge, publicly signing up to Cradle-to-Cradle in the middle of the economic crunch. Akzo-Nobel’s Corporate Director of Sustainability, Andre Veneman, explained,

– We believe that sustainability is the way out of the crisis for companies. It allows us to continue our work on innovations and products which deliver benefits to our customers and to ourselves. C2C is more a vision than a product and it will help our sourcing people and researchers think outside of the box and ask ‘what are our next steps?’

Braungart defends the C2C protocol and the timing of the book’s release** during a period of recession.

– If a company isn’t updating and improving the quality of its products, it won’t be competitive anymore and then it can’t grow. It’s the same as having old telephones and communications systems … they would have to invest to bring them up to date. It’s a necessity.

C2C’s focus on products and growth highlights key principles at odds with traditional environmental thinking. C2C celebrates abundance as an opportunity to mimic nature and optimize material flow to make gains for the environment. It regards ‘one planet living’ as an affront to human existence, whilst environmentalists see it as an essential route to change. Braungart argues,

– If we only have one planet, then we are too many. With human knowledge we can make the planet far more productive with 10,000 times more energy input, and materials which are far more sophisticated than anything we use now.

It’s an appealing, if counterintuitive, argument. But it’s difficult to see past the emphasis on commercial growth to a future that is truly sustainable. Braungart maintains that:

– For 30 years the environmental movement has been blaming and shaming companies and governments. This has created a great debate that showed the world there were limitations on raw materials and potential for an energ y shortage. These lessons can now be used for good and a positive agenda. In countries like Malaysia and China, where they haven’t had this debate, they are still focused on inferior products and processes. But we don’t have to compete with these anymore. We know better.

The key message of C2C seems to be that companies and anyone who designs or creates products must apply ambition and vision to defining meaningful goals. Professor Braungart explains,

– It’s not that designers need to know that much more, it’s that they need to learn to ask the right questions. Some designers say “Oh, let’s beautify this at the end”, instead of “Let’s make really good design”. He cites the issue of indoor air quality as a challenge designers could address. – When we analyze indoor air quality it’s 3 to 8 times worse than it is outside. As an interior designer you can make sure that the indoor air quality is better than the outside air, and then you can say you have done this. It’s very simple because it’s an environment which you can control and define, where outside you cannot control what everybody else is doing.

But will companies take up the charge to embark on the rigor of a Cradle-to-Cradle journey for no immediate return? Braungart is resolute:

– We don’t have a lot of alternatives. The system is already going to destroy itself. So if you don’t change the agenda for the next 10–15 years, it cannot support us. It’s not that we will lose humankind on this planet completely, but we will lose. Within the next 60 years there will be about one billion people [remaining] with about 30 % of the species – that’s it.

The C2C case for celebrating human abundance asks us to forget everything we’ve been told about preserving the environment and to trust commercially driven companies to help us deliver the healthy biosphere and technosphere we need, because their survival depends on it too.

It’s a big gamble. But if we don’t heed Braungart’s warning to raise our expectations and ambitions, we could find we’re stuck with tools and ideas too small for the job at hand.

* Tyler Moorehead is Director of GreenUnlimited, a London consultancy for green business development. (tyler.moorehead@greenunlimited.co.uk)

** ‘Cradle-to-Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things’ by Michael Braungart and William McDonough (Jonathan Cape 2008 ISBN 978 0 22408 786 5) 67

This article was published in LOFT The Nordic BOOKAZINE Volume #8. It was written by Tyler Moorehead a media strategy and concept specialist from the US. 

Please check out her profile at Green Consultancy for further information.