On the premise that in nature all products of life – living things, seeds, excretion and corpses – feed other life in ecosystems with an endless number of niches, they want to reform industry so that all its products – industrial and consumer goods, gasses, effluents and waste – are used as food for other products. Hence the introduction of two separate spheres in the production process: the biosphere and the technosphere.

Copying nature and its endless cycle of life, they claim that recasting human production from a linear into a circular model is all it takes to end our environ – mental troubles. And with McDonough’s architecture firm, Braungart’s Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA) and their company McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, redesigning everything is what they intend to do. “It is a question of social structures and social contradictions, not a question of illness or deficient metabolism.” Jean Aubert and Jean Beaudrillardīetween themselves architect William McDonough and former head of Greenpeace’s chemistry department Michael Braungart can design anything from the smallest molecule up to the largest city. For these reasons an open source approach to ecology is urgently needed. But is C2C really the concept to successfully balance ecology and economy? Although it promises to do away with the problem of scarcity, one likely consequence is a severe restriction of the use of raw materials, as well as of the knowledge necessary to make C2C work. Their slogan ‘Waste Equals Food’ has fast won over major politicians and captains of industry as well as environmentalists from many different camps. It appears that after Al Gore’s startling message, William McDonough and Michael Braungart have given ecologically concerned Holland a concept to work with. Untying Cradle to Cradl: Towards an Open Source Sharing Model for Unrestricted Useĭuring the last year the Dutch have seen the rise of Cradle to Cradle (C2C).

Michael braungart cradle to cradle