Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

Although quite an intense read, it is quite interesting and at times captivating. Based on an architect and a scientist that teamed up and work on projects to basically help companies become more environmentally friendly.

Examples include the book design, Ford Motor company, and other examples of products that can slowly pollute the environment and possible solutions to these products. Alot of the solutions can be recycled over and over, as the cradle to cradle title suggests.

The book also describes the difference between the Technosphere and Biosphere, and how products from these two different environments interact with each other and the world around us.

Reccomended read, and the book is fully waterproof - Genius!


Highly Recommended!   June 6, 2004
Rolf Dobelli (Luzern Switzerland)
33 out of 35 found this review helpful

This is an extraordinary and unlikely book. It is not printed on paper, but on a waterproof polymer with the heft of good paper and more strength, a substance that reflects the right amount of light, yet holds the ink fast. It seems like an impossible fantasy, but so does much of what the authors propose about design and ecology. They speak with the calm certainty of the ecstatic visionary. Could buildings generate oxygen like trees? Could running shoes release nutrients into the earth? It seems like science fiction. Yet, here is this book, on this paper. The authors make a strong case for change, and just when you're about to say, "if only," they cite a corporation that is implementing their ideas. However, it's hard to believe their concepts would work on a large scale, in the face of powerful economic disincentives. We believe authors do aim some of their criticism at obsolete marketing and manufacturing philosophies, but the overall critique is well worth reading.


A declaration of principles for a future world   May 13, 2004
Daniel Johnston (Aberdeen United Kingdom)
22 out of 24 found this review helpful

I found out about William McDonough by accident in a magazine article and bought this book on spec out of curiosity. I'm very glad I did. Finally a book with genuine hard and fast ideas of a method to get the sterile, polluted, modern world out of the mess it is in. If we can spread the messages this book imparts, there is a possibility that we can escape the ensuing environmental disaster that even the Pentagon is now predicting. With chemicals affecting every biological organism on Earth in unknowable ways and nature's mechanisms seriously disrupted, someone had to advocate a way forward which can harness the progress of science with the existence of the planet in perpetuity. This is that vision. If you are a business person who thinks that environmentalists are inherently cave dwelling, backward looking bleeding hearts or an environmental activist who thinks that industry and commerce are run by Hitleresque destroyers with no souls, buy this book and get with the program. WE ARE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE. Not only that but we have a lot of work to do and dreams to fulfill. I intend to buy a few copies of this book and send it to people who might be able to make a difference and I implore anyone else who understand its value to do the same.


A manifesto for new consumer....   March 16, 2008
Brendan Dunphy (Nice, France)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Cradle to Cradle is a manifesto for the new consumer - a mall-nirvana of non toxic products, endlessly `up-cycled' and replaceable; sustainability without the need to change our consuming habits.

Shrugging off alternative strategies as too dour and depressing, the authors put their faith in the belief that we can design our way out of the current predicament of toxic and crude products and create a virtuous circle of product creation, use and "up-cycling" to preserve precious resources and reduce our impact on the planet.

This is an appealing vision and one has to admire the work of co-authors Bill and Michael over many years in developing and testing their theory. But I was left more than a little disappointed as I realised not just the practical limits of their approach but also the philosophy that seemed to underlie their proposition.

This is a manifesto for accelerated consumerism, an evolutionary attempt to overcome the problems we have created through ignorance and myopia. At no point do the authors seem to question the wisdom of consumerism in a shrinking world or its instant appeal and ramifications for a global population of almost 7billion today and maybe 9 billion by 2050.

Maybe I was expecting too much, but even if every product complied with the cradle-to-cradle philosophy we would still be an awfully long way from a sustainable, let alone just world. I can't help but feel that even if the Cradle-to-Cradle philosophy was able to generate the abundance of endlessly re-cycled products it proposes, we will still require a more fundamental appraisal of why we want so much `stuff' we do not need in the first place, regardless of how it is designed and produced.

I am reminded of the Irish farmer's response to the request for directions from a lost tourist, "Well, if I was you, I wouldn't be starting out from here." Making existing product's more eco-friendly and efficient sounds a very worthy goal but maybe the first question we should be asking is, "Do we really need them in the first place?"



Brilliant   March 30, 2006
Ian R. Lambert (UK)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

Speaking as a lecturer in design (Napier University, Edinburgh) his book should be required reading for any student in design or architecture.

Very informative, up to date and deals with the reality of sustainabilty in design, which is NOT about raiding skips.