No easy solution

Making our products and buildings greener means using recycled and less-toxic materials, right? Not exactly say the authors of Cradle to Cradle, a book I recently finished reading. This is a book that I strongly recommend. The book has an interesting position on the topic of product design and recycling:

1. Recycling is good, as we don't need to harvest additional raw material to create products, but it only really delays the trip to the dump. You can only recycle materials once, maybe twice. After that, the properties have been altered and the quality is usually not as good as that of the original material. Creating products from recycled materials also requires energy for processing and, some times, chemicals to clean impurities before making the product. Why is our traditional recycling falling short of expectation? Because products were never made to be recycled in the first place. Materials were mixed in ways that cannot be reversed. If we want to reverse the cycle of cradle to grave (products made for disposal), products must be designed to allow the recycling of their organic and technical materials.

2. Designing products cradle to cradle does not mean an end to economic prosperity. Our industry would transform itself from one of ownership to goods-as-services. Instead of buying a TV, then throwing it away three years later to get the latest model, we would sign contracts with TV manufacturers. We would lease our TV sets, and when new models become available, the manufacturer would replace the old TV with a new one, and take back the old set for recycling. TV sets, instead of being composed of a mix of plastics, metals and chemicals, would be designed to be pulled apart and recycled for raw materials.

There are no easy solutions to our current consumption cycles, but at least Cradle to Cradle offers some insights as to how we could stop creating products meant for disposal. This is an interesting departure from the focus on consuming less to create less waste.