Beyond Sustainability--Designing for Abundance
William McDonough & Michael Braungart
(Foreword by Former President Bill Clinton)
Melcher Media/North Point Press
Imagine if we could replenish the earth’s soil with human-made phosphates or if we could build greenhouses underground in deserts using new technology. Imagine the small changes you make in your life rippling out to other places in the world and imagine a connection between wind power and food. All of this and more appears in the pages of Upcycle by the same duo that brought us the Cradle to Cradle certification program. While we find many pessimists and realists in the science communities, William McDonough (an architect) and Michael Braungart (chemist) consider themselves optimists. Not only that, they debunk the idea of doing without to save the planet. Can we have our cake and eat it too?
The authors give examples of their consultation work with giant corporations such as Walmart in its quest to go green (I still don’t shop at the chain), and they give examples of a future architectural project in Spain involving actual butterflies, as well as, the stories of other innovative entrepreneurs who did the impossible, such as the inventor of a plane powered by a human pedaling a bicycle. However, the authors mainly focus on converting waste into useable and reusable materials, even with carbon resulting from burning coal. The authors suggest building horizontal chimneys in which the carbons are used in soil where they help plants grow (not to suggest that we should burn coal on the planet).
The main point of the book, and I don’t always agree with it, is that we don’t need to make sacrifices with economy or in our personal lives, as long as we invent safe and sustainable products and services. The problems that the authors bring up with products that need regulations are not effectively designed. If a product comes with a warning label it represents poor design and all products need to be part of a permaculture cycle, but even the current trash we have on the planet could be turned into renewable energy as in the form of biogas.
While I find these authors innovative, optimistic and hopeful, I wonder how human waste (of the sewage variety) can be transformed into organic compost when most humans take toxic pharmaceuticals or eat GMO foods. How do we clean that up?
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