Cradle to Cradle Read online

  We have been working with a kind of roofing that responds to all of these issues, including the economic ones. It is a light layer of soil, a growing matrix, covered with plants. It maintains the roof at a stable temperature, providing free evaporative cooling in hot weather and insulation in cold weather, and shields it from the sun’s destructive rays, making it last longer. In addition, it makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, captures particulates like soot, and absorbs storm water. And that’s not all: it looks far more attractive than naked asphalt and, with the storm-water management, saves money that would be lost to regulatory fees and flood damage. In appropriate locales, it can even be engineered to produce solar-generated electricity.

  If this sounds like a novel idea, it’s not. It is based on centuries-old building techniques. (In Iceland, for example, many old farms were built with stones, wood, and sod, and grass for roofs.) And it is widely used in Europe, where tens of millions of square feet of such roofing already exist. Enhanced by today’s sophisticated technology and engineering, this approach to roofing is effective on multiple levels, not least of which is its ability to capture the public imagination. We helped Mayor Richard Daley put a garden on the roof of Chicago’s city hall, and he foresees a whole city covered with green roofs that will not only keep it cool but produce solar energy and grow food and flowers, as well as providing soothing green sanctuary from busy urban streets to birds and people alike.

  Beyond Control

  Taking an eco-effective approach to design might result in an innovation so extreme that it resembles nothing we know, or it might merely show us how to optimize a system already in place. It’s not the solution itself that is necessarily radical but the shift in perspective with which we begin, from the old view of nature as something to be controlled to a stance of engagement.

  For thousands of years, people struggled to maintain the boundaries between human and natural forces; to do so was often necessary to their survival. Western civilization in particular has been shaped by the belief that it is the right and duty of human beings to shape nature to better ends; as Francis Bacon put it, “Nature being known, it may be master’d, managed, and used in the services of human life.”

  Today few natural disasters can really threaten those of us in the industrialized nations. On a day-to-day basis, we are fairly safe from all but the most serious epidemics and climatic events: earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, floods, plagues, perhaps a meteor. Yet we still cling to a mental model of civilization based on the practices of our ancestors, who hacked and plowed their way through a difficult wilderness. Overwhelming and controlling nature is not only the reigning trend, it has even become an aesthetic preference. The hedges or borders of the modern lawn sharply distinguish what is “natural” from what is “civilized.” In a city landscape of asphalt, concrete, steel, and glass, nature’s excess may be considered messy, even useless, something to be limited to a few carefully sculpted gardens and trees. What autumn leaves there are must be quickly gathered from the ground, placed in plastic bags, and landfilled or burned rather than composted. Instead of trying to optimize nature’s abundance, we automatically try to get it out of the way. For many of us used to a culture of control, nature in its untamed state is neither a familiar nor a welcoming place.

  To emphasize this point, Michael likes to tell the story of the forbidden cherry tree. In 1986 several people in a neighborhood in Hannover, Germany, decided they wanted to plant a cherry tree on their street. They thought such an addition would provide habitat for songbirds and pleasure for people who might want to eat the cherries, pluck a blossom or two, or simply admire the tree’s beauty. It seemed an easy enough decision, with only positive effects. But the tree was not so easily transposed from their imaginations to real life. According to zoning laws in that neighborhood, a new cherry-tree planting would not be legal. What the residents viewed as delightful, the legislature viewed as a risk. People might slip on fallen cherries and cherry blossoms. Fruit trees with dangling fruit might lure children to climb them—a liability if a child fell and got hurt. The cherry tree was simply not efficient enough for the legislators: it was messy, creative, unpredictable. It could not be controlled or anticipated. The system was not set up to handle something of that kind. The neighbors pressed on, however, and eventually they were granted special permission to plant the tree.

  The forbidden fruit tree is a useful metaphor for a culture of control, for the barriers erected and maintained—whether physical or ideological—between nature and human industry. Sweeping away, shutting out, and controlling nature’s imperfect abundance are implicit features of modern design, ones rarely if ever questioned. If brute force doesn’t work, you’re not using enough of it.

  As we know from our own work, paradigms sometimes shift not only because of new ideas but because of evolving tastes and trends. Contemporary preferences are already tending toward greater diversity. Michael tells another story: in 1982 his mother’s garden, which was full of vegetables, herbs, wildflowers, and many other strange and wonderful plants, was determined by town legislators to be too messy, too “wild.” She was asked to pay a fine. Rather than bow down to this “minimization demand,” as Michael calls it, she decided to continue growing the kind of garden she loved and to pay a yearly fine for the right to do so. Ten years later this very same garden won a local award for creating habitat for songbirds. What had changed? The public taste, the prevailing aesthetic. It is now fashionable to grow a garden that looks “wild.”

  Imagine the fruits of such a shift on a large scale.

  Becoming a Native

  There is some talk in science and popular culture about colonizing other planets, such as Mars or the moon. Part of this is just human nature: we are curious, exploring creatures. The idea of taming a new frontier has a compelling, even romantic, pull, like that of the moon itself. But the idea also provides rationalization for destruction, an expression of our hope that we’ll find a way to save ourselves if we trash our planet. To this speculation, we would respond: If you want the Mars experience, go to Chile and live in a typical copper mine. There are no animals, the landscape is hostile to humans, and it would be a tremendous challenge. Or, for a moonlike effect, go to the nickel mines of Ontario.

  Seriously, humans evolved on the Earth, and we are meant to be here. Its atmosphere, its nutrients, its natural cycles, and our own biological systems evolved together and support us here, now. Humans were simply not designed by evolution for lunar conditions. So while we recognize the great scientific value of space exploration and the exciting potential of new discovery there, and while we applaud technological innovations that enable humans to “boldly go where no man has gone before,” we caution: Let’s not make a big mess here and go somewhere less hospitable even if we figure out how. Let’s use our ingenuity to stay here; to become, once again, native to this planet.

  This affirmation does not mean that we advocate returning to a pretechnological state. We believe that humans can incorporate the best of technology and culture so that our civilized places reflect a new view. Buildings, systems, neighborhoods, and even whole cities can be entwined with surrounding ecosystems in ways that are mutually enriching. We agree that it is important to leave some natural places to thrive on their own, without undue human interference or habitation. But we also believe that industry can be so safe, effective, enriching, and intelligent that it need not be fenced off from other human activity. (This could stand the concept of zoning on its head; when manufacturing is no longer dangerous, commercial and residential sites can exist alongside factories, to their mutual benefit and delight.)

  The Menominee tribe of Wisconsin, wood harvesters for many generations, use a logging method that lets them profit from nature while allowing it to thrive. Conventional logging operations are focused on producing a certain amount of carbohydrate (wood pulp) for use. This agenda is single-purpose and utilitarian: it does not count how many species of birds the forest may harbor, or how its slopes stay
stable, or what occasions for recreation and respite—as well as resources—it provides and could continue to provide to future generations. The Menominee often cut only the weaker trees, leaving the strong mother trees and enough of the upper canopy for squirrels and other arboreal animals to continuously inhabit. This strategy has been enormously productive; it has allowed the forest to thrive while supplying the tribe with commercial resources. In 1870 the Menominee counted 1.3 billion standing board feet of timber—what in the timber industry is tellingly known as “stumpage”—on a 235,000-acre reservation. Over the years they have harvested 2.25 billion feet, yet today they have 1.7 billion standing feet—a slight increase. One might say they have figured out what the forest can productively offer them instead of considering only what they want. (It’s important to note here that this particular form of forestry is not necessarily universal in its potential applications. In some instances— including restorative work, in which you might remove a monocultural forest to plant a more diverse system—clear-cutting appears to be a successful management tool. As the Forest Stewardship Council notes, there are no absolutes about method.)

  Kai Lee, a professor of environmental science at Williams College, tells an enlightening story about native peoples’ view of place. In 1986 Lee was involved in plans for the long-term storage of radioactive wastes at the Hanford Reservation, a large site in central Washington State, where the United States government had produced plutonium for nuclear weapons. He spent a morning with scientists discussing how to mark a waste site so that even in the distant future, people would not accidentally drill for water there or otherwise bring about harmful exposures and releases. During a break he saw several members of the Yakima Indian Nation, whose traditional lands include much of the Hanford Reservation. They had come there to talk with federal officials about another matter. The Yakima were surprised—even amused—at Kai’s concern over their descendants’ safety. “Don’t worry,” they assured him. “We’ll tell them where it is.” As Kai pointed out to us, “Their conception of themselves and their place was not historical, as mine was, but eternal. This would always be their land. They would warn others not to mess with the wastes we’d left.”

  We are not leaving this land either, and we will begin to become native to it when we recognize this fact.

  The New Design Assignment

  An old joke about efficiency: An olive-oil vendor returns from the marketplace and complains to a friend, “I can’t make money selling olive oil! By the time I feed the donkey that carries my oil to market, most of my profit is gone.” His friend suggests he feed the donkey a little less. Six weeks later they meet again at the marketplace. The oil seller is in poor shape, with neither money nor donkey. When his friend asks what happened, the vendor replies, “Well, I did as you said. I fed the donkey a little less, and I began to do really well. So I fed him even less, and I did even better. But just at the point where I was becoming really successful, he died!”

  Is our goal to starve ourselves? To deprive ourselves of our own culture, our own industries, our own presence on the planet, to aim for zero? How inspiring a goal is that? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, rather than bemoaning human industry, we had reason to champion it? If environmentalists as well as automobile makers could applaud every time someone exchanged an old car for a new one, because new cars purified the air and produced drinking water? If new buildings imitated trees, providing shade, songbird habitat, food, energy, and clean water? If each new addition to a human community deepened ecological and cultural as well as economic wealth? If modern societies were perceived as increasing assets and delights on a very large scale, instead of bringing the planet to the brink of disaster?

  We would like to suggest a new design assignment. Instead of fine-tuning the existing destructive framework, why don’t people and industries set out to create the following:

  buildings that, like trees, produce more energy than they consume and purify their own waste water

  factories that produce effluents that are drinking water

  products that, when their useful life is over, do not become useless waste but can be tossed onto the ground to decompose and become food for plants and animals and nutrients for soil; or, alternately, that can return to industrial cycles to supply high-quality raw materials for new products

  billions, even trillions, of dollars’ worth of materials accrued for human and natural purposes each year

  transportation that improves the quality of life while delivering goods and services

  a world of abundance, not one of limits, pollution, and waste.

  Chapter Four

  Waste Equals Food

  NATURE OPERATES ACCORDING to a system of nutrients and metabolisms in which there is no such thing as waste. A cherry tree makes many blossoms and fruit to (perhaps) germinate and grow. That is why the tree blooms. But the extra blossoms are far from useless. They fall to the ground, decompose, feed various organisms and microorganisms, and enrich the soil. Around the world, animals and humans exhale carbon dioxide, which plants take in and use for their own growth. Nitrogen from wastes is transformed into protein by microorganisms, animals, and plants. Horses eat grass and produce dung, which provides both nest and nourishment for the larvae of flies. The Earth’s major nutrients—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen—are cycled and recycled. Waste equals food.

  This cyclical, cradle-to-cradle biological system has nourished a planet of thriving, diverse abundance for millions of years. Until very recently in the Earth’s history, it was the only system, and every living thing on the planet belonged to it. Growth was good. It meant more trees, more species, greater diversity, and more complex, resilient ecosystems. Then came industry, which altered the natural equilibrium of materials on the planet. Humans took substances from the Earth’s crust and concentrated, altered, and synthesized them into vast quantities of material that cannot safely be returned to soil. Now material flows can be divided into two categories: biological mass and technical—that is, industrial—mass.

  From our perspective, these two kinds of material flows on the planet are just biological and technical nutrients. Biological nutrients are useful to the biosphere, while technical nutrients are useful for what we call the technosphere, the systems of industrial processes. Yet somehow we have evolved an industrial infrastructure that ignores the existence of nutrients of either kind.

  From Cradle-to-Cradle to Cradle-to-Grave: A Brief History of Nutrient Flows

  Long before the rise of agriculture, nomadic cultures wandered from place to place searching for food. They needed to travel light, so their possessions were few—some jewelry and a few tools, bags or clothes made of animal skins, baskets for roots and seeds. Assembled from local materials, these things, when their use was over, could easily decompose and be “consumed” by nature. The more durable objects, such as weapons of stone and flint, might be discarded. Sanitation was not a problem because the nomads were constantly moving. They could leave their biological wastes behind to replenish soil. For these people, there truly was an “away.”

  Early agricultural communities continued to return biological wastes to the soil, replacing nutrients. Farmers rotated crops, letting fields lie fallow in turn until nature made them fertile again. Over time new agricultural tools and techniques led to quicker food production. Populations swelled, and many communities began to take more resources and nutrients than could be naturally restored. With people more tightly packed, sanitation became a problem. Societies began to find ways to get rid of their wastes. They also began to take more and more nutrients from the soil and to eat up resources (such as trees) without replacing them at an equal rate.

  There is an old Roman saying, Pecunia non olet: “Money doesn’t stink.” In Imperial Rome servicepeople took wastes away from public spaces and the toilets of the wealthy and piled them outside the city. Agriculture and tree-felling drained soils of nutrients and led to erosion, and the landscape became drier and more arid, with less f
ertile cropland. Rome’s imperialism—and imperialism in general—emerged in part in response to nutrient losses, the center expanding to support its vast needs with timber, food, and other resources elsewhere. (Tellingly, as the city’s resources shrank and conquests grew, Rome’s agricultural deity, Mars, became the god of war.)

  William Cronon chronicles a similar relationship between a city and its natural environment in Nature’s Metropolis. He points out that the great rural areas around Chicago, America’s “breadbasket,” were actually organized over time to provide services for that city; the settlement of the surrounding frontier did not happen in isolation from Chicago but was inextricably bound to the city and fueled by its needs. “The central story of the nineteenth-century West is that of an expanding metropolitan economy creating ever more elaborate and intimate linkages between city and country,” Cronon observes. Thus the history of a city “must also be the history of its human countryside, and of the natural world within which city and country are both located.”

  As they swelled and grew, the great cities placed incredible pressure on the environment around them, sucking materials and resources from farther and farther away, as the land was stripped and resources taken. For example, as the forests of Minnesota disappeared, logging moved on to British Columbia. (Such expansions affected native people; the Mandans of the upper Missouri were wiped out by smallpox, in a chain of events resulting from settlers staking homesteads.)