Day 14 - A Non-fiction Book

I have read many non-fiction books over the last little while and so this was another tough one, but I chose a book that really made me look at my world just a little differently.

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things is a book I borrowed from a friend a few years ago.  It was written by Michael Braungart, a German chemist and William McDonough, an American architect and has to do with the "cradle to grave" mentality that comes with consumer products.  Everything we make from paper to steel has a shelf life and will eventually become waste.  Think about it, everything we have from our shoes to our homes will eventually become garbage.  Even when we recycle we are only delaying the inevitable, as everytime we "recycle" something the material degrades. (They use the term "downcycling" in the book.) A little depressing isn't it? 

Well it's not all doom and gloom.  McDonough and Braungart are proponents of the "cradle to cradle" system of manufacturing which means that everything is "upcycled" ie at the end of a product's life cycle it will either become biological nutrients - meaning they can re-enter the environment or technical nutrients - meaning the materials remain within a closed loop cycle.  One example they used was that of a shoe that is designed and mass produced using the C2C model. The sole might be made of "biological nutrients" while the upper parts might be made of "technical nutrients." The shoe is mass produced at a manufacturing plant that utilises its waste material by putting it back into the cycle; an example of this is using off-cuts from the rubber soles to make more soles instead of merely disposing of them (this is dependent on the technical materials not losing their quality as they are reused). Once the shoes have been manufactured, they are distributed to retail outlets where the customer buys the shoe at a fraction of the price they would normally pay for a shoe of comparable aspects; the customer is only paying for the use of the materials in the shoe for the period of time that they will be using the shoe. When they outgrow the shoe or it is damaged, they return it to the manufacturer. When the manufacturer separates the sole from the upper parts (separating the technical and biological nutrients), the biological nutrients are returned to the natural environment while the technical nutrients are used to create the sole of another shoe.[1]

The book itself isn't made of paper, it is instead made of polymers that can be upcycled (into technical nutrients) and it is also waterproof! :)  It is a thought provoking book that does more than tell us that we're all greedy consumers that are destroying the planet, it gives us a way out.  All that's left is for the world to listen.