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Cradle To Cradle Recycling: The Next Industrial Revolution

By: Mike Arms

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Nature activists are adept at identifying the disastrous impact of every modern-day industry on the environment. Industrialists, meanwhile, find conservation advocates to be insensitive to the social and economic roles of industrialization. They maintain that if every environmental protection advice is observed thoroughly, it will lower living standards everywhere, technologically and economically. Both groups view industrial waste and the machineries that we create, as destructive to the environment. The choice is between rampant industrialization and narrow environmentalism.

Is there, perhaps, another choice? As a matter of fact, there is a third alternative. Cradle to cradle recycling.

Recycling, as it is being done today, is actually "downcycling" or "cradle to grave" recycling. This idea is expounded quite persuasively by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart in their 2002 seminal work, “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things.” The designs we create out of old materials are either inferior in quality (due to materials degradation or contamination) or use only very little of the original material (the remainder thrown away as toxic waste in the landfills).

There is no such wastefulness in nature. How many cones does a pine tree must produce for a new pine tree to grow? A thousand, probably tens of thousands. All for a single new baby pine tree. Are those hundred other cones or seeds that didn't become new trees wasted? Of course, not. They all fall to the earth and biodegrade to become fertilizers to be part of the pine tree's next spring cycle. Nature boasts of her sustainable cycles, such as that of the pine tree, all the time. Not a single thing in nature is wasted, every seed or cone ultimately contributes to perpetuate the cycle that gets replicated a great number of times.

What if we can adopt nature's brand of sustainability and zero waste in our industrial production cycles? What if every gadget that we make can be reutilized, recycled, or completely broken down to its organic components? Cradle to cradle is an attempt to rebuild "the way we make things" to mirror exactly the highly efficient concept of sustainability in the natural world. How can this be accomplished? Think of designing sustainability into every product. Engineers, architects, and designers will have to include after-use product disposition while the product is still in the drawing boards. Is the item reusable? Are all the parts recyclable? Are the parts, paints, and coatings biodegradable?

A person who goes to the market considers using plastic bags or paper bags for her groceries. A city government in Germany considers if their town should keep burning coal or switch to palm oil for power generation. In our everyday lives, we invariably fall into "lesser of two evils" type of decisions. Plastic will remain for thousands of years and coal is the most polluting of all the fuels we burn. Conversely, paper production kills trees, and palm oil production decimates orangutans. Lesser evils. Since the start of the industrial period, we've been boxed into this illusion of destructive choices.

Cradle to cradle recycling, once it becomes widely accepted (and the opposition of ignorant interests is enormous) will probably be the "next industrial revolution." It dispels the illusion of limited options, because when sustainability is a basic component of the product design, we need not make those constricting choices. Every gadget reaching the end of its life-cycle is either reusable, recyclable, or biodegradable. That is cradle-to-cradle recycling.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Michael Arms writes for the Pacebutler Recycling and Environmental blog and maintains several Squidoo lenses on recycling and the environment. Pacebutler Corporation is one of several US online companies which buy used cell phones directly from US mobile phone users. You can also donate cell phones to your preferred non-profit through Pacebutler.

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