So... Cradle to Cradle is a process whereby a product can be disassembled at the end of its life to become nutrients for the next product life cycle. There are two product nutrient streams: 
The Biological and Technical Streams. Biological, meaning organic substances that biodegrade and decompose and Technical, meaning chemicals and metals. The idea is to create a "closed loop cycle" from these nutrient types. Biological nutrients will breakdown and become compost (food) for another biological system – for instance cotton or wool at the end of its life could be composted and become nutrients for another crop. Technical nutrients would follow the same "closed loop cycle" however instead of biodegrading they would be recaptured and used again in a similar cycle that it was initially used for. For instance cars could be created in such a way that at the end of their life they have been designed for disassemble so that valuable technical nutrients such as copper in the wiring is captured and can be reused for wiring, instead of being melted down with all the other types of metals and turned into an alloy of lesser value and ultimately ending up in landfill.
So don't these kinds of systems already exist? Well yes and no. Sometimes they do with Biological nutrients. Your food scraps end up as compost in your garden and feed your plants. That is a Biological nutrient returning to the earth they way it is supposed to. But let's just say that you live in an apartment and there is nowhere to put your veggie scraps so you throw them in the bin. Now all that lovely food is thrown into landfill where it creates methane and not one little tree or even a blade of grass can take advantage of it because it is buried in a deep, dirty, smelly hole that no one will touch for 1000 years or so. That's a nice thing to leave to our decedents to sort out!
How come this closed loop system isn't already in place you might ask. Well you see when the industrial revolution hit it became a lot easier to make things quickly and as the economy grew people's demand for more and more stuff grew too – (see the story of stuff). In the early days of the industrial revolution people thought that the earth's supply of nutrients was boundless and nature was something to be tamed. So they cut down the great big forests and at first it didn't make much of a dint. But all in all nature was thought to be resilient and could supply us forever. So you see it simply wasn't necessary to think about the end result of a product. We could just throw it "away" and buy a new one. Now you will notice that "away" is catching up with us as the sea becomes toxic from plastic and the new stuff we buy has a built in redundancy so it only lasts a few years at best. We still have the same mentality but I think people are starting to wake up and say "hey we can't keep digging up the earth forever" and "where does my garbage go" or "hey the tip near me really stinks!"
One of the biggest hurdles for Cradle to Cradle is what Michael Braungart and William McDonough, the authors of Cradle to Cradle call "Monstrous Hybrids". They are products made from both technical and biological streams fused together without any thought of how they will be disassembled. An example is a polyester cotton shirt. Polyester is a Technical nutrient and cotton is a Biological nutrient. At the end of it's life the cotton in shirt cannot naturally biodegrade and the polyester is not easily retrieved. It is a Monstrous Hybrid. There are many Monstrous Hybrids in your life right now. Have a look around you, can you find them? Does life look the same now? Now are you starting to see all the stuff in your life through different eyes?
However Cradle to Cradle goes beyond simply products – it can extend to everything we do. You see it is a way of reconnecting with nature and natural cycles, a way in which we as a species become responsible for everything that we do. Cradle to Cradle emphasises that life is about abundance – nature works in abundance and the motto Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is not necessarily helping our current crisis, it is just prolonging the inevitable – a slow death as opposed to a quick one.
Can you imagine a society that:
- Safely and effectively handles its own material wastes and those of other species
- Grow and harvests its own food while nurturing the ecosystem of which it is a part
- Construct houses, farms, dumps, cemeteries, living quarters, and food-storage facilities from materials that can be truly recycled
- Create disinfectants and medicines that are healthy, safe and biodegradable
- Maintain soil health for the entire planet
'M Braungart & W McDonough, Cradle to Cradle, 2009, USA, Vintage, 2008 Edition, pg 79'
Well guess what – there is a species on this planet that is already doing all of the above – the humble ANT. And there are many more ants in the world then there are humans. Think about it. Millions of little critters all around us working in harmony with the earth and thriving. What if humans could be the same? Then we wouldn't have to be so concerned with restricting what we do because we would know that the earth was benefiting from the things we did. Is that utopia?
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