"Cradle to Cradle": Beginning a Trend

I think reading the book “Cradle to Cradle” and watching the video “The Next Industrial Revolution” has made me realize that what William McDonough and Michael Braungart are proposing is vital. We need people like them to begin implementing solutions. Whether or not their vision is overly optimistic, it is still an extremely important realization. We have been talking about changing the infrastructure and design of our world, Mike Maniates talked about creating environments where being environmentally friendly is automatic and this book and film talk about examples of how we can do that. The field of architecture and design is a crucial fundamental aspect of the way our world is structured. Change in this area is going to be necessary in creating a more sustainable environment.

Seeing the examples of what changes in architecture and design can do (in terms of benefitting the environment and lessening harmful human impact) is a powerful call to action. Seeing that these things are not too hard or too expensive makes it harder to ignore our obligation to be sustainable. What William McDonough and Michael Braungart are proposing is definitely revolutionary and they might be overly optimistic about how quickly a switch to building “cradle to cradle” could be. If their idea catches on it will take a while to remake our working and living environments in their proposed style. But I did not find that they were in any was over optimistic, they merely seemed excited and enthusiastic about making what change they could now.