Cradle to Cradle: (Patterns of Life)

Description

A series of special editions of the best popular science books to explore the patterns of our planet. Designed by Patternity, the award-winning creative studio and pattern consultancy. Michael Braungart and William McDonough propose a plan for our planet in this stunning new edition of their radical ecological manifesto. This book proposes a new vision for modern industry. Instead of our current wasteful and polluting methods of manufacturing, we could be taking nature as a model for making things. With the right redesign, objects that have come to the end of their useful lives should provide the basis for something new. In designing and producing products we need to stop worrying about being 'less bad' and start finding ways of actually being good. PATTERNS OF LIFE- SPECIAL EDITIONS OF GROUNDBREAKING SCIENCE BOOKS

Michael Braungart is a chemist and founder of the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA) in Hamburg. He has been lecturing at universities, businesses and institutions around the world since 1984 on critical new concepts for ecological chemistry, and is the recipient of numerous awards, honours and fellowships. William McDonough is an architect and founding principal of William McDonough + Partners based in Virginia. In 1999, Time magazine recognised him as a 'Hero for our Planet', and in 1996 he received the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development, the highest environmental honour given by the United States.

The best argument for good design is that it lasts. The best argument for good science is that it deplores waste. I'm bored with guilty and technologically illiterate environmental Luddites describing a future of guilt and privation led in caves. There's an alternative responsible future persuasively offered by Braungart and McDonough. The survival of the planet can be re-stated in terms of stimulus, opportunity, challenge and reward. Works for me. -- Stephen Bayley Already embraced by far-thinking manufacturers and governments. * Food Ethics Magazine * It's one of the most thought-provoking books I've ever read -- Ellen Macarthur * Daily Express * Environmentalists too rarely apply the ecological wisdom of life to our problems. Asking how a cherry tree would design an energy efficient building is only one of the creative 'practices' that McDonough and Braungart spread, like a field of wild flowers, before their readers. This book will give you renewed hope that, indeed, 'it is darkest before the dawn' -- Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club Achieving the great economic transition to more equitable, ecologically sustainable societies requires nothing less than a design revolution - beyond today's fossilized industrialism. This enlightened and enlightening book shows us how - and indeed, that 'God is in the details.' A must for every library and every concerned citizen -- Hazel Henderson, author of "Building a Win-Win World and Beyond Globalization: Shaping a Sustainable Global Economy"