Cradle to Cradle

Introduction
• Imagine that you visit a landfill. What will you see
there?

• Old furniture, upholstery, carpets, televisions, clothing,

shoes, telephones, computers, complex products, and
plastic packaging, as well as organic materials like
diapers, paper, wood, and food wastes.

• Most of these products were made from valuable

materials that required effort and expense to extract
and make, billions of dollars' worth of material assets.

• The biodegradable materials such as food matter and

paper actually have value too; they could decompose
and return biological nutrients to the soil.

• Unfortunately, all of these things are heaped in a land-

fill, where their value is wasted.
 • They are the ultimate products of an
Production & Consumption Cycle industrial system that is designed on a
linear, one-way CRADLE TO GRAVE
model.

• Resources are extracted, shaped into

products, sold, and eventually disposed of
in a "grave" of some kind, usually a
landfill.

• This approach is Cradle to Grave which is

linear in thinking.

• Everything else is designed for you to

throw away when you are finished with it.

• In fact, many products are designed with

"built-in obsolescence" to last only for a
certain period of time.
• It is purposely done by the company to
allow to encourage the customer to get rid
of the things and buy a new model.

• The concept of monoculture production

where ‘One thing fits All’ has led to the
mass production and massive usage of
resources.

• It has led to the production of highly

dangerous and persistent materials.

• It has also reduce nature’s capacity to

maintain healthy and fertile ecosystems.

• To counter this problems the

environmentalist and business leaders have
tried to limit the consequences of
production & consumption.
 Eco Efficiency: Fine Tuning the System
• Business leaders and environmentalist have
time and again tried to limit the
consequences of industrial production by
retrofitting the systems of industry to reduce
their harm.

• Eco-efficiency means doing 'more with less’

using environmental resources more
efficiently in economic processes.

• Some of their aims include:

• Releasing less waste into the air, water and soil.
• Meeting or exceeding environmental regulations.
• Sending less material to landfills.
• Making fewer dangerous materials.
• Depleting natural resources more slowly.
• These goals have been most visibly
articulated in the widely embraced
business strategy of the 1990s, eco-
efficiency.

• As admirable as its goals may be, eco-

efficiency does not change the story.

• At its heart, eco-efficiency is a guilt-

driven agenda that takes for granted—
even institutionalizes—the antagonism
between nature and industry.
The aims of eco-efficiency
are essentially to become
“less bad”— for instance,
beginning with a system
that is 100% “bad”, and
seeking to become only
10% bad.
 A New Story: Cradle to Cradle Design
• Cradle to Cradle Design offers a
compelling alternative.

• It rejects the assumption that human

industry inevitably destroys the natural
world.

• Instead, Cradle to Cradle Design

embraces abundance, human ingenuity,
and positive aspirations.
 What is Cradle to Cradle
• It is a pioneering insight in the area of
Sustainability

• Not thinking product from Cradle to

Grave: LINEAR

• Thinking Product from Cradle to

Cradle: CYCLICAL
C2C contd…
Imagine an industrial system that:
• Purifies air, water, and soil
• Retains valuable materials for perpetual, productive reuse
• Measures prosperity by natural capital productively accrued
• Requires no regulation
• Creates positive emissions
• Celebrates an abundance of cultural and biological diversity
• Enhances nature’s capacity to thrive
• Grows health, wealth, and useful resources
• Generates value and opportunity for all stakeholders.

• Such a system, modelled on the natural world’s abundant creativity, can

solve rather than alleviate the problems industry currently creates, allowing
both business and nature to thrive and grow.
 Eco-Effectiveness: Following Nature’s Design Principles

• By pursuing a vision of industry that does not damage ecosystems or

social systems, Cradle to Cradle Design moves beyond the “less bad”
aims of eco-efficiency.

• It move towards Eco-Effectiveness.

• By observing healthy natural systems we can see three basic principles

of eco-effectiveness, modelled on the design principles of nature:
• Waste equals food
• Use current solar income
• Respect diversity
• By learning from nature’s ‘design
principles,’ eco-effective design conceives
industrial systems that emulate the healthy
abundance of nature.

• Waste Equals Food (W=F)- The processes

of each organism engaged in a living
system contribute to the health of the
whole. One creature’s “waste” is
nourishment for another.

• Use Current Solar Income- Simply put, a

cherry tree manufactures food using
sunlight, an elegant, effective system that
uses the earth’s one perpetual source of
energy income.
• Celebrate diversity- Natural systems thrive on complexity. Instead of
distilling Darwin’s ideas into the “survival of the fittest,” Cradle to
Cradle Design sees greater significance in Darwin’s identification of
nature’s profusion of niches (survival of the ‘fittingest’).
 Conceiving Cradle to Cradle Products
• The key principles of eco-effective design were first systematically outlined
in the Intelligent Product System (IPS), developed and articulated by
Michael Braungart and his colleagues.

• IPS provides a framework for cradle-to-cradle product conception and

material flow management.

• Just as in natural systems one organism’s ‘waste’ becomes nutrients for

another, IPS utilizes effective nutrient cycles in the realm of human
industry.

• IPS recognizes two metabolisms within which materials flow as healthy

Nutrients: Biological Metabolism and Technical Metabolism.
 Biological Metabolism
• Materials that flow optimally through the biological
metabolism are called biological nutrients (e.g. the
nitrogen cycle).

• As defined for cradle-to-cradle products, biological

nutrients are biodegradable (or otherwise naturally
degradable) materials posing no immediate or eventual
hazard to living systems that can be used for human
purposes and be safely returned to the environment to
feed ecological processes.

• Products conceived as biological nutrients are called

products of consumption.

• They are designed for safe and complete return to the

environment to become nutrients for healthy living
systems.
 Technical Metabolism
• A technical nutrient is a material, frequently synthetic or mineral, that remains safely in a
closed-loop system of manufacture, recovery, and reuse (the technical metabolism),
maintaining its highest value through many product life cycles.

• Technical nutrients are used in products of service, which are durable goods that render a
service to customers.

• The product is used by the customer but owned by the manufacturer, either formally or in
effect.

• The product of service strategy is mutually beneficial to the manufacturer and the
customer.

• The manufacturer maintains ownership of valuable material assets for continual reuse
while customers receive the service of the product without assuming its material liability.

• The manufacturer or commercial representative of the product also fosters long-term

relationships with returning customers through many product life cycles.
 Fractal Ecology: Value and Opportunities

• The fractal triangle shows how, at any level

of scrutiny, each design decision has an
impact throughout the spectrum.

• Fractal Ecology, is embodied in the fractal

triangle is a tool for analysing and
understanding opportunities to grow value.

• The goal is not to balance economy,

ecology and social equity but to optimize
and maximize value in all areas of the
triangle through intelligent design.
Economy- Equity-Equity Ecology-Ecology
Economy Is it improving the Is it creating
Can we make and quality of life of healthy habitat?
sell the product at all the
a profit? stakeholders?
Economy-Equity Equity-Ecology Ecology-Economy
Is the product Is it enhancing Is it making
contributing to the stakeholders’ effective use of
wider economic health and safety? resources?
health of the
community?

Equity-Economy Ecology-Equity Economy-Ecology

Is the product or Is the product and Is it making
process achieved production safe for efficient use of
while providing local and global resources?
fair benefits and communities and
wage practices? ecosystems?
The Business Value of Cradle to Cradle Design
Some of the benefits and opportunities presented by designing products as
biological and technical nutrients include the following.
• A new perspective, fostering design innovation
• Strong, lasting customer relationships
• Valuable materials perpetually put to valuable use
• Additional means for understanding and measuring progress
• Natural resources replenished through safe, productive commerce
• Chemicals, materials, and processes designed for health and perpetual
recyclability
• Customers receiving valuable services without material or toxic liability
• Risks effectively managed by designing them out of products and systems.
Put to Practice: The Cradle to Cradle Design Protocol

• The Cradle to Cradle Design Framework incorporates nature’s cyclical

material model into all product and system design efforts, using the
Cradle to Cradle Design Protocol (the Protocol).

• The Protocol is a working, results-oriented method for evaluating and

(re)designing products and processes. This parallel process phases out
undesirable substances and replaces them with preferable ones.