Benjamin Federman

April 30th, 2010

Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of McDonough & Braungarts' Cradle-to-

Cradle.  Where does it fit going forward?

Introduction
McDonough and Braungarts' Cradle-to-Cradle is a compellingly complex story
about how humans, through industry, have been become lethally burdensome to
the planet's ecology. If the same behavior continues at the same rate, it will
inevitably lead to the demise of our own species, while bringing the rest of the
planet along for the ride. It is the story of an evolving industrialist past, a present
state of affairs, and the impending results if conditions remain unchanged. The
authors, using their experience in materials and construction, have developed the
Cradle-to-Cradle design methodology, which has begun a discussion about the
prospect of an industrialist future free from the calamities that afflict our
environments. What lacks in practical application is made up in commonsense
language that communicates to a wider audience. Cradle-to-Cradle   portrays the
intricate web of relationships and systems that exist between consumers,
professionals, manufacturers and citizens alike. Combining science with design,
McDonough and Braungart have proven successful in their applications of
the   Cradle-to-Cradle   design methodology because they know how to ask and
answer the right questions with proper data collection and analysis. Where
McDonough and Braungart fall short, however, is directing the majority of those
questions to our environments and not furthermore to ourselves. Donella
Meadows, the famed scientist and environmentalist, puts it best in her book
Thinking in Systems: A Primer, when she says that "we are [all] complex systems–
our own bodies are magnificent examples of integrated, interconnected, self-
maintaining complexity. Every person we encounter, every organization, every
animal, garden, tree, and forest is a complex system" (Meadows 3). The systems
that embody our minds, bodies, and souls inherently function in the same manner
as the systems that encompass our physical environments, while directly
influencing one another. In addition to responding to our deteriorating physical
environments, we must likewise apply similar manners of thinking to the
methodologies of reorganizing such staple institutions like that of agriculture,
government, education, and religion, all fundamental derivatives of our collective
consciousness. But most importantly, we must discover the desire to do so, or we
will never sincerely improve our physical environments and restore harmony to
the systems that embody the ecology of our planet.
Systems
The systems that function to give us life and bring our physical surroundings into
being naturally operate in a similar manner because they are subjected to a
hierarchically more authoritative set of rules that reign throughout the entirety of
the universe. The relationships between humans and their environments exist in
the context of how we influence those environments, and in return, how the
environment influences us. Donella Meadows describes a system as "a set of
things–people, cells, molecules, or whatever–interconnected in such a way that
they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted,
constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system's response to
these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the
real world" (Meadows 2). Acknowledging the universal rules which govern us, our
natural surroundings, and the systems that compose them throughout the design
process, is a means to look at the bigger picture to more clearly digest the patterns
of behavior that develop over time and the rules which shape those patterns.   In
the same manner that McDonough and Braungart have worked relentlessly to
distill the elements that constitute the systems of our natural and built
environments, we too can collect and analyze information about the complexities
of our intellect, the physicality of our bodies, and the mysteries of our spirituality
to better understand the histories, present situations, and futures of our designed
environments. By rendering such information as essential throughout the design
process, we will better recognize and understand the range of forces that influence
the designing of our habitats, and to put it more bluntly, get down to root causes.

Systematic Change
All systems are comprised of mechanisms, structures, and functions, which
determine their patterns of behavior. Since patterns of behavior can only become
patterns of behavior by developing over time, time itself becomes a governing
factor over all systems. As McDonough and Braungart describe in Cradle-to-
Cradle, "Nature operates according to a system of nutrients and metabolisms in
which there is no such thing as waste" (McDonough & Braungart 92). Time does
not stop, nor does it go backwards. As best we know, time moves in an infinite
forward trajectory. Similarly in nature, there is no such thing as waste, which is
why our plastics are harmfully accumulating in the oceans, while our landfills
take on the form and function of growing mountains. Everything is a part of
processes that are driven by time. If we have constructed materials that do not
want to participate in the processes that exist in nature, and those materials are
regularly accumulating, then it is no surprise that we have a problem. This
reasoning is best supported by the physicist Sean Carroll when he
writes,  "Remarkably, a single concept underlies our understanding of irreversible
processes [time]: something called entropy, which measures the 'disorderliness' of
an object or conglomeration of objects. Entropy has a stubborn tendency to
increase, or at least stay constant, as time passes. [...] And the reason why entropy
wants to increase is deceptively simple: There are more ways to be disorderly than
to be orderly, so (all else being equal) an orderly arrangement will naturally tend
toward increasing disorder" (Carroll 2). It could be easily assumed, that in terms of
our natural environments versus our manmade environments, order is more
representational of ecosystems as dictated by nature and disorderly ecosystems are
those dictated by man. As time moves in one direction from the past to the future,
it is natural for our environments to become increasingly complex and
disorganized, because "There are more ways to be disorderly than to be
orderly" (Carroll 2) and time does not stop. Simply put, it is incredibly easy for us to
introduce surmounting disorder to our environments. As they ask a wide range of
questions throughout the design process, McDonough and Braungart illustrate an
understanding of this concept in the context of our natural and synthetic
environments. If McDonough and Braungart were to direct their questions beyond
the physical elements of the institutions they are designing for, they would see
similar patterns of behavior.

Institutional Change
Our society's most fundamental institutions, that of agriculture, politics,
education, and religion, are manmade systems that have been founded by an
accumulation of our intellect, the needs of our bodies, and the ideologies of our
spirituality. Speaking abstractly, these elements, in addition to what is provided in
our physical environments, are the tools that are ultimately responsible for the
way in which we have constructed and organized our societal institutions. Jason
Corburn, an associate professor of city and regional planning at UC Berkeley, says
in his book Toward the Healthy City that "Physical changes to places without
accompanying political and institutional change will ultimately fail to improve the
health of disadvantaged urban populations and move urban politics toward
planning more healthy and equitable cities" (Corburn 2). In the context of city
planning, disadvantaged urban populations are often those that are subjected to
the bottom end of the services offered by agriculture, government, education, and
religion. Similarly, our natural environments are receiving the worse that these
institutions, in addition to industry, have to offer. Going forward, it will be
essential to not just assess and develop methodologies for how to construct these
institutions but also how to organize them. Expanding upon his vision for healthy
urban planning, Corburn states that "greater attention needs to be paid to the
institutional processes that shape these policies. Institutions are not just the
formal structures or procedures of government but rather an established way of
addressing certain social issues, such as norms of practice, that become 'taken for
granted' and accepted over time" (Corburn 15). Corburn explains that there are
manmade rules and regulations that shape the way in which these institutions
function. They are embodied physically in their architecture, products, and
additional objects that accompany their services. But institutions are also
embodied by organized processes that drive the patterns of behavior which
emerge over time. These "norms of practice, that become 'taken for granted' and
accepted over time" make it difficult to create systematic responses to our ever-
changing societies and natural environments.

Challenge of Change
McDonough and Braungart focus on the physicality of construction and materials
in their Cradle-to-Cradle design methodology as they respond to the growing threat
of our way of life. By expanding the range of assessment onto the inner workings
of the institutions we are so reliant upon, we will reveal hybrids of construction
and organization that take on forms physically, organizationally, and ideologically
over time. The way in which we organize the infrastructural processes of
institutional systems, which like nature are embodied in their mechanisms,
structures, and functions, we will further tap the potential for harmonious human
design in the same vein as   Cradle-to-Cradle. In Robert Pirsig's famous work, Zen
and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he succinctly describes the major challenge
of system design. "If a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is
left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a
revolution destroys a government, but the systematic patterns of thought that
produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat
themselves.... There's so much talk about the system. And so little understanding."
Leaving behind our systematic patterns of behavior that have developed over time
is by far the most challenging aspect about implementing systematic change into
our environments, but it is essential none the less.

Conclusion
In addition to directly influencing one another, the systems that embody the
intellectual, physical, and ideological qualities of our humanity inherently function
under the same rules that govern the systems which comprise our natural
environments. As we respond to our deteriorating physical environments, we must
take into account similar methods for designing and organizing staple institutions
so that they too work within the recognized limits of nature, avoiding the
introduction of perpetual disorder unto our environments. It is vital to distinguish
that the methods used to implement changes to our environments are of equal
importance as the changes themselves. McDonough and Braungart use a
combination of science and design to bring their  Cradle-to-Cradle methodology to
fruition. While it supports the questions they ask of their environments and the
preceding changes, it is not a practical model for the larger part of society to
utilize. As we witness the adaptation of holistic ideologies like that of Cradle-to-
Cradle, we must ask ourselves how to find the practical means by which these
majority populations can adopt such useful methods of thinking, working, and
interpreting their worlds.