Blogs & Ecology

Image credit: Qreamteam

Garbage is America's #1 export and possibly the biggest raw material source we have. But what is waste? And why do we make it?

In nature, waste does not exist - if it did we would not be here today since the creation of a material that another life form cannot use is not sustainable and would lead to the destruction of our eco-system. One way to look at waste is that it is a commodity with negative value. That is, it's a commodity that we are willing to pay to get rid of. It is a liability that has to be transported quickly and efficiently to a landfill.

TreeHugger loves Bill McDonough; We have probably written more posts about him and his cradle-to-cradle certification than any other individual. He is the king of the green one-liner, a brilliant and entertaining speaker, and a pretty good architect. He is a successful green entrepreneur and gets to hang out with Richard Branson, Larry Page, Daryl Hannah and Elon Musk. He speaks at TED and at the Democratic Convention.

Which is why my jaw dropped to the floor when I read Danielle Sacks' demolition job in Fast Company....

photo/A+R
With retail sales down and expected to continue plummeting, will buyers eschew green products in favor of less-expensive fare? Not if retailers expand their definition of “eco-friendly,” said Andy Griffith, one-half of the team behind the wildly popular A + R stores in Los Angeles, CA.

From an MP3 player from sustainable hardwood to vintage fabric stuffed animals: Find out more about the green gifts Griffith is betting on this season.
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Photo by Alex Osterwalder

IBM Consulting reminds us that a business is only as efficient as their entire process allows it to be. Every successful business should know how to process their product or service from “cradle to grave” with the best possible efficiency. This is referring to the actual design, production process, packaging, distribution, customer response, refurbishing, and final recycling.
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"We are working on the design of communities and begin with what we call the Essay of Clues. We look at things like the sun, the wind, the water, the biological history and the culture of the site. Then we imagine that we are birds that evolved for that place and we look down and wonder what we wish to see. And then we get underground and look up and imagine we are a bacterium or a bug or a worm and we imagine what we'd like to see. Then we evolve the design." - William McDonough

Cutting down on the use of paper is easy enough, but in spite of all your efforts you’ll never become 100% paperless. That’s where tree free paper comes in. Recently launched on the market by GPA, a Chicago paper company, Ultra Green paper is 100% tree free. And of equal importance; the paper is produced without any water. What more can you ask for? This paper is going to be a massive selling point for business leaders vying for deals. Not to speak of green design/advertising.

Michael Braungart is co-author with William McDonough of Cradle to Cradle. He writes a very strange article in Abitare that includes a few gems, including this one about the population problem.

The whole idea of packaging embedded with seeds has been a Cradle-to-Cradle staple for a long time (seed "bombs" were even used by the Green Guerillas in New York in the 1970s) though never successfully transferred to the mainstream. Since packaging still has so far to go to be anything approaching sustainable (Bought any electronic media lately? It's seemingly swathed in a double layer of impenetrable and unredeemable plastic) any efforts to point out that packaging need not be so over-the-top and unfriendly are still welcome.

You are probably reading this on a machine filled with lead, and all kinds of other toxic and unrecyclable nasties. Luckily there is at least one technology consulting firm that is doing their part to push hardware buyers and sellers to become more sustainable—and they are doing it for free with a great web tool.

Softchoice is trying to become the 'leading enabler of sustainable IT practices'. They are off to a good start with their EcoTech solutions page.

Despite all the talk about green interior design, there's a long way to go before we live with furniture and household items that are actually biodegradable. A truly green sofa ought to be disposable via the compost heap in your own garden by the time you're done with it, don't you agree? That's the central argument in the Cradle2Cradle philosophy. Unlike durable design, C2C is the real end of the throw away society.

The Cradle to Cradle enchanted Dutch town Venlo is hosting the 5th FreeFunk festival this year. Last year, the festival’s turntables and LED-lightshow were powered by 12 solar panels, home trainers (!) and wind turbines. This year, the FreeFunk Festival will reduce its environmental footprint even more with 60 solar panels on the main stage to power the audiovisual equipment. ...

looolo cushions are designed to dizzolve

We found ourselves wandering through the Material Connexion Library in New York, happy like kids in a candy store. The huge physical library stores over 4.000 materials, with something to inspire any designer or architect. Of course what we were really impressed by was the now open Cradle to Cradle material section that Material Connexion set up in collaboration with MBDC and EPEA last year. These first C2C material libraries opened in January this year in New York City, Milan, Cologne...