#rr05

Everyday we touch and use products that contain thousands of chemical components which could be dangerous. Many of mankind's old designs are slowly killing us.

In the introduction, the authors point out that industries and nature are kinda like fire and water, you can only have one. If we want a better future, we need to change our perspective of thinking, consider more than just benefiting ourself but also others.

More and more people realize that we are part of the ecosystem and we ain't the center of it. We evolve to fit to it but it will not change for us. In the book, people from different fields are coming and working together. By knowing as much as possible about our nature, and consider more careful about the harm and gain, we still have a chance to build a nice world without leaving too much wastes.

RR05: Cradle to Cradle by McDonough (Ch. 1-3)

I really thought it was interesting how the first few chapters focused a lot on the safety of design. I had no idea that many of the products I use every day could be incredibly dangerous. I think if more people were educated about this, they would pay more attention the products they are purchasing and perhaps designers would have more room to design safely.

I also like how focused they are on creating no waste product design. Although it is very unlikely that something can have "no waste" it is a really great thing to aim for.

The introduction chapter of "Cradle to Cradle" was- although interesting- quite overwhelming. First, they load a ton of guilt on you about the ways you hurt the enviorment. And yes, it does bring awareness, but it makes you feel like an awful person! Then they go on to describe how consumers are never given a clear path to follow in order to help sustain a healthy enviorment, so really what are we supposed to do about it?

Next the author talks about all the ways the world could change to be more "green." This part was the most overwhelming. At first I was like: yeah that could be more efficient, there could be a better design for that too, and how did I not realize how unresourceful that is. But eventually I thought: Okay okay! I get it, the world sucks and we all need to do a better job. But it would be extremely hard to really put 100% into helping our enviorment, because virtually EVERYTHING would have to change. For example, flooring: is the carpet recycled? Is it recylable? Does it use a lot of energy or result in the emission of dangerous chemicals for production? Are the machines the factory is using made out of healthy materials? Are they safe for workers to be around on a daily basis?

In the introduction McDonough stresses the importance of sustainability and how our designs affect the world.  Also it stresses how previous designs didn't take that into account and how it does affect the world and the negatives it causes.  As designers we must take this into account and design for the environment not to be affected or affected minimally.

While my initial reaction to the introduction of Cradle to Cradle probably isn't fair, it is what it was. Wonderful, Green Police. Both of them sound something like stuck up environmentalists who think they're a step above everyone else since they can analyze every aspect of modern society with disgust. But wait, not only are they those sorts of people, but they think they're better than all the other people like them.

I suppose they didn't say that modern society was bad, just how we produce it. But really, their dissection of that 'perfect' scene in the very beginning did nothing but put me off. I wasn't outraged at our irresponsible production methods, I wasn't appalled that manufacturers exposed me to these things, I wasn't even impressed by their alternative book manufacturing methods. In fact, my first thought about this book was "Wow, that's incredibly heavy." I had just put down a copy of Gray's Anatomy, a book with well over a thousand pages, almost six times as long as Cradle to Cradle, and it weighed only perhaps twice as much. They say they're concerned about responsible production, how about the extra energy spent transporting such a dense book to market?

Admittedly, they do make a fine point regarding the things we expose ourselves too, but they act almost like it's a new thing. We've never had ideal environments to live in, it's just that now, we can identify the problems with it. And comparing us to ants feels just plain insulting. Yes, maybe ants can enrich their environments, but so do we. We want somewhere to grow food, and so we make a farm. The soil gets depleted, we introduce fertilizer, or use a different crop that likes the new balance we've created, or we adapt the old crops to fit the new soil. We want to live somewhere, we improve the land we live on to suit us better building homes and cities to facilitate our society and concentrate knowledge for our benefit. We improve what we feel is necessary to improve to enhance our lives.

Ants are no different. The difference is that ants have been here something like 130 million years, doing more or less the same thing they do now. Nature has had time to adapt. Humanity has been active in our present state for what? A couple thousand years, maybe ten thousand if you wanna push the limits. And nature is adapting. Life will not end because of human intervention, it will change. Environmentalists just want to idealize the world before humans and criticize any deviation from that.