waste = food

That’s nature’s brilliant design principle. I rejoice in it everytime I take out the compost pile.

William McDonough and Michael Braungart in the book Cradle to Cradle, ask how can we apply this principle to the products we create. They propose two types of waste streams: biological and technological. The most obvious example of biological is composting the food we eat to become healthy soil to produce more food. Another ancient practice regaining ground is the idea of human waste as valuable nutrient; compost toilets do this on an individual scale, while sewage treatment plants which use diverse plantlife and ecosystems to filter and purify are doing it on a more massive scale. The authors also imagine that packaging will become biological waste—a nontoxic biodegradable that we will simply heap onto the compost pile. There is no need for packaging to outlive the lifespan of it contents or it’s function. Right now many plastics will take centuries to biodegrade.

Technological will include items such as TVs, cars, parts of shoes. They imagine these will be leased and when the user is finished with them returned to the manufacturer as valuable reusable materials. So that when we’re finished with our car, we can feel as good about unloading it as we do our food waste into the compost.

Cradle to Cradle’s premise is rather than focus on reduction (as the environmental movement historically has), we should look to a shift in the types of materials and the ways in which they are circulated. A design and consumer nirvana, no doubt. And one being hotly pursued as it represents healthy economic opportunities.