Green Design - From Cradle to Cradle

AuthorSylvie Castonguay
PositionWIPO Magazine Editorial Staff, Communications and Public Outreach Division

Sustainability is today's buzzword in design. The green market is expanding rapidly and eco-friendly design is helping companies to stand out from the competition. Green designers - a new breed of environmentally conscious engineers and architects - are rethinking entire product life cycles, from the industrial manufacturing processes, to what happens at the end of the life of the product. They aim to build non-polluting factories, which make products that are safe for the environment and 100 percent recyclable, by designing new industrial methods and scrutinizing every raw material that goes into fabrication. Some products created according to these principles now carry a new certification mark: Cradle to CradleTM (C2C).

The C2C certification mark is the brainchild of one of the leading lights of the movement, the architect and industrial designer William McDonough, who co-wrote "Cradle to Cradle" in 2002 with his business partner, German chemist Michael Braungart. Mr. McDonough's vision differs from that of traditional environmentalist. Rather than seeking to reduce consumption, he wants to help bring about a new Industrial Revolution: the reinvention of industrial processes to produce clean solutions and create an industry where "everything is reused - either returned to the soil as nontoxic ‘biological nutrients,' or returned to industry as ‘technical nutrients' that can be infinitely recycled."

The goal is to remodel industry and architecture to emulate the balance found in nature's ecosystems. It may sound an impossible dream, but hard-headed Fortune 500 companies are already working with him.

Fabric "safe enough to eat"

In 2002 the Swiss textile manufacturer Rohner Textil made headlines, cut costs and won new business when the company teamed up with Mr. McDonough and U.S. textile design firm Designtex to produce a biodegradable upholstery fabric that they describe as "safe enough to eat."

While Rohner's textile mills already complied with Swiss environmental regulations, its fabric trimmings had been declared hazardous waste. To produce the new fabric, Climatex® Lifecycle..., a fundamental re-design took place in every aspect of production, from the factory work space, to the elimination of all toxic dyes and chemicals, to the sourcing of raw materials. It is woven from the wool of free-range New Zealand sheep...

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