Designs that respond to the challenges and opportunities offered by each place fit elegantly and effectively into their own niches. Around the world, geology, hydrology, photosynthesis and nutrient cycling, adapted to locale, yield an astonishing diversity of natural and cultural life. Similarly, human constructs can utilize clean and renewable energy in many forms-such as solar, wind, geothermal, gravitational energy and other energy systems being developed today-thereby capitalizing on these abundant resources while supporting human and environmental health.Ĭelebrate diversity. Living things thrive on the energy of current solar income. Everything can be designed to be disassembled and safely returned to the soil as biological nutrients, or re-utilized as high quality materials for new products as technical nutrients without contamination.

In nature, the “waste” of one system becomes food for another. The book put forward a design framework characterized by three principles derived from nature:Įverything is a resource for something else.

In their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart presented an integration of design and science that provides enduring benefits for society from safe materials, water and energy in circular economies and eliminates the concept of waste.

Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough