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I stumbled into a really interesting presentation recently on the intertrons while researching the idea of “Cradle to Cradle” design. Among other things, it takes issue with the idea of recycling, in its current form, which is really just slowing down the process of waste production as goods are “downcycled” into lower-quality products. Wending my way to the video below led me past something I’d seen before, the “Eco roof” at Ford’s Dearborn, Michigan Truck Plant. As you’ll see in the presentation, installing a 10-acre grass roof saved Ford nearly 40 million dollars in the construction of an equally effective water treatment plant. Perhaps a good intro is the following quote from the presentation, on why McDonough’s book is printed on a fully recyclable polymer that can be recycled into another book made of the same polymer.

as Margaret Atwood pointed out, “we write our history on the skin of fish with the blood of bears.” And with so much polymer, what we really need is technical nutrition, and to use something as elegant as a tree — imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, accrues solar energy as fuel, makes complex sugars and food, creates microclimates, changes colors with the seasons and self-replicates. Well, why don’t we knock that down and write on it?

-William McDonough on why his book, Cradle to Cradle, isn’t printed on paper.