McDonough William - The Upcycle

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Contents

To our families,

and to all of the children,

of all species, for all time

Glance at the sun.

See the moon and the stars.

Gaze at the beauty of earths greenings.

Now,

Think.

Hildegard of Bingen

Betrachte die Sonne.

Sieh den Mond und die Sterne.

Erkenne die Schnheit der Natur.

Und dann denke nach.

Hildegard von Bingen

If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.

Albert Einstein

We have this remarkable experience in this field of fundamental physics that beauty is a very successful criterion for choosing the right theory. Why on earth could that be so?

Murray Gell-Mann

The goal of the upcycle is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world with clean air, water, soil, and powereconomically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed.

Foreword

I first met Bill McDonough in the early 1990s, when he brought some remarkable design ideas to Greening the White House, an initiative I launched to dramatically reduce the White Houses energy consumption and make it a model of efficiency. Bill, an American architect, had just teamed up with the German chemist Dr. Michael Braungart to write the Hannover Principles, which were already becoming an international touchstone in green circles. This set of ideas, about how to design safe cities, homes, and workplaces, and how to endlessly reuse the earths resources more efficiently and more effectively, struck me as something bigger than an academic exercise. These ideas made sense, and they were doable.

Bill and Michael proposed that a better-designed world would be good for business, good for peoples health, and good for the environment. Their first book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, introduced these ideas to the broader public and gave momentum to the sustainability movement, urging us to eliminate the concept of waste and arguing that no resource ought to be considered dispensable. Ive watched as many of the concepts presented in Cradle to Cradle have taken root at the U.S. Postal Service and NASA, at small businesses and corporations as large as Walmart and Procter & Gamble, and in countries all over the world. Ive seen how these simple ideas, when put into practice, can improve productivity and make people happier and healthier.

In 2008, I visited Make It Right, the program Brad Pitt founded with Bills consultation to help Hurricane Katrina victims return home to New Orleanss devastated Lower Ninth Ward. The programs designers and builders were applying Cradle to Cradle principles and processes throughout the construction of the new houses. A few years later, I heard from a woman who had spent three years in emergency housing in Texas but had finally returned to New Orleans thanks to Make It Right. She had a daughter who had always wanted to take dance lessons. After shed moved into her new, healthier, low-cost home, not only did lower utility bills enable her to afford some lessons, but her daughters once-severe asthma disappeared because of the cleaner interior materials. She could breathe againand dance.

That is the essence of Bill and Michaels workthe genuine desire to help others, coupled with intellectual curiosity and a deep commitment to constant improvement. They work to transform good enough into the very best. They focus on making the right things the right way.

After a long career in elected office and more than a decade traveling the globe for the Clinton Foundation, Ive learned that we get the best outcomes when we make decisions that are rooted in evidence and experiencewhen we put aside ideology and focus on what works. The ideas that Bill and Michael put forward in this book come from an honest sensibility that transcends the daily finger-pointing of left, right, or even reverse. They just point forward.

The Upcycle is a book about creativity, about thinking big even if we have to act small, and about approaching problems with a bias for action. It encourages us to find solutions through close observation, innovation, and the study of real, local conditions and needs. This is the approach that has made Bill and Michaels work so effective over the yearswhether its working to design a super-efficient building with NASA, partnering with some of the worlds biggest companies to devise renewable products and energy systems that are good for the bottom line, or helping victims of Hurricane Katrina get a new start in better, more healthful houses.

The optimist says the glass is half full and the pessimist says its half empty. Bill and Michael say its always totally fullof water and airand they are constantly working to share that full glass with more people, to make it even bigger, and to celebrate the abundance of the things that enable us to thrive.

In the pages that follow, Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart invite you to think about the future we share; to imagine what could be and how to make it so. We are all in this together, and well need a global commitment to sustainability if we want our children to inherit a world of shared opportunity, shared responsibility, and shared prosperity. Lets get to work.

President Bill Clinton

Introduction

Imagine you are sitting in the top-floor boardroom of a major United States consumer products company and you are meeting one-on-one with the companys executive in charge of sustainability. You have been to this facility many, many times before. Over seven years, you have met with executives in charge of finance, supply chains, manufacturing, product design, research and development, and marketing. Hundreds of meetings to listen, to learn, and to explore your new concepts for sustainable growth and beneficial innovation.

Together, you and the executive have shared datalots of data. You know big-picture business issues facing this company and detailed chemistries of the products. You even know how many lightbulbs are used to illuminate the enterprise worldwide, how much energy that consumes, how many lightbulbs contain mercury, and how many people it takes to change a lightbulb and what that costs.

This is the nature of the work. To use a detailed, defined inventory as a platform for invention, innovation. To ask and answer: Whats next?

Outside the giant plate-glass windows, tall granite-clad skyscrapers stand proudly in the sunshine. The Brazilian mahogany table is polished to a shine, and the high-backed leather chairs remind you of the important executive decisions made in this room, which can affect the lives of millions of peoplefor better or for worse. One might say you are here chasing the butterfly effect. Given the scale of this company, one small decision has the power to make a real difference for the economy, for people, and for the planet.

That is one reason you are herescale. But you are also here for another reasonvelocity. Many of the largest corporate enterprises in the world have come to realize the downside of the butterfly effect, the repercussions of modern business that are obviously damaging and too often unaccounted forfamously called externalities, such as carbon in the atmosphere, toxic materials, poisoned rivers, lost rain forests, and so on, with no end of this decline in sight. Many businesspeople realize this is not good business. They like to know what they are doing and to be able to account for it, but they feel like they are driving a car without a gas gauge or even, shall we say, a battery charge indicator? It makes them nervous.