"I was tired of working hard to be less bad. I wanted to be involved in making buildings, even products, with completely positive intentions."
This quote, from the introduction of "Cradle to Cradle", could serve as the creed for William McDonough and Michael Braungart's approach to environmentally-friendly design, a smarter alternative to the retroactive methods of making the shoddy nature-molesting designs of the past slightly less nature-killing and world-ruining. For attaching a bunch of solar panels onto a building and calling it environmentally-friendly is just as deceptive as attaching a ramp to a building and suddenly deeming in handicap-friendly. No matter how much shit you tack on to a bad design, underneath all the soda-bottle carpeting and curb cuts, there still will be a bad design. Or in other words, no matter how much biodegradable surface cleaner you use, you still can't polish a turd. (F**k off Mythbusters)
However, it is not just the designs of our buildings and products that is harmful to the environment. The design of the systems that run our world; industry, government, pretty much all of the infrastructure of advanced human society, all these systems run in flawed ways that are essentially assuring that life will one day cease on the planet Earth. The modern human world was designed with productivity first and foremost in mind, with little consideration for consequences. And in this world where productivity rhymes with profit, we are quickly learning the errors of our ways, that our productivity is only working to hasten the destruction of our world, and that there is no amount of little green pieces of paper worth losing the wonderful magical playground we have somehow inherited. Because of the destructive ways we have created, one seeking to not harm in the environment finds themselves to be in a state of moral paralysis, unable to make a move without having "unwittingly become party to a process of waste and destruction".
This is how I felt when trying to determine a career path for myself, as it seems virtually impossible to earn a living without directly contributing to the continued destruction of our environment, our habitat. So I am extremely interested in learning about McDonough and Braungart's ideas on how to "Eliminate the concept of waste"- not reduce, minimize, or avoid waste, as environmentalists were then propounding, but eliminate the very concept, by design".
If my life's work could in anyway help to create a smarter. more sustainable world, it would help quite a bit to ease my conscience, as I just can't help but enjoy the many, many benefits of our modern, industrialized world. And often I am slightly disgusted by the decadence our lifestyles. It seems quite cruel that a privileged few of us have the luxury to be concerned with the designer of our clothing or whatever the f**k the Kardashians are doing, while the rest are concerned about where there bi-weekly meal is coming from or if their child is going to die from diarrhea.
I think the mock children's show "Wonder Showzen" perfectly satirized this disparity:
I find it ridiculous that we have developed solutions for such trivial problems, while we still haven't solved many of the very basic problems of existence that plague much of the world. We don't need to develop any new cosmetic surgical procedures. We need to develop more things like the water-purifying bottle, the infant warmer, or any of these other Design for the Other 90% projects. I would like it very much if I could help people just live, exist.
Cause just like William McDonough, I'm tired of just trying to be less bad.
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