If I needed to summarise my comments with one sentence I’d say “Cradle to Cradle is great but not a panacea”.
The below is a limited analysis of “why”, only for those who have some time to kill through reading some of my rantings. I am critical, sceptical and talk (write?) too much by default due to being a PhD student. I really do think Cradle to Cradle is great. But not a panacea!
In do feel myself lucky as well since I had the chance to listen to Prof. Braungart’s presentation on cradle to cradle design.
I agree with what Tim and Kylie have already said above. To me the most important aspect of Cradle to Cradle framework is adoption of the concept of eco-effectiveness instead of eco-efficiency which is a flawed concept in many terms. I also agree with Tim that eco-effectiveness shifts the focus from negative measurement (decrease impact to zero percent) to positive measurement (increase effectiveness to hundred percent). Yet, in my opinion this does not necessarily add value to the sustainable design discourse and practice as long as it remains as part of the rhetoric used to promote the framework. Despite my deep respect to Cradle to Cradle as a concept and framework, I do have certain reservations in relation to the practicalities.
I do understand and appreciate Prof. Braungart’s focus on materials. He is a chemist. This is similar to biologist Janine Benyus’s infatuation with nature and seeing it as a fruitful source of inspiration for innovations. There isn’t anything more satisfying than loving what we deal with in our professional lives. However, sustainability is a systemic property; not of a single product’s or material’s.
Focusing on single issues (e.g. single aspect improvement, the materials in the context of this discussion) in sustainable design practice has been recognised as creating more problems than it solves almost about twenty years ago, right after the pumping of “green design” by several design organisations and unintentional creation of “green consumerism” not as a replacement of but in addition to regular and ever-growing consumerism.
Cradle to Cradle has great potential in influencing our technologies towards sustainability as a framework yet it cannot be accepted as the ultimate solution to all of the sustainability problems we have. There is a multiplicity of design principles all of which are promising yet they need to be matched appropriately with the design task in hand, the societal context the product is going to be used and the requirements of sustainability both at local and at global level.
I do find Prof. Braungart’s argument “We are not crowded but our designs are not smart enough” simplistic and misleading which can only hold (to a certain extent) in Western post-industrial societies where fertility rates are low or minus and basic needs are sufficiently met for the majority of the population. The time has come to think without artificial borders drawn either due to political reasons (e.g. national/geographical borders) or for scientific simplicity (e.g. system boundaries not representative of the “system” but of a component of the system). World is a system. As much as a butterfly in China can cause storms in America, rice crisis in Philippines can cause social conflict in Europe.
Design has a lot to do in increasing quality of life of 80% of the population who are underprivileged and never had anything “designed” for them. Therefore, in this sense, the “abundance” rhetoric of Cradle to Cradle reproduces the glam image of design instead of adding something new to “redesigning design” for sustainability. It is politically very correct in gaining the heart of the insatiable consumer who wants to know what’s new in the market to add to his/her collection of emotionally obsolete products collection next year (doesn’t matter, it’s a technical nutrient!).
Cradle to Cradle argues that as long as we close the loops of technological and biological nutrient cycles, we are ok. This is again a simple argument. Firstly, despite its theoretical attractiveness, a 100% closure is not possible especially in technical cycle since material, energy and quality losses always occur in recovery, reuse, and/or recycling. An effective implementation of Cradle to Cradle requires substantial changes in our technological system since without a system of properly managed take-back, a material’s technological nutrient quality remains as a potential and not realised.
This calls for development of new policies, infrastructure and practices; i.e. institutional change, nothing less, since a properly managed take-back would require policies and infrastructure in place as well as informed users/consumers and committed producers who are willing to participate in implementation of cradle to cradle requirements. In realising such systemic change, empowerment and participation of designers is both desirable and needed both for practical and democracy-related reasons.
Therefore, “designers don’t need to know about materials, science is there, your designs are stupid, just make your designs smarter and leave the material science to us ” is an argument which is not only hard to swallow but also disempowering.
There is an increasing need in interdisciplinary collaboration and keeping what one knows to oneself and only releasing small doses of protected and “coded” intellectual property, in my opinion, is not going to lead our designs towards sustainability.
Not only designers but every single profession of more or less defined disciplinary boundaries will need to get in to the territories of other disciplines and learn more about “others” since we have to work with others in understanding the systems we are working within (e.g. ecosystems, societal system, economic system, industrial system, technological system, etc. which are closely linked to each other through hierarchical interdependencies).
Therefore, better collaborate instead of claiming territorial rights on our own disciplinary domain. In addition, a designer has the ultimate right and responsibility to know what’s going into the product he/she designs even if he/she cannot interpret chromatograms to the extent that a material scientist can.
There is more to design than typing down properties and pressing “enter” to obtain an answer which is not transparent and thus not justified as being the “right answer” which needs to be adopted without further inquiry. Another issue is the fact that there is a high cost associated with being able to receive such service which may suffocate and eventually kill local and smaller scale businesses who are not able to allocate required monetary resources.
This, in the worst dystopian case, means a world consisting only of multi-nationals; i.e. massive power nodes, a corporate colonialism.
Even if we assume 100% turnover in material cycles, referring to the biodegradable t-shirt example given by Prof. Braungart, still the rate of consumption is a parameter in the effectiveness of the Cradle to Cradle framework. One t-shirt thrown in a cotton field as a biological nutrient sounds like a feasible solution but what if ten thousand t-shirts are discarded at once? Therefore, even if “we are not crowded” holds as an argument when solely based on a bio-mass comparison of humans and ants, how much and what rate our society consumes is still of concern, solution of which requires changes not only in our designs but also in life-styles, values, etc. (and these can be influenced by design as well!).
Prof. Braungart also suggested that making a TV without toxic components is not possible yet as long as those toxic materials are technological nutrients there’s no problem. Well, this is again a very simple argument since handling and recycling toxic materials is always going to be an issue which would require additional governance of the production/consumption cycle not only about emissions etc. but also about conditions of labour where handling occurs. In addition to closing the loops in the short-term, for longer term, I’d like to think not about another TV to be produced but about the ultimate function TV is fulfilling in the society and the alternative ways of fulfilling that function preferably not using toxic materials and more importantly without creating passive, dumb and uncreative generations.
This is where design can have incredible influence; in shaping a completely different society, not only designing differentiated products improved on the basis of their material cycles.
Therefore, in my opinion, a future orientation with a systemic understanding is necessary at all levels of societal practice including design. A product cannot be sustainable on its own. The world is far more complex and only the system within which a technology is used will eventually determine whether that technology has been sustainable or not.
The lack of a systemic approach doesn’t decrease the value of the framework, of course. We will need to close our material loops but this will not suffice. Cradle to Cradle and several other design principles developed by as equally smart people as Prof. Braungart himself have to be taken into consideration.
Yet, doors should be left open and lock-in around any particular set of principles and/or tools should be avoided. We need a multiplicity of valid approaches appropriate for different use contexts, different time-frames of use, and different types of products; investing all in a single framework dealing with one aspect of what consists products is simply not managing (environmental, social, financial) risks well enough.
Idil Gaziulusoy