MBDC: Cradle to Cradle Design. MBDC
is articulating and putting into practice a new design paradigm; what
Time calls ‘a unified philosophy that — in demonstrable and practical
ways — is changing the design of the world.’ Instead of designing
cradle-to-grave products, dumped in landfills at the end of their
‘life,’ MBDC transforms industry by creating products for
cradle-to-cradle cycles, whose materials are perpetually circulated in
closed loops. Maintaining materials in closed loops maximizes material
value without damaging ecosystems. [xBlog: The visual thinking weblog | XPLANE]
More and more people (including us) are playing in this conceptual sandbox — because it just makes so much sense.
(As I wrote in 1991: “Nature’s ecosystems
have nearly four billion years experience developing efficient, adaptive, resilient, sustainable
systems — to identify and guide strategy, assessment,
design and information services that build profit,
competitive advantage and quality of life through
exceptional environmental performance. Why reinvent the wheel, when the R & D —
for companies, communities, buildings and land use — has
already been done?”)
McDonough-Braungart does it with particularly great style.