Choosing A Cradle of Sustainability Over A Grave of Waste

By Sara Kaplaniak

07/15/2008

Like municipalities around the country, the city where I live has not been immune to controversy related to cleaning up its messes. For years, the city has been trying to rescue an inefficient and unprofitable trash incinerator while infuriating people threatened by higher fees. More recently, some residents learned that they will have to chip in towards purging a local creek of fertilizers washed off from lawns, golf courses and farm fields. These issues came to mind when I took my kids to see a new summer flick: WALL-E.

For those unfamiliar with the animated film, WALL-E takes place 800 years in the future on a forbidding Earth that has become too toxic for humans after centuries of unchecked consumption and waste. The main character, a forgotten robot, continues to dutifully convert trash into compact cubes that he stacks into enormous piles resembling today's skyscrapers. Along the way, WALL-E collects treasures for himself - a Rubik's cube, strings of Christmas lights, a zippo lighter and even (gasp) a living plant!

During a more interesting day at work, WALL-E meets Eve, a sassy robot sent by humans to assess things at home. He shares his seedling, prompting an alarm and Eve's return to humanity. WALL-E follows only to find that the humans have re-colonized on a space station resembling a giant shopping mall. They've evolved into obese, baby-like forms coasting around on floating recliners with computer screens affixed in front of their faces. With this new sign of life on Earth, their leader seeks information about soil, the sea and the concept of agriculture.

Although an exaggeration, it shows how disconnected we are becoming from our roots in nature. But all's not lost. Some modern-day folks are thinking about a world where garbage doesn't exist at all.

Take world-renowned architect William McDonough and his business partner, chemist Dr. Michael Braungart. In their book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, McDonough and Braungart present ideas aimed at transforming consumption and waste as we know it. According to the authors, society has already emitted billions of pounds of toxic materials into the air, water and soils in the name of making things for the masses. They make a case for ending traditional "take, make and waste" practices resulting from last century's industrial revolution.

In order to avoid the global "grave" witnessed in WALL-E, McDonough and Braungart propose a new revolution that moves beyond consumption and disposal, and even back-end solutions like recycling. The cradle-to-cradle concept calls upon industry to consider a product's life-cycle before it is even manufactured. Nature serves as mentor and guide. Ecosystems become infrastructures. Production becomes as safe and ever-renewing as natural processes. Sustainable and prosperous products are used, returned to the Earth or reused without becoming garbage . . . . ever.

They cite the cherry tree. Each year it dumps piles of fruit and leaves on the ground to rot. But this "waste" goes back into nature to be reborn as new trees, as food and shelter for birds, and perhaps jam for our table. Humans should follow suit.

Currently we're doing the opposite. For example, billions of diapers end up in landfills each year. Even those choosing to reduce their impact with cloth alternatives struggle with energy usage related to regular washing. In response, McDonough and Braungart's product and process design firm, MBDC, supports a new generation of diapers that can be flushed or returned to nature as compost due to the absence of plastic, latex, dyes, perfumes and other unnatural elements.

The diapers represent one of many cradle-to-cradle "certified" products - a list that could ultimately include anything made for human consumption. Or should we keep manufacturing products that will have to be cleaned up by a lonely robot, or in the shorter term, our pocketbooks as incinerators break down, and soils and waters become saturated with pollution?

In the end, WALL-E concludes on a hopeful note. Unfortunately, I felt anything but as my fellow viewers threw out plastic bottles and cardboard food trays upon exiting the theater.

The cradle-to-cradle concept restores my hope when these things get me down. Instead of a disposable society, I'm pulling for the one McDonough and Braungart envision, which has been described as "a society with zero waste, where nothing makes it to the trash bin and all materials, under a kind of karmic destiny, can be recovered to lead productive lives over and over again." I'm rooting for production processes that don't pump toxic chemicals into the air, water and soil, and a world moving towards the notion of emulating instead of controlling nature. But for starters, I'll take a movie theater that recycles.