Waste=Food

[hanabi]

I watched a great documentary last week and have been meaning to post about it since. Did anyone else see it? Sorry to cut and paste a link from a media e-store but the show has been and gone so I can't use the TV guide: http://www.enhancetv.com.au/shop/pro...oductid=104687

Future Focus: Waste Equals Food

A documentary about breakthroughs in protecting the environment by transforming waste back into food/raw material.

In the early 90s, the American "green" architect William McDonough and German "green" chemist Michael Braungart teamed up to realise the Waste = Food principle in man-made products. They replace the old maxim "Cradle to Grave" with the new principle of "Cradle to Cradle", meaning that all products must be completely biodegradable in the biosphere and serve as food for the natural organisms there, and that all non-degradable material must be able to be used as high-quality raw material for new products in the techno-sphere.

They took their ideas regarding global waste problems to the Ford Motor Company, NIKE and the rapidly developing China. They helped Ford transform their heavily polluted manufacturing sites into green areas that are safe enough for children to play in. Due to their encouragement, NIKE has designed toxin-free running shoes that can be completely recycled. McDonough and Braungart were also invited to China to develop China's first ecologically sustainable model village. (From the Netherlands, in English)

Waste equals food is also called "Cradle to cradle technology" or "Circular economy". It refers to a research and development philosophy all industry can adopt that creates the potential for a virtually 'waste-less' future.

From www.mbdc.com :

Minimizing toxic pollution and the waste of natural resources are not strategies for real change. Designing industrial processes so they do not generate toxic pollution and "waste" in the first place is true change. Long-term prosperity depends not on the efficiency of a fundamentally destructive system, but on the effectiveness of processes designed to be healthy and renewable in the first place.

Cradle to Cradle Design's strategy of eco-effectiveness is rooted in the systems of the natural world, which are not efficient at all, but effective. Consider the cherry tree. Each spring it makes thousands of blossoms, which then fall in piles to the ground-not very efficient. But the fallen blossoms become food for other living things. The tree's abundance of blossoms is both safe and useful, contributing to the health of a thriving, interdependent system. And the tree spreads multiple positive effects-making oxygen, transpiring water, creating habitat, and more. And it is beautiful!

Eco-effectiveness seeks to design industrial systems that emulate the healthy abundance of nature. The central design principle of eco-effectiveness is waste equals food.

When waste equals food, the "be less bad" imperatives of efficiency fade. When a product returns to industry at the end of its useful life and its materials are used to make equally valuable new products, the minerals or plastics of which it is made do not need to be minimized-because they will not become waste in a landfill. Industry saves billions of dollars annually by recovering valuable materials from used products. Similarly, products designed to be made of natural, safely biodegradable materials can be returned to the soil to feed ecosystems instead of depleting them.

What do you think? Does this just promote further consumption or is this a real solution to the degradation of our atmosphere?
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