Guest post by Michael ArmsTree huggers are skilled at identifying the negative effect of industrialization on the environment. Industrialists, meanwhile, find conservation advocates to be insensitive to the social and economic roles of industrialization. They contend that if every environmental protection advice is observed thoroughly, it will set us back for decades, technologically and economically.
Both groups view industrial waste and the machineries that we create, as destructive to the environment. The choice is between unchecked industrialization and narrow environmentalism.
Is there another way out of the box? As a matter of fact, there is a third alternative. Cradle to cradle recycling.
Have you heard of the book called “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, published in 2002? In this visionary book, they assert that recycling, as it is done today, is in reality "downcycling" or "cradle to grave" recycling. We make floating buoys from styrofoam or produce news print out of white paper. The new products we create out of recycled materials are invariably lesser in quality to the original (due to materials degradation or contamination) or utilize just a fraction of it (the rest deposited in the landfills as hazardous waste).
There is no such profligacy in nature. How many cones does a pine tree need to produce in order for a new pine tree to flourish? A thousand, probably tens of thousands. All for a single new baby pine tree. Are those thousand other cones or seeds that failed to become new trees wasted? Certainly, not. They all go back to the ground and decompose to become nutrients to help in the pine tree's next spring cycle. Nature proudly displays sustainable cycles, such as that of the pine tree, everywhere. Nothing in nature is wasted, every seed or cone ultimately helps to sustain the cycle that gets repeated a great number of times.
What if we can adopt nature's way of sustainability and absolutely no waste in our industrial production processes? What if every machinery that we make can be reused, recycled, or totally biodegraded to its organic components? Cradle to cradle is the way to transform "the way we make things" to reflect the highly efficient concept of sustainability in the natural world. How? Imagine designing sustainability into every product. Engineers, architects, and designers will have to provide for after-use product disposition while the product is still in the conceptualization stage. Is the machinery reusable? Are all the parts recyclable? Are the parts, paints, and coatings biodegradable?
A lady who goes to the market considers using plastic bags or paper bags for her groceries. A city council in Europe considers if their town should keep burning coal or use palm oil for electricity generation. In our day-to-day routines, we frequently fall into "lesser of two evils" kind of choices. Plastic will remain for thousands of years and coal is the dirtiest of all the fuels we burn. On the other hand, paper production kills rain forests, and palm oil production kills orangutans. Lesser evils. Since the start of the industrial era, we've been boxed into this appearance of destructive choices.
Cradle to cradle recycling, once it becomes part of our collective wisdom (and the opposition of ill-informed interests is enormous) will probably be the "next industrial revolution." It dispels the chimera of limited options, because when sustainability is an integral component of the product design, we need not make those ridiculous choices. Every item reaching the end of its life-cycle is either reusable, recyclable, or biodegradable. That is cradle-to-cradle recycling.
Michael Arms contributes articles to the Pacebutler Recycling and Environmental blog and maintains several Squidoo lenses on recycling and the environment. Pacebutler Corporation is one of the US-based trading companies which buy used cell phones directly from US cell phone users. You can also donate cell phones to your preferred charity or non-profit through Pacebutler.
