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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Epigraphs
Foreword by President Bill Clinton
Introduction
1. Life Upcycles
2. Houston, We Have a Solution
3. Wind Equals Food
4. Soil Not Oil
5. Let Them Eat Caviar
6. The Butterfly Effect
7. What’s Next?
Notes
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Making of This Book
Also by William McDonough and Michael Braungart
Praise for Cradle to Cradle
About the Authors
Copyright
To our families,
and to all of the children,
of all species, for all time
Glance at the sun.
See the moon and the stars.
Gaze at the beauty of earth’s greenings.
Now,
Think.
—Hildegard of Bingen
Betrachte die Sonne.
Sieh den Mond und die Sterne.
Erkenne die Schönheit der Natur.
Und dann denke nach.
—Hildegard von Bingen
If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.
—Albert Einstein
We have this remarkable experience in this field of fundamental physics that beauty is a very successful criterion for choosing
the right theory. Why on earth could that be so?
—Murray Gell-Mann
The goal of the upcycle is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world with clean air, water,
soil, and power—economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed.
Foreword
I first met Bill McDonough in the early 1990s, when he brought some remarkable design ideas to
Greening the White House, an initiative I launched to dramatically reduce the White House’s energy
consumption and make it a model of efficiency. Bill, an American architect, had just teamed up with
the German chemist Dr. Michael Braungart to write the Hannover Principles, which were already
becoming an international touchstone in green circles. This set of ideas, about how to design safe
cities, homes, and workplaces, and how to endlessly reuse the earth’s resources more efficiently and
more effectively, struck me as something bigger than an academic exercise. These ideas made sense,
and they were doable.
Bill and Michael proposed that a better-designed world would be good for business, good for
people’s health, and good for the environment. Their first book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way
We Make Things, introduced these ideas to the broader public and gave momentum to the
sustainability movement, urging us to eliminate the concept of waste and arguing that no resource
ought to be considered dispensable. I’ve watched as many of the concepts presented in Cradle to
Cradle have taken root at the U.S. Postal Service and NASA, at small businesses and corporations as
large as Walmart and Procter & Gamble, and in countries all over the world. I’ve seen how these
simple ideas, when put into practice, can improve productivity and make people happier and
healthier.
In 2008, I visited Make It Right, the program Brad Pitt founded with Bill’s consultation to help
Hurricane Katrina victims return home to New Orleans’s devastated Lower Ninth Ward. The
program’s designers and builders were applying Cradle to Cradle principles and processes
throughout the construction of the new houses. A few years later, I heard from a woman who had spent
three years in emergency housing in Texas but had finally returned to New Orleans thanks to Make It
Right. She had a daughter who had always wanted to take dance lessons. After she’d moved into her
new, healthier, low-cost home, not only did lower utility bills enable her to afford some lessons, but
her daughter’s once-severe asthma disappeared because of the cleaner interior materials. She could
breathe again—and dance.
That is the essence of Bill and Michael’s work—the genuine desire to help others, coupled with
intellectual curiosity and a deep commitment to constant improvement. They work to transform “good
enough” into the very best. They focus on making the right things the right way.
After a long career in elected office and more than a decade traveling the globe for the Clinton
Foundation, I’ve learned that we get the best outcomes when we make decisions that are rooted in
evidence and experience—when we put aside ideology and focus on what works. The ideas that Bill
and Michael put forward in this book come from an honest sensibility that transcends the daily finger-
pointing of left, right, or even reverse. They just point forward.
The Upcycle is a book about creativity, about thinking big even if we have to act small, and about
approaching problems with a bias for action. It encourages us to find solutions through close
observation, innovation, and the study of real, local conditions and needs. This is the approach that
has made Bill and Michael’s work so effective over the years—whether it’s working to design a
super-efficient building with NASA, partnering with some of the world’s biggest companies to devise
renewable products and energy systems that are good for the bottom line, or helping victims of
Hurricane Katrina get a new start in better, more healthful houses.
The optimist says the glass is half full and the pessimist says it’s half empty. Bill and Michael say
it’s always totally full—of water and air—and they are constantly working to share that full glass
with more people, to make it even bigger, and to celebrate the abundance of the things that enable us
to thrive.
In the pages that follow, Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart invite you to think about the
future we share; to imagine what could be and how to make it so. We are all in this together, and we’ll
need a global commitment to sustainability if we want our children to inherit a world of shared
opportunity, shared responsibility, and shared prosperity. Let’s get to work.
—President Bill Clinton
Introduction
Imagine you are sitting in the top-floor boardroom of a major United States consumer products
company and you are meeting one-on-one with the company’s executive in charge of sustainability.
You have been to this facility many, many times before. Over seven years, you have met with
executives in charge of finance, supply chains, manufacturing, product design, research and
development, and marketing. Hundreds of meetings to listen, to learn, and to explore your new
concepts for sustainable growth and beneficial innovation.
Together, you and the executive have shared data—lots of data. You know big-picture business
issues facing this company and detailed chemistries of the products. You even know how many
lightbulbs are used to illuminate the enterprise worldwide, how much energy that consumes, how
many lightbulbs contain mercury, and how many people it takes to change a lightbulb and what that
costs.
This is the nature of the work. To use a detailed, defined inventory as a platform for invention,
innovation. To ask and answer: What’s next?
Outside the giant plate-glass windows, tall granite-clad skyscrapers stand proudly in the sunshine.
The Brazilian mahogany table is polished to a shine, and the high-backed leather chairs remind you of
the important executive decisions made in this room, which can affect the lives of millions of people
—for better or for worse. One might say you are here chasing the butterfly effect. Given the scale of
this company, one small decision has the power to make a real difference for the economy, for people,
and for the planet.
That is one reason you are here—scale. But you are also here for another reason—velocity. Many
of the largest corporate enterprises in the world have come to realize the downside of the butterfly
effect, the repercussions of modern business that are obviously damaging and too often unaccounted
for—famously called externalities, such as carbon in the atmosphere, toxic materials, poisoned
rivers, lost rain forests, and so on, with no end of this decline in sight. Many businesspeople realize
this is not good business. They like to know what they are doing and to be able to account for it, but
they feel like they are driving a car without a gas gauge or even, shall we say, a battery charge
indicator? It makes them nervous.
They also are like Olympic athletes who want to be on a safe, level playing field and who do not
want to be left behind. They want to lead.
