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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
