The Cradle to Cradle SM Design Protocol
A closed loop approach to materials, products and manufacturing processes
Haworth’s Gold-rated Zody Chair®. Cradle to Cradle™ Certified materials are eligible for a LEED point as an Innovation Design credit. [Photo: Haworth, Inc.]
by Jim Taggart .Created by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry [MBDC] and first launched in 1995, the Cradle to Cradle design protocol evaluates, optimizes and certifies materials, products and manufacturing processes for their human health, ecological and life cycle impacts.
It has already been embraced by a diverse range of major manufacturers including Ford, BASF, Nike and Canadian-based Victor-Innovatex. Recently the USGBC recognized the use of Cradle to Cradle Certified materials as eligible for a LEED point as an Innovation Design credit.
Traditional environmentalism has often been highly critical of industry and commerce, believing their practices to be inherently incompatible with the objectives of stewardship and sustainability. Pressure has been applied to restrict industrial and commercial activities in order to mitigate their negative effects on the environment.
To this end, most current regulations and incentive programs are designed with harm reduction in mind – not a lasting solution to resource depletion and environmental degradation.
It was this realization that compelled architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart to embark on a comprehensive re-evaluation of traditional product life cycles. They found their inspiration in the intricate and complex ecosystems of the natural world.
“In nature there is no such thing as waste; the by-products of one process become the food for another,” observes McDonough. “Life and death are intertwined and interdependent, together forming a closed loop.”
In pre-industrial times, human activity was intimately connected to the cycles of the natural world, and human beings were sensitive to their place within it. Even in the industrialized world, this connection persisted until recent times. Growing up in Japan in the 1960s, McDonough recalls the legions of peasant farmers who would come to the cities daily to sell their produce, and take away cartloads of ‘night soil’ to fertilize their fields.
MBDC believes that similar ecologically sound closed loop systems can be developed for our manufacturing processes. Hence Cradle to Cradle design takes a different approach to sustainability, one that models human industry on the integrated processes of nature’s biological metabolism—its productive ecosystems—by developing an equally effective technical metabolism, through which the materials of human industry safely and productively flow.
Products can be developed for closed-loop systems, in which every ingredient is safe and beneficial—either to biodegrade naturally and restore the soil, or to be repeatedly recycled into new materials and products.
Utilizing biological nutrients and technical nutrients allows a manufacturer to eliminate the concept of waste and recover value, rather than creating a future solid waste problem and relinquishing material assets by delivering a product to a customer.
Instead, items such as furnishings and automobiles could be ‘leased’ by the consumer, and returned to the manufacturer for recycling at the end of the service life. Similarly building materials, components and systems could be designed for complete disassembly—either for recycling or reuse.
Cradle to Cradle Assessment
To this end, Cradle to Cradle assessment has been developed as a scientific process for evaluating the current human health, environmental health and recyclability/compostability attributes of materials and products. MBDC compiles formulation data from a client and its suppliers, reviews available scientific studies, and characterizes substances, materials and products against Cradle to Cradle criteria, throughout a material’s full life cycle.
The assessment process uses eco-toxicological and other scientific studies to profile a material’s properties against a set of 19 human and environmental health criteria. The human health criteria measure a substance’s safety for customers, workers and the surrounding community during production, use and recycling/disposal. The environmental health criteria measure a substance’s safety for the air, soil, water, climate, exposed organisms and their successive generations, and the ecosystem as a whole.
For new products or processes, this assessment can inform and guide material selection decisions, with the goal of developing and utilizing the most environmentally intelligent materials from the start.
With this enhanced product knowledge, a manufacturer can make accurate, credible claims about a product’s sustainability.
Cradle to Cradle Certification
MBDC applied its 12 years of work with companies across various industries to create a product certification program, to allow clients to demonstrate tangible efforts to implement ecologically-intelligent design.
Within the Cradle to Cradle Certification process, MBDC evaluates a material or product’s ingredients and the complete formulation for human and environmental health impacts throughout their life cycles, as well as the capacity for the product to be fully recycled or composted.
Certification of a finished product also requires the evaluation of energy use quantity and quality (i.e., relative proportion of renewable energy), water use quantity, water effluent quality, and workplace ethics associated with manufacturing. Criteria fall into the following five categories:
- 1. Materials,
- 2. Material Reutilization/Designfor Environment,
- 3. Energy,
- 4. Water, and
- 5. Social Responsibility
If a candidate material or product is found to achieve the necessary criteria, it will be certified as a Silver, Gold or Platinum product
Optimized Cradle to Cradle
Cradle to Cradle design endeavors to create products that are healthy for humans and the environment, as well as sources of high-quality materials for perpetual cycles of assembly, use, and disassembly and recycling/ composting. This approach can sometimes seem counter intuitive.
For example, for many applications [including their own book ‘Cradle to Cradle’] McDonough and Braungart often prefer plastic materials over paper. They argue that, if comprised of environmentally benign compounds, combined with safe inks and additives, and designed to be 100% recyclable, then plastic wins over paper which, although from a renewable source, requires toxic chemicals to produce and is not itself 100% recoverable.
Maximizing product sustainability and creating closed-loop metabolisms requires the safe and effective operation of multiple processes. The life cycle stages that should be assessed and optimized include material and product manufacturing, distribution, post-use recovery, disassembly, and recycling or composting.
Improvements within these systems can produce a variety of benefits. For example, procurement cost savings can be achieved if materials are reconceived as assets, recovered and reused at the end of their initial service life.
Given the depletion of global resources that has occurred over the last two centuries as a consequence of the industrialization of the mostly Western world, it is alarming to consider the potentially devastating impact that would result from a similar pattern of development in the emerging economies of the East. Cradle to Cradle design has a critical role to play in reconciling the economic ambitions of these superpowers of tomorrow with the stark reality of finite resources.
As Mme. Deng Nan, Party Secretary of the China Association for Science and Technology; and Co-chair, of the China-US Center for Sustainable Development puts it:
“It is China’s goal to increase the utilization of resources by a factor of eight to 10 times in order to continue the current rate of growth. If we are to succeed, it is very important to develop a circular economy based on cradle-to-cradle design principles.”
With environmental issues now uppermost in the minds of politicians and public alike, it would be an opportune time to broaden the debate to include Cradle to Cradle considerations.
While we may yet find ways to make climate change a manageable phenomenon for future generations, we must also strive to ensure that the earth they inherit is neither poisoned nor stripped of all its useable resources. China must walk the talk, and other nations including ours must follow.
For more information visit: www.mbdc.com , and www.greenbuildingtradeshow.com . é Print this article | Send by e-mail