Cradle to Cradle Supporters

Last week Roger Cox and Bert Lejeune called for more openness and public private cooperation around Cradle to Cradle. Read their vision here or in Dutch here. I am happy to help to make their important plea more known…

Introduction

Governmental organisations in the Netherlands have taken great interest in the recycle concept ‘Cradle to Cradle’ (C2C) of American architect William McDonough. They have intensely promoted C2C over the last two years, resulting in a major public awareness and making the name C2C bigger in the Netherlands then anywhere in the world.

This is duly recognised by McDonough and his partner and co-founder of C2C, the German chemist Michael Braungart. For them, in the last two years, the Netherlands have become their second (if not first) base for consulting on a large range of important Dutch projects. But the first cracks are appearing and McDonough and Braungart need to make changes for the better with regard to the introduction of C2C in Dutch society. Failing to do so will render C2C as ineffective a tool for sustainability as many others. Not only in the Netherlands, but potentially elsewhere in the world as well.

Cradle to Cradle demands that every product (a chair, building or airplane) is designed in such a way that, at the end of its useful lifetime, it can be disassembled economically into its constituent parts. Design for  disassembly enables producers to safely return these parts in the biological cycle (and become nutrients again), or return them to the closed-loop industrial cycle (and become valuable raw material again). You could say that it is the ultimate form for recycling. Call it the creation of a circular economy.

When this new type of economy would be powered by solar energy (including wind and geo-thermal) a vision emerges. A vision of a solar powered circular economy. It could provide us with an economy that could solve our energy problem and raw material problems at the same time. A solution that is much needed, because climate change and other ecological and economical threats demand that we use a radically different approach.

The promotion of C2C is therefore to be applauded. However, to make C2C successful as a model for a transition towards a sustainable economy, it needs a willingness from governments to connect C2C to the transition towards a sustainable energy regime, as well as to adjust rules and regulations to facilitate C2C. On the other hand there’s a need for the founding fathers of C2C to change their closed and proprietary approach of C2C. Urgently.

For the situation in the Netherland, a public private partnership around C2C would be the logical and necessary next step to make. This partnership could have great value for the approach of C2C in other countries as well. Especially in the United States where William McDonough is (rightly) considered to be one of the great green thinkers. However, if such a public private partnership in the Netherlands doesn’t come about, C2C could very well taper off quickly. That would be a missed opportunity of momentous proportions, We will explain why. But let’s first elaborate on why a change around C2C is urgently required.

Lack of competition

Currently in the Netherlands C2C constitutes mostly a vehicle for McDonough and Braungart for consulting anyone interested in developing C2C products. These products need certification and are required to meet the C2C-criteria stipulated by the founding fathers themselves. In this way some 150 products were certified in the last 8 years. This falls short of the envisioned take off.

A massive development and certification of C2C products is also not to be expected as long as consultancy and certification is performed in a closed shop approach. Considering the enthusiasm around C2C in the Netherlands - with civilians, governmental organisations and businesses alike - many want to expand on the concept themselves. It is predictable that other names for C2C will be cooked up, in order to facilitate competing consultancy and certification activities.

In itself, there is nothing wrong with inter-brand competition. But

fragmentation doesn’t serve a broadly supported movement towards a sustainable C2C society. This makes preference for intra-brand competition self evident. This also means competition, but under the umbrella of the C2C name. It secures and enhances the recognisability of sound sustainable development for the larger audience. It also enables mass communication for achieving C2C as good sustainable development, which is a prerequisite for the much needed real take off of a transition towards a sustainable society.

Cooperation allowing intra-brand competition also constitutes the way for  McDonough and Braungart, to address the growing critique in the US. This critique amounts to the idea that a butcher should not be the one to certify his own products and that therefore McDonough and Braungart should not certify their own consultancy. In a sensible strategy, McDonough and Braungart will cooperate towards realizing an independent certification institute. This addresses criticism and enables competition. We could all then start working together, taking C2C to the next level, so it can become a leading model for the transition to sustainability.

The communicative strength of Cradle to Cradle

The existing C2C products show that sustainable product innovation has a great future ahead of it. Besides product innovation, there’s the C2C vision: a world where people live in harmony with the environment; where production processes are clean and eco systems are integrated into our cities and buildings; where products become food for new products after use, and where the consumer is not an environmental liability anymore. This vision is of great importance and has inspired many, especially in the Netherlands, making people ambitious and wanting to join hands. This is a unique situation that has been created. It is because of the communicative strength of Cradle to Cradle.

Government action

Due to its proven communicative and inspirational value, governments can use C2C in creating the required support for a fast transition towards a sustainable society. Creating this support is of overriding importance. Because whether the necessary sustainable innovations take root, is the consequence of political choices. If we have to wait for the OPEC-cartel influencing the oil prices in such a way that we all will switch to solar energy, we will have to wait until the cows come home. Thus, to just lay back and wait, is no option.

Decision makers should muster courage to make the necessary choices. Bold choices. These choices demand broad support among the electorate. Citizens will be more easily inspired by the vision that we roll up our sleeves together in order to bring about a solar powered circular economy, rather than by ideas about Carbon Capture and Storage and the use of nuclear energy as the future for our children. These are no final solutions and they do not appeal.

Public Private Partnership (PPP) is required

It might look otherwise, but for the worldwide sustainability movement there is a lot at stake. As shown, there are many reasons why the Dutch government and the founding fathers of C2C need to start cooperating towards an open structure around C2C. That is, if they want to seize the unique and once in a lifetime opportunity that is presenting itself right now in the Netherlands. A public private partnership, dedicated to the establishment of an independent C2C certification institute as well as to the adaption of regulation to facilitate C2C, is logical and necessary. In this institute, the transition thinkers of the Dutch research institute for transitions (Drift) can also partake. The partnership secures the quality of C2C in an open structure. Once this security is in place, every government, every business and all others, established in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the world, can start working with C2C. It would give us all a clearer direction of where we need to go and what our future looks like. This sort of partnership makes mass communication possible, increases competition, lowers costs and allows much more C2C products and other C2C related developments to emerge while enhancing the support for a transition to a renewable energy regime.

Fixing the cracks

If a choice for this proposed partnership model is not opted for, this unique opportunity will be gone soon. The cracks and holes that are now appearing around C2C can still be fixed, thus creating a win/win situation for all stakeholders. In the Netherlands we all know that a relatively small effort, like a child’s finger in a dike, can prevent a small hole from causing a flood. Not paying attention to the hole can cost us all dearly. So let’s start fixing it. If not, we shouldn’t loose more time than necessary and launch another name for the concept we love.

Roger Cox and Bert Lejeune, transition-lawyers at Paulussen in Maastricht, Netherlands (www.paulussen.nl)

This is a very important discussion on so many levels, and it's equally important that we get a better perspective on ourselves and the ways in which we take in and respond to ideas and information. It's fundamental paradigm-shift material for sure.

You get the likes of McD and Braungart repackaging older concepts developed by others ( C2C was initially described  by Walter Stahel in 1976), but then adding considerable value through further evolving the notions, testing and refining the principles in the lab and on the production floor, and devoting massive amounts of energy to promoting and popularizing the ideas. At the same time, there is a complex web of personal drivers (ambition, ego, markets and income, passion, intention, vision...) which energizes their work but also tends them towards less-than-helpful attitudes around exclusivity, self aggrandizement, and lack of openness and transparency where projects have failed to deliver. Some of what we see are personality-specific influences (even if "human nature" shared by many people), while other factors are cultural and systemic, and McD and B are as caught up in this as the rest of us.

But let's take a step back and see if we can gain more perspective. Look at the way in which we respond to such new(ish) ideas and to the people who champion them. Why do we create heroes from ordinary people, and then demand super-ordinary behaviour? Why do we remain essentially passive about this?

What is it about a sensible shift in strategies such as C2C, which once branded becomes proprietary, even when freely described for anyone to take it up and evolve it further? If C2C and other timely ideas and perceptual shifts are to have enough impact they must be mainstreamed. And not just in policy and industry; they have to catalyze changes in all behavior for all of us, based upon a clearer understanding of material and energy cycles and what that means for us on a moment-to-moment and ongoing basis.

In my own work as a teacher of "deep design" and sustainability I emphasize development of the designer over the instruction of design philosophies, methodologies, or standards. Tools and concepts will come and go, they will evolve with our increased understanding and awareness, and will change according to projects and needs. But to open our eyes, to change from design as a job or even an avocation, to design as a lens for seeing our lives and our world - - - this is the level of change needed to allow meaningful engagement and constructive intervention in the numerous ailing and moribund systems which now dominate the news through their failures.