Moving Toward Sustainability by way of the “New Industrial Revolution”

After completing Tom Wessels’ book, I am left feeling less than inspired to “move towards” the sustainability issue. Despite his ideas and comments in the last 3 chapters concerning the reality of the free market, our obvious need for cultural change, as well as his personal feelings and ideas about interconnectedness via “Black Elk Speaks”, I am still not moved into action. Tom Wessels' writing comes from a problematic focal point and I don’t feel sufficiently inspired by the body of Wessels' contributions to take on what appears at times to be an insurmountable task. I feel the need for real focus on solutions, and a revolutionary approach to immediate change and how we frame the sustainability discussion are not his paramount goals.

After completing the introduction in McDonough’s and Braungaurt’s book “Cradle to Cradle”, I am feeling refreshed and inspired by their ideas on how to implement real fundamental change. The sustainability question that is continually bubbling up in my life goes something like; how do we as a people design, resource, manufacture, and recycle the products that are intended to enhance our lives? They begin their introduction with two and one half pages of examples of everyday problems that demand real solutions. they go on to demonstrate a viable example of how to print books on the subject of sustainability in a way as not to kill trees and further damage the environment. Then they proceed right into over nine pages of their own personal experiences, strength they have gained on the subject, and some real old fashioned hope for the future. They use evolved terminology, a new synthesis of the same old problematic rhetoric. Terms like “evolve away from”, and “seek more effective solutions”. They introduce us to the current "struggles"of the current “framework at odds”. Industry vs. the environmentalists, “We need to do more with less”, “Minimize your footprint and feel bad and guilty if you don’t". Although these concepts may at some point have a positive end result, the “guilt trips” have yet to be a cause for measurably effective change. What about the concepts of abundance and re-framing the subject in that way?

The background experience of these two authors is very important. McDonough has been abroad and saw first hand how the scarcity of resources encouraged people to create simpler, local, yet effective designs and solutions. When he returned to the states he witnessed how fruitless it is “tacking new technologies onto the same old model”. Braungaurt grew up in Germany with a background in environmental chemistry, politics, and Greenpeace. His ideas about “protesting more knowledgeably” led him to “reframe the debate” within his own vision for sustainability. Moving from “enforcement to encouragement” and from “recycle” to “upcycle”
Shortly after their first meeting McDonough’s and Braungaurt created the Hannover Principles in 1991 a set of design guidelines that would “eliminate the concept of waste” or as they say in the introduction “not reduce, or avoid waste as environmentalists were propounding, but eliminate the very concept by design.”

The wings of our emerging sustainability paradigm are still wet and fragile. We need researchers and scientists,as well as activists, corporations, and people everywhere to embrace this new model of thinking and living. I am looking forward to exploring in detail, the thoughts, personal experience, and practices that McDonough and Braungaurt will explore in th rest of "Cradle to Cradle". It is my hope that their ideas will affect change in all of us. I for one feel we are on the cusp of the most amazing and critically transformative time in the history of the environmental movement and mankind itself. and these are the new paradigm thinkers that will lead the way.



”