Cradle to Cradle is a new design paradigm being driven by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, LLC (MBDC), a product and process design firm dedicated to "remaking the way we make things." Detailed eloquently in their book of the same title, MBDC's revolutionary Cradle to Cradle approach proposes that human design can learn from nature to be effective, safe, enriching, and delightful.

Cradle to Cradle Design models human industry on nature's processes, in which materials are viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms. Industry must protect and enrich ecosystems—nature's biological metabolism—while also maintaining safe, productive technical metabolism for the high-quality use and circulation of mineral, synthetic, and other materials.

'Waste = Food' is a principle of natural systems adopted by MBDC that eliminates the concept of waste. In this design strategy, all materials are viewed as continuously valuable, circulating in closed loops of production, use, and recycling.

The project at left is MBDC's 100% compostable and bio-degradeable upholstery fabric for textile company DesignTex at the Rohner textile mill in Switzerland. Legend has it that when the local regulators came to Rohner to check the effluent of the factory, they found that the water leaving the building was cleaner than the water that was coming in from the municipal water system! What's more, since Rohner is no longer using harmful chemicals to make their products, factory workers don't have to wear protective clothing anymore, rooms formerly used to store toxic materials have been freed up for other uses, and the company has become more prosperous than ever.

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