(ESPM 2019) According to MCDONOUGH, with the ‘cradle to cradle’ designing and manufacturing

DESIGNING THE FUTURE By Anne Underwood Imagine buildings that generate more energy than they consume and factories whose waste water is...

DESIGNING THE FUTURE

By Anne Underwood

Imagine buildings that generate more energy than they consume and factories whose waste water is clean enough to drink. William McDonough has accomplished these tasks and more.

Architect, industrial designer and founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in Charlottesville, Va., he’s not your traditional environmentalist. Others may expend their energy fighting for stricter environmental regulations and repeating the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle.”

McDonough’s vision for the future includes factories so safe they need no regulation, and novel, safe materials that can be totally reprocessed into new goods, so there’s no reason to scale back consumption (or lose jobs). In short, he wants to overhaul the Industrial Revolution--which would sound crazy if he weren’t working with Fortune 500 companies and the government of China to make it happen. He spoke in New York with NEWSWEEK’s Anne Underwood.

UNDERWOOD: Why do we need a new industrial revolution?

MCDONOUGH: The Industrial Revolution as a whole was not designed. It took shape gradually as industrialists and engineers figured out how to make things. The result is that we put billions of pounds of toxic materials in the air, water and soil every year and generate gigantic amounts of waste. If our goal is to destroy the world-- to produce global warming and toxicity and endocrine disruption--we’re doing great. But if the goal isn’t global warming, what is? I want to crank the wheel of industry in a different direction to produce a world of abundance and good design.

UNDERWOOD: You say that recycling, as it’s currently practiced, is “downcycling.”

MCDONOUGH: What we call recycling is typically the product losing its quality. Paper gets mixed with other papers, re-chlorinated and contaminated with toxic inks. The fiber length gets shorter, allowing more particles to abrade into the air, where they get into your lungs and nasal passages, and cause irritation. And you end up with gray, fuzzy stuff that doesn’t really work for you. That’s downcycling.[My mentor and colleague] Michael Braungart and I coined the term upcycling, meaning that the product could actually get better as it comes through the system. For example, some plastic bottles contain the residues of heavy-metal catalysts. We can remove those residues as the bottles come back to be upcycled.

UNDERWOOD: Not all products lend themselves to that.

MCDONOUGH: Most manufacturers take resources out of the ground and convert them to products that are designed to be thrown away or incinerated within months. We call these “cradle to grave” product flows. Our answer to that is “cradle to cradle” design. Everything is reused--either returned to the soil as nontoxic “biological nutrients” that will biodegrade safely, or returned to industry as “technical nutrients” that can be infinitely recycled.

UNDERWOOD: Are there products already that meet cradle-to-cradle goals? If so, how do we find them?

MCDONOUGH: Products that meet our criteria for biological and technical nutrients can be certified to use our logo. A note on the packaging will tell you how to recycle it. We have already approved a nylon, some polyester textiles, running tracks, window shades, chairs from Herman Miller and Steelcase, and carpets from Shaw, which is part of Berkshire Hathaway. The first was a Steelcase fabric that can go back to the soil. We’re now working on electronics on a global scale.

UNDERWOOD: How do paper products like magazines fit into this picture?

MCDONOUGH: Why take something as exquisite as a tree and knock it down? Trees make oxygen, sequester carbon, distill water, build soils, convert solar energy to fuel, change colors with the seasons, create microclimates and provide habitat. My book “Cradle to Cradle,” which I wrote with Michael Braungart, is printed on pages made of plastic resins and inorganic fillers that are infinitely recyclable.

UNDERWOOD: So we can keep our trees and have newspapers, too.

MCDONOUGH: Most environmentalists feel guilty about how society behaves, so they say we should make longer-lasting products--for example, a car that lasts 25 years. That car will still use compound epoxies and toxic adhesives, but the ecological footprint is reduced because you’ve amortized it over a longer time. But what’s the result? You lose jobs because people aren’t buying as much, and you’re using the wrong technology longer. I want five-year cars. Then you can always be getting the newest car--more solar-powered, cleaner, with the newest air bags and safety features. The old car gets upcycled into new cars, so there are still plenty of jobs. And you don’t feel guilty about throwing the old one away.

UNDERWOOD: So growth is good?

MCDONOUGH: Yes, if you use nature as a model and mentor, if you use modern designs and chemicals that are safe. Growth is destructive if you use energy not from the sun and a system of chemicals that is toxic, so it’s anti-life.

UNDERWOOD: Can you really have industry so clean it requires no controls?

MCDONOUGH: At the Rohner textile plant in Switzerland we designed a fabric safe enough to eat. The manufacturing process uses no mutagens, carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, heavymetal contaminants or chemicals that cause ozone depletion, allergies, skin desensitization or plant and fish toxicity. When inspectors measured the effluent water, they thought their instruments were broken. The water was as clean as Swiss drinking water.

UNDERWOOD: How do you get more industries to adopt these ideals?

MCDONOUGH: Industries don’t change unless they have to or there’s some commercial benefit. At Herman Miller, the furniture company, we designed a factory full of daylight and fresh air. Productivity soared. And because of all the natural light, they cut lighting costs by 50 percent-overall energy by 30 percent. We’ve been doing this a long time.

UNDERWOOD: Your ideas are really catching on.

MCDONOUGH: We won’t get everything right the first time. Change requires experimentation. Our job is to dream-and to make those dreams happen.

(adaptado de newsweek.com, 15, Maio, 2005)

QUESTÃO 44
(ESPM 2019) According to MCDONOUGH, with the ‘cradle to cradle’ designing and manufacturing:

a) products will last much longer than what they currently do.

b) we will have to live with idea that jobs will be lost.

c) people will naturally buy less than they currently do.

d) designers will come up with zero waste solutions for products.

e) more waste materials will be incinerated.

QUESTÃO ANTERIOR:
- (ESPM 2019) According to the text, McDonough wishes to

• [accordion]
• RESOLUÇÃO:
• Não temos resolução para essa questão! Você sabe explicar? Copie o link dessa página e envie sua resolução clicando AQUI!
• GABARITO:
• d) designers will come up with zero waste solutions for products.

PRÓXIMA QUESTÃO:
- (ESPM 2019) For Mcdonough it is impossible to

QUESTÃO DISPONÍVEL EM:
- Prova ESPM 2019.2 com Gabarito