Cradle to Cradle - William McDonough

In the Ted talk video of "Cradle to cradle design" by William McDonough, I learned a lot about the great solutions designers have to help stop global warming.



When William McDonough said,

“The fundamental issue is that, for me, design is the first signal of human intentions, ” 

I agree with McDonough’s viewpoint. When humans are trying to achieve something, the only way to make things easier is to design it. For example, because people had intensions of bringing all their stuff in one container, we designed bags. We intend those bags to be more convenient and light-weighted for us to carry around, so we designed bags with wheels and they became luggages. Some of our designs may have caused different consequences, such as having leads in pencils or cancer-causing chemicals in bathing ducks for babies, the initial intention was to write, or entertain babies, instead of trying to get people sick or even die. When we want cool air on a hot summer, we designed fans and air-conditioners. However, the consequences these products might have caused to damage the environment was not the intentions of these designs.  



In response to his statement:

"what we realize today is that modern culture appears to have adopted a strategy of tragedy. If we come here and say, "Well, I didn't intend to cause global warming on the way here," and we say, "That's not part of my plan," then we realize it's part of our de facto plan. Because it's the thing that's happening because we have no other plan."

I believe that we have a strategy of tragedy. I am confident that we have plans and treatments to the situation of global warming and there are actions to improve our future conditions if global warming isn’t stopped. There are many ways to prevent global warming and many people have awareness of what’s going on with our environment. Even little plans such as not eating meat for one meal a day for everyone in the world, requests for beef production and cow stock would decrease and thus it will lead to less amount of methane gas released into the atmosphere. Even this talk itself has shown many solutions to help save our environment. Having been to the environmental march in New York two years ago and currently living in eco dorm during green dorm challenge, I have many reasons to believe that we are facing and treating and fixing the environmental problems with valid and scientific plans.




Although McDonough believes that design determines our interactions with nature and how we value it, I think that nature shapes the way we design. If nature isn’t the way it is, then we wouldn’t have designed certain things as they are. For example, if we’re in a place like the North pole or South pole and we’re going through the polar night when the sun won’t be up for about six months, we won’t be able to rely on solar panels to provide us energy or electricity. Another example would be if we lack a certain material in nature, then we obviously wouldn’t use it to build or design something else. Moreover, architecture is also a type of designing. Speaking from personal experiences, the buildings in Shanghai and those in Andover are very different. From structure to facility, the campus in both places vary significantly. The buildings’ sizes, the number of stories, and requirements for heaters all vary due to the different environments of the locations. Thus, nature has a great impact on how designs turn out.



A cradle to cradle design is something that is designed to be completely recyclable or reusable. An example for a cradle to cradle design would be a kind of shoes from Nike that has infinitely recyclable polyesters for the top and biodegradable soles for the bottom.
The two metabolisms are biological and technological. In McDonough’s project of a designed cradle to cradle city, the wastes we flush down the toilet are taken in to “construct the wetlands for habitat restoration. And then it makes natural gas, which then goes back into the city to power the fuel for the cooking for the city.” Then the compost will be taken back and act as fertilizers to the farmings they have on the top of the roofs of the buildings. An example for technical metabolism would be the Shaw carpet that is infinitely reusable. The nylon in the carpet would go back to caprolactam and then go back to carpet.



As an environmentalist, William McDonough is really a hero and genius to come up with all the practical and cool designs that could save us significant amount of energy. I admire him for using his knowledge on something so cool and environmental-friendly. I'm really glad to see people like him to stand up and use their knowledge to design things that could save the Earth.

Kent Armstrong visited AP Environmental Science during E block on February 6th. As the owner of TerraStryke, Kent introduced us to bio remediation. He told us that he has been in the industry for around 35 or 36 years, and the purpose of his job is to restore contaminated environment.

He talked about how the Brownfields project clean up and redevelop contaminated sites so they could be reused. The idea is to "bring this back into a revenue generating property," such as apartments and offices. The Greenfield is "an area that has not been developed yet," and the Greenfields project is to keep the place pristine and not contaminated. 

As Alan asked about the difference between a Superfund cite and a Brownfield, Kent repsponded: "a Brownfield is more often a private investment, that often times will go get a grant or a loan... is pretty much doing all the work based on grant loan." A Superfund cite has a greater impact and is "impacting more people, more places, more water, and it costs a ton." At a private project, cleaning up dirt or trash is charged in tons but the projects are still under your control, instead of under the rule makers'. However, at a Superfund site is controlled by the government and it creates and then implements the plan without the owner of the property have any say in it. And "anytime the government makes the plan it always cost you more money, because there's so many more people..." involved.

 When he talked about how we determine a site's value and liability, he used his example of checking the Osram company. He said he found "mercury even in a dust form" in the tile of the kitchen. Kent was fired from the job because "I made them aware of the health and safety risk they were exposed to." He was never to be allowed to set foot on Osram property again although he kept doing his job for two and a half years. "It gets hard core man, it gets pretty hardcore." Some of the contaminants that could be found at these sites are metals (lead, mercury, calcium), which are in-organics that cannot be destroyed, solvents (chlorinated, dry cleaners, manufacturing facilities) that are organics that can be destroyed, and petroleum hydrocarbons (gasoline, Diesel).

Kent's job can be divided into four phases. The first is mainly to walk around the property and make visual assessments to the property by walking or driving, checking the ground to see if there's stain and some records. Then they move onto phase two where they "collect samples... From those samples we analyze them..." They're not delineating or saying where the problem is but to tell them what they found in what. After being informed and if they still want the property, Kent would move onto phase three assessment. In phase three, Kent starts delineating. "I'm giving them an idea of what's the magnitude and the scope necessary, associated with your property that you wanna buy to make it so it's functional." This phase gives perspectives of the strategies and efforts required to realize the site compliance. Then in phase four they design remediation and implementation. "How do we clean it up? One of the most expensive way to do it is incineration." Some of the other ways are excavation, stabilization, and bio-remediation (augmentation, bio-stimulation), etc.

After a 48 minute lecture from Kent, I definitely learned a lot about his company and the techniques he uses to assess properties. I am interested by the science behind it. Moreover, I really hope that with the work that Kent and his company does to assess the chemicals and contaminants at sites and properties, more people (owner of the properties) will put time and effort (or money) into cleaning those sites and getting rid of the hazardous chemicals in the environment. I believe his work will help people understand more about toxic wastes and therefore make the environment more healthy. His presentation enlightened me about bio-remediation and I'm glad to see people treating and purifying our one and only Earth.