Yes, it is 'less bad' but the optimisations are in the wrong place." A rare example of the "inspirational" book that actually is. It could not go back into any biological cycle. They espouse the benefits of such 'eco-effectiveness' and offer other ideas for putting it into practice. It's a product that 'can be broken down and circulated infinitely in industrial cycles,' claim the authors. Braungart explains pithily in his new introduction: "When you do something wrong, don't try to improve upon it." An example: "I was recently shown a new photocopying machine made with far better components, and which ran twice as fast on less energy consumption, but the paper still could not be composted. It's made of plastic resins and inorganic fillers instead of wood pulp or cotton. The guiding principle here too, in a way, is against "efficiency", if that is understood as doing the same old thing but polluting less while you do it. Instead of recycling (or, as they say, "downcycling") products into inevitably lower-grade homogeneous material, why not design things from the start so that their valuable ingredients (copper, steel and so on) can be recuperated in pure form and used again, circulating indefinitely as "technical nutrients"? Why not design buildings to work like trees? Why not refuse to use any chemical in manufacturing that can't safely be reabsorbed by the biosphere? Case studies of their own consulting work in designing daylit factories or non-poisonous fabrics illuminate the enjoyably tart prose throughout. T his is an updated edition of a celebrated 2002 industrial manifesto, whose authors (a chemist and architect) also take inspiration from the robustness of natural systems to recommend technological change.
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