Cradle to Cradle

The book traces Cradle to Cradle's origin against the dominant 'cradle-to-grave' industrial model: 'As early as the 1970s, thinkers like Genevieve Reday and Walter R. Stahel began to formulate a regenerative alternative, coining the term "cradle to cradle." This critique was powerfully amplified for a global design audience by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, whose seminal 2002 book popularized a philosophy that views materials as either biological or technical nutrients in safe, continuous cycles.' It states its core principle directly: Cradle to Cradle 'envisions a world where all materials are "technical nutrients" (safely re-circulated in industrial cycles) or "biological nutrients" (able to safely return to the soil).' In the Procedures Component, the book lists 'implementing cradle-to-cradle protocols in product development' among the standard practices for ecological integrity, and early on frames it among 'movements like Cradle to Cradle, challenging the very concept of waste.'