The culture of innovation within the field of environmental technology and management is bringing forth significant change in the world of industry. From the growing influence of green chemistry and engineering to the emergence of environmental concerns in corporate research and development, one can see promising new initiatives in nearly every sphere of industrial activity.

Many of these developments, however, are limited by the "eco-efficient" framework in which they are applied. A widely adopted business paradigm, eco-efficiency is essentially a reductive agenda, its reforms rather narrowly aimed at minimizing the negative impacts of industry. New management tools based simply on efficiency, for example, may allow industry to use fewer resources, produce less waste and minimize toxic emissions, but they tend not to change the fundamental design of products or industrial production. In other words, efficient is not sufficient. As a result, even promising new technologies use energy and materials within a conventional cradle-to-grave system, diluting pollution and slowing the loss of natural resources without addressing the systemic design flaws that create waste and toxic products in the first place.

Global sourcing and lean production have standardized this state of affairs, with the result being a surfeit of products characterized by increasingly poor quality. Consider the off-gassing diagram of a name-brand children's toy from the United States shown below, which identifies more than thirty chemicals known to be mutagenic, desensitizing, or even suspected or known carcinogens.

[Figure 1: Off-gassing diagram of a name brand United States children's toy]

As the diagram illustrates, poor standards of quality result in everyday products that release hundreds of hazardous chemicals. Typically, these products, from electric shavers to carpets and upholsteries, are used indoors, where off-gassed chemicals accumulate. Energy efficient buildings, which are designed to require less heating and cooling, and thus less air circulation, can make things worse. A recent study in Germany, for example, found that air quality inside several highly rated energy efficient buildings in downtown Hamburg was nearly four times worse than on the dirty, car-clogged street.

The effects are hard to ignore. Where buildings with reduced air-exchange rates are common, so are health problems. In Germany, where tax credits support the construction of energy efficient buildings, allergies affect 42 percent of school age children between 6-7 years old, largely due to the poor quality of indoor air. This is what we would call chemical harassment. It is the result not of bad intentions, but of poor design.

A New Model for Industry
Cradle to Cradle Design offers a clear alternative, a framework in which the safe, regenerative productivity of nature provides models for wholly positive human designs. Working from this perspective, we do not aim to be less bad. Instead, our design assignment is to create a world of interdependent natural and human systems powered by the sun in which safe, healthful materials flow in regenerative cycles, elegantly and equitably deployed for the benefit of all.

Within this framework, every material is designed to provide a wide spectrum of renewable assets. After a useful life as a healthful product, cradle-to-cradle materials are designed to replenish the earth with safe, fecund matter or to supply high quality technical resources for the next generation of products. When materials and products are created specifically for use within these closed-loop cycles-the flow of biological materials through nature's nutrient cycles and the circulation of industrial materials from producer to customer to producer-businesses can realize both enormous short-term growth and enduring prosperity. As well, we can begin to re-design the very foundations of industry, creating systems that purify air, land and water; use current solar income and generate no toxic waste; use only safe, healthful, regenerative materials; and whose benefits enhance all life.

This positive industrial agenda identifies a new definition of quality in product, process and facility design. From the cradle-to-cradle perspective, quality is embodied in designs that allow industry to enhance the well being of nature and culture while generating economic value. Pursuing these positive aspirations at every level of commerce adds ecological intelligence, social equity and cultural diversity to the conventional design criteria of cost, performance and aesthetics. When these diverse criteria define good design, and when they are applied at every level of industry, productivity and profits are not at odds with environmental and social concerns. Indeed, as cradle-to-cradle design matures, we are increasingly able to design products and places that support life, that create ecological footprints to delight in rather than lament. This changes the entire context of the design process. Instead of asking, "How do I reduce the impact of my work?" and "How do I meet today's environmental standards?" we ask: "How might I increase my ecological footprint and enhance its positive effects? How might I grow prosperity and celebrate my community? How might I create more habitat, more health, more clean water, more delight?"

The Cradle to Cradle Paradigm
Cradle to Cradle Design refocuses product development from a process aimed at limiting end-of-pipe liabilities to one geared to creating safe, healthful, high-quality products right from the start. In the world of industry it is creating a new conception of materials and material flows. Rather than seeing materials as a waste management problem in which interventions here and there slow their trip from cradle to grave, cradle-to-cradle thinking sees materials as nutrients and recognizes two safe metabolisms in which they flow.

In the biological metabolism, the nutrients that support life on Earth-water, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide-flow perpetually through regenerative cycles of growth, decay and rebirth. Rather than generating material liabilities, the biological metabolism accrues natural fecundity. Waste equals food. The technical metabolism can be designed to mirror natural nutrient cycles; it's a closed-loop system in which valuable, high-tech synthetics and mineral resources circulate in an endless cycle of production, recovery and remanufacture. Ideally, the human systems that make up the technical metabolism are powered by the energy of the sun.

[Figure 2: Biological Metabolism/Technical Metabolism]

By specifying safe, healthful ingredients, industry can create and use materials within these cradle-to-cradle cycles. Materials designed as biological nutrients, such as detergents, packaging or textiles for draperies, wall coverings and upholstery fabrics, can be designed to biodegrade safely and restore the soil after use, providing more positive effects, not fewer negative ones. Materials designed as technical nutrients, such as perpetually recyclable nylon fiber, can provide high-quality, high-tech ingredients for generation after generation of synthetic products-again a harvest of value.

Biological and technical nutrients have already entered the marketplace. The upholstery fabric Climatex Lifecycle® is a blend of pesticide-residue-free wool and organically grown ramie, dyed and processed entirely with nontoxic chemicals. All of its product and process inputs were defined and selected for their human and ecological safety within the biological metabolism. The result: the fabric trimmings are made into felt and used by garden clubs as mulch for growing fruits and vegetables, returning the textile's biological nutrients to the soil. The first product on the market designed as a biological nutrient, Climatex Lifecycle® has been followed by many others since its introduction in 1993.

Honeywell, meanwhile, is marketing a textile for the technical metabolism, a high-quality carpet yarn called Zeftron Savant®, which is made of perpetually recyclable nylon 6 fiber. Zeftron Savant® is designed to be reclaimed and repolymerized-taken back to its constituent resins-to become new material for new carpets. In fact, Honeywell can retrieve old, conventional nylon 6 and transform it into Zeftron Savant®, upcycling rather than downcycling an industrial material. The nylon is rematerialized, not dematerialized-a true cradle-to-cradle product.

Ideally, technical nutrients are designed as products of service, a key element of the cradle-to-cradle strategy. Products of service are durable goods-cars, computers, refrigerators, carpets-designed by their manufacturer to be taken back and used again. The product provides a service to the customer while the manufacturer maintains ownership of the product's material assets. At the end of a defined period of use, the manufacturer takes back the product and reuses its materials in another high-quality product. Material recovery systems such as these are the foundation of the technical metabolism. Widely practiced, the product-of-service concept can change the nature of production and consumption as human systems powered by renewable energy reuse valuable materials through many product lifecycles.

The Practice of Cradle to Cradle Design
The Cradle-to-Cradle Design Framework incorporates nature's cyclical material model into all product and system design efforts through a process called Life Cycle Development (LCD). While product development within this framework is not the same as life cycle assessment (LCA), "life cycle thinking" serves as an important structure for scientific inquiry and informs the process of cradle-to-cradle product design.

[Figure 3: Life Cycle Development Process]

LCD is a working, results oriented method for evaluating products and processes as they are being re-designed. While observing how a material or final product flows through any of its various life cycle stages (raw materials production, manufacturing, use, and recovery/reutilization) and identifying human and environmental health impacts at each stage, LCD phases out undesirable substances and replaces them with preferable ones. The re-design process occurs during-not after-environmental and human health assessment. This simultaneous work saves costs for manufacturers and users and allows manufacturers to maintain market presence and continue to generate revenue as they improve their products.

The LCD process is made up of three phases, which follow an initial identification of a product's proper metabolism. Defining each product as either a potential biological nutrient or a potential technical nutrient sets up two different sets of design criteria and informs all phases of product development. Biological nutrients will need to be compostable, for example, while the recovery of technical nutrients might require chemical recycling. All products, however, are assessed and developed through three phases:

• inventory of material flows
• impact assessment according to the life cycle of individual products
• optimization to produce a healthy, prosperous cradle-to-cradle life cycle.

These phases represent an iterative process that can be engaged at many levels. The process can start with an idea, as well as with a raw material (going into different products), a product (made of different raw materials), or a process.

Inventory
The first step in LCD is a material inventory designed to collect full information on every material used in the manufacture of a product. Each material is then inventoried for its chemical constituents. The inventory process results in a complete listing of components by CAS (Chemical Abstract Service) number, name, function, and percent weight of the final material or product.

Impact Assessment
Assessing materials encourages product transparency and the conscious selection of ingredients that will have the most positive impact on human and ecological health. A material's impact on human and environmental health is assessed in five basic categories:

Direct exposure covers the acute and chronic toxicological impacts on organisms that might be exposed to the materials, including carcinogenicity, endocrine disruption, irritation of skin and mucous membranes, and sensitization.

The succession of generations includes potential impacts such as mutagenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, genetic engineering and persistence and biodegradation.

Food chains are evaluated by bioaccumulation potential.

Climactic relevance is evaluated based on global warming potential and ozone depletion potential.

Value recovery assesses a material's potential as a biological or technical nutrient. To recover value and maintain materials in closed loop cycles, materials must be either returned safely to the soil or be perpetually recyclable. Evaluation of the value recovery potential of a material is based on the following considerations:

• Is it technically feasible to compos or recycle the material?
• Does a recycling or composting infrastructure exist for the material?
• What is the resulting quality of the recycled material or compost?

In addition, products must have a defined end-of-use strategy and be designed for disassembly so that recovery of materials is possible. Evaluating the recoverability of materials in a product is based on the following questions:

• What is the take back strategy for the product and its materials?
• Can dissimilar materials be easily separated?
• Can common or readily available disassembly tools be used?
• Can the material type be identified through markings, magnets, etc.?

Optimization
Once all materials have been assessed, those with the most positive human and environmental health characteristics and highest value recovery potential may be selected for inclusion in a re-designed product. Optimization is an iterative process. Complete optimization of a product or material may initially be impossible due to time or financial constraints, or lack of materials that meet the criteria for environmental and human health and value recovery. When all problematic inputs cannot be substituted, they can be prioritized for replacement and the manufacturing process can be re-designed to minimize exposure until a positive replacement is identified. Ultimately, the optimization phase is designed to yield positively defined products that enhance commercial productivity, social health and ecological intelligence.

Getting Results: Cradle to Cradle Design at Work
The LCD process is the foundation for designing biological and technical nutrients. Examining some of the details of the design of a particular cradle-to-cradle product illustrates the process at work and begins to suggest how it can yield extraordinary value.

Consider the technical nutrient carpet tile developed by Shaw Industries. Seeking a safe, beneficial product for its commercial customers, Shaw undertook a thorough scientific assessment of the material chemistry of its carpet fibers and backing. Dyes, pigments, finishes, auxiliaries-everything that goes into carpet-were examined according to the Cradle-to-Cradle LCD and each ingredient was selected to meet its rigorous criteria. Out of this process has come the promise of a fully optimized carpet tile, a completely safe, perpetually recyclable, value generating product. And a highly regarded product as well: Shaw's new design won the 2003 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award.

Awards aside, Shaw's new product brings a much needed alternative to the commercial carpet market. Typically, carpet is made from two primary elements, a face fiber and a backing. Most face fiber today is nylon and most carpet backing is PVC. Commonly known as vinyl, PVC is a cheap, durable material widely used in building construction and a variety of consumer products, including toys, apparel and sporting goods. The vinyl chloride monomer used to make PVC is a human carcinogen and incineration of PVC can result in dioxin emissions. There are also concerns about the health effects of many additives commonly used in PVC, such as plasticizers, which off-gas chemicals known to be endocrine disrupters.

During conventional carpet recycling nylon face fiber and PVC backing are recycled together, which yields a hybrid material of lesser value. In effect, the materials are not recycled at all but downcycled-and they're still on a one-way trip to the landfill or incinerator. There, the PVC content of the material makes recycled carpet hazardous waste.

Responding to widespread scientific and consumer concern about PVC, Shaw developed an alternative, a safe polyolefin-based backing system with all the performance benefits of PVC, which it guarantees it will take back and recycle into safe polyolefin backing.

The face fiber of Shaw's technical nutrient carpet tile also changes the game. It's made from nylon 6, which can be easily depolymerized into its monomer, caprolactam, and repolymerized repeatedly to make high quality nylon 6 carpet fiber. The main competing face fiber, nylon 6,6 is not easily depolymerized for recycling. Following protocols for value recovery, Shaw is developing an effective take-back and recycling strategy for all of its nylon 6 fiber.

In effect, Shaw's new carpet tile eliminates the concept of waste. The company now guarantees that all of its nylon 6 carpet fiber will be taken back and returned to nylon 6 carpet fiber, and its safe polyolefin backing taken back and returned to safe polyolefin backing. All the materials that go into the carpet will continually circulate in technical nutrient cycles. Raw material to raw material. Waste equals food. This cradle-to-cradle cycle, altogether different from eco-efficient recycling, suggests the benefits of a positive approach to managing material flows.

Other industries are also achieving significant results. Working with McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), the footwear manufacturer Nike is employing the Cradle-to-Cradle Framework to determine the chemical composition and environmental effects of the materials used to produce its line of athletic shoes. Focusing primarily on Nike's global footwear operations, the company's material assessment began with factory visits in China, where teams collected samples of rubber, leather, nylon, polyester, and foams, along with information on their chemical formulations.

In an ongoing partnership, when Nike and MBDC identify materials that meet or exceed the company's sustainable design criteria, those components are added to a growing palette of materials (a Positive List) that Nike will use in its products. These ingredients are designed to either be safely metabolized by nature's biological systems at the end of the products useful life or be repeatedly recovered and reutilized in new products.

Nike's systematic effort to develop a positive materials palette has begun to produce tangible results, such as the phasing out of PVC. After two years of scientific review, Nike set its sites on the elimination of PVC from footwear and non-screenprint apparel. In Spring 2002, Nike highlighted two PVC-free products, Keystone Cleats and Swoosh Slides, as a way to begin a dialogue with customers about its PVC-free commitment.

Integrating Cradle-to-Cradle Design Strategies
Many companies begin adopting cradle-to-cradle principles by applying them to a single product. Ultimately, however, the strategy's effectiveness depends on its deep integration into the product development process. The furniture designer and manufacturer Herman Miller has gone a long way toward that end, developing an interdisciplinary Design for Environment (DFE) team that implements cradle-to-cradle material assessments, translates design goals throughout the company, measures environmental performance and engages its supply chain in implementing design criteria.

Working closely with MBDC and the German design consultancy EPEA, the DFE team built a chemical and material assessment methodology that could be effectively used by the firm's designers and engineers. Throughout the design process, the multi-faceted assessment analyzes materials for their human health and toxicological effects, recyclabilty, recycled content and/or use of renewable resources, and product design for disassembly.

The DFE team includes a chemical engineer who incorporates findings from assessments into an evolving materials data base, and a purchasing agent who acts as a conduit and data source between the supply chain and Herman Miller's purchasing team. This strategy engages both groups as partners in implementing new design criteria, thereby ensuring the consistent procurement of safe materials. As one Herman Miller engineer has said, "getting a handle on supply chain issues from an environmental standpoint has also helped us get a handle on the organization and prioritization of materials." Now, for example, Herman Miller can use the new database to record the volume and content of the raw materials it uses and distributes, figures it had not previously tracked.

Herman Miller put the DFE team to work on the design of its new task chair, a complement to its popular Aeron office chair. After assessing production processes, as well as 500 chemicals in 850 materials, and integrating those findings into the overall design process, Herman Miller unveiled the Mirra. Noting its pioneering design, Metropolis magazine suggested that the environmentally sound, high-performance Mirra might be "the next icon." Perhaps. What's certain is that the Mirra's combination of ergonomic, aesthetic and environmental intelligence makes it not only extraordinarily comfortable and easy to adjust, but also a shining example of smart material and energy use.

Among other features, the Mirra is assembled using 100 percent wind power. Recycled content comprises more than 40 percent of its weight and nearly 100 percent of its materials can be recycled, a strong step toward a cradle-to-cradle product. The elimination of PVC makes the chair environmentally safe and its overall design makes it easy to disassemble. It is a bold move into 21st century product design.

Managing Material Flows with Intelligent Materials Pooling
By defining product ingredients and engaging their respective supply chains, Shaw, Nike and Herman Miller are all taking steps toward developing a safe, profitable technical metabolism. This is a critical step in the cradle-to-cradle strategy. Ultimately, the key to optimizing the assets of cradle-to-cradle materials lies in the intelligent management of regenerative material flows, just as in the world of energy the optimization of the strategy would lead us toward an effective use of renewable energy.

After eons of evolution, nature is well-equipped to effectively manage the material flows of the biological metabolism. We need to be sure that the materials we design as biological nutrients can safely biodegrade, and we need to set up recovery systems to be sure they are returned to the soil, but nature does not need our help to run its nutrient cycles. The technical metabolism, however, can only be managed by human design.

To safely and effectively manage the flows of polymers, rare metals, and high tech materials for industry, we have developed a nutrient management system for the technical metabolism, which we call Intelligent Materials Pooling (IMP). IMP is a collaborative approach to material flows management involving multiple companies working together to entirely eliminate hazardous materials. Partners in an IMP form a supportive business community, pooling information and purchasing power to generate material intelligence and profitable cradle-to-cradle material flows.

The evolution of an intelligent materials pool unfolds in four phases. The first is a community-building phase in which companies committed to cradle-to-cradle design discover shared values and complimentary needs. A business network of willing partners emerges as each agrees to work together to phase out a common list of toxic chemicals.

Out of this shared commitment comes a community of companies with the market strength to engineer the phase-out and develop innovative alternative materials. The companies would share the list of materials targeted for elimination and develop a positive purchasing and procurement list of preferred intelligent chemicals.

The third phase involves defining material flows within the partnership. The partners would specify for and design with preferred materials. They would also establish defined use periods for products and services and individually set up take back programs. This phase establishes the infrastructure that supports the product of service concept, in which technical nutrients are designed to be returned to manufacturers for continual re-use. In effect, this transforms the partners into a material bank with renewable assets. Their "pool" of materials is not owned in common, but the partners' shared material specifications, their effectively managed technical metabolism, and their combined purchasing power allows them to profitably use positively defined, high quality materials.

The final phase of IMP is open-ended, as it involves the strengthening of the business partnership through ongoing support. This can involve such mutually beneficial activities as the creation of preferred business partner agreements, the sharing of information, the development of co-branding strategies, and support for the mechanisms of the newly created technical metabolism.

Finding willing partners in the competitive world of business might be hard to imagine but it is hardly unprecedented. In the textile industry innovative mills like Victor Innovatex and Rohner Textil, along with MBDC and Designtex, have profitably collaborated on the design and production of ecologically intelligent fabrics. In the textile and apparel industry at large, several companies have expressed deep interest in establishing a "polyester coalition." With the technology for truly recycling polyester in development, a polyester coalition could begin to close the loop on the flow of this widely used industrial material.

Design for the Triple Top Line
The various aspects of the Cradle-to-Cradle strategy, from Life Cycle Development to Intelligent Materials Pooling, together offer a framework for good design. While the protocols within the framework can be rigorous and exacting, they also create a space for enormous creativity. When a company decides to develop a biological or technical nutrient, for example, the chemical assessment of materials is just one step toward the complete re-thinking of the design assignment. With a good scientific foundation and a positive, rather than reductive agenda, one can begin to ask some very interesting design questions.

The conventional design questions revolve around cost, aesthetics and performance. Can we profit from it? Will the customer find it attractive? Will it work? Advocates of sustainable development have tried to expand those questions to include environmental and social concerns. While this "triple bottom line" approach has given companies a useful tool for balancing economic goals with a desire to "do better by the environment," the concept in practice often appears to center only on economic considerations, with social or ecological benefits considered as an afterthought. Businesses calculate their conventional economic profitability and add to that what they perceive to be the social benefits, with, perhaps, some reduction in environmental damage-lower emissions, fewer materials sent to the landfill, reduced materials in the product itself. These are important steps toward identifying problems but ultimately they are strategies for managing negative effects.

What if this triad of concerns-economic growth, environmental health, and social equity-were addressed at the beginning of the design process as triple top line questions rather than used as an accounting tool at the end? That's where the magic begins. Instead of meeting the bottom line through a series of compromises between economy, ecology and equity, designers can employ their dynamic interplay to generate revenue and value in all three sectors-triple top line growth. The goal is to create more positive effects not fewer negative ones. From this perspective, questions such as How can I create more habitat? How can I create jobs? become just as important as How much will it cost? Often, in fact, a project that begins with pronounced ecological or social concerns can turn out to be tremendously productive financially in ways that would never have been imagined if you'd started from a purely economic perspective.

The Fractal Triangle
Working with our clients, we have found that a visual tool, the fractal triangle, help us apply triple top line thinking throughout the design process. Representing the ecology of human concerns, the fractal triangle shows how ecology, economy and equity anchor a spectrum of value, and how, at any level of scrutiny, each design decision has an impact on all three. As we plan a product or system, we move around the fractal inquiring how a new design can generate value in each category.

[Figure 4: Fractal Triangle]

In the pure Economy sector, we might ask "Can I make my product at a profit?" As we see it, the goal of an effective company is to stay in business as it transforms. The Equity sector raises social questions: "Are we finding ways to honor all stakeholders, regardless of race, sex, nationality or religion?" Moving to the Ecology corner, the emphasis shifts to imagining ways in which humans can be tools for nature: "Do our designs create habitat or nourish the landscape?"

As we move around the triangle, questions expressing a complex interaction of concerns arise at the intersections of Ecology, Economy and Equity. In the Economy/Equity sector, for example, we consider questions of profitability and fairness. "Are employees producing a promising product earning a living wage?" As we continue on to Equity/Economy, our focus shifts more toward fairness. Here we might ask: "Are men and women being paid the same for the same work?"

[Figure 5: Fractal callouts]

Often, we discover our most fruitful insights where the design process creates a kind of friction in the zones where values overlap. An ecologist might call these areas ecotones, which are the merging, fluid boundaries between natural communities notable for their rich diversity of species. In the fractal triangle, the ecotones are ripe with business opportunities.

Triple top line thinkers tap these opportunities not by trying to balance Ecology, Economy and Equity, but by honoring the needs of all three. In an infinitely interconnected world, they see rich relationships rather than inherent conflicts. Their goal: to maximize value in all areas of the triangle through intelligent design. When designing a manufacturing facility, for example, they would ask: How can this project restore more landscape and purify more water? How much social interaction and joy can I create? How do I generate more safety and health? How much prosperity can I grow?

Questions such as these allow us to remake the way we make things. Today.

Getting Results: Generating Value in the Design Process
In projects already underway-indeed, already completed-triple top line thinking has sparked an explosion of creativity in our clients' decision-making. Consider, for example, the restoration of Ford Motor Company's Rouge River plant in Dearborn, Michigan. In May 1999, Ford decided to invest $2 billion over 20 years to transform the Rouge into an icon of 21st century industry. As we approached the design process with Ford many wondered if a blue chip company with a sharp focus on the bottom line could take a step toward something truly new and inspiring. Could inspiration and profits co-exist?

Well, yes. Using triple top line thinking and the Fractal Triangle, we explored with Ford's executives, engineers, and designers innovative ways of creating shareholder value. Rather than using economic metrics to try to reconcile apparent conflicts between environmental concerns and the bottom line, the company began to ask triple top line questions. Innovations would still need to be good for profits, but Ford's leaders began to examine how profits could be maximized by design decisions that also maximized social and ecological value.

Rather than trying to meet an environmental responsibility as efficiently as possible, Ford opted for a manufacturing facility that would create habitat, make oxygen, connect employees to their surroundings and invite the return of native species. The result: a daylit factory with a 450,000 square-foot roof covered with growing plants-a living roof. In concert with porous paving and a series of constructed wetlands and swales, the living roof will absorb and filter stormwater run-off, making expensive technical controls, and even regulations, obsolete. All this with tremendous first cost savings, with the landscape thrown in for free. According to Ford, the natural stormwater system alone, compared to conventionally engineered water treatment systems, proved out a first cost saving of $5 million.

This is the power of positive, principled design.

Toward a Cradle-to-Cradle World
Designs that celebrate this diverse range of concerns bring about a process of industrial re-evolution. Our products and processes can be most deeply effective when they resonate with the living world. Inventive machines that use the mechanisms of nature instead of harsh chemicals, concrete, or steel are a step in the right direction, but they are still machines-still a way of using technology to harness nature to human purpose. New technologies do not themselves create industrial revolutions. Unless we change their context, they are simply hyper-efficient engines driving the steamship of the first Industrial Revolution to new extremes.

Natural systems take from the environment but they also give something back. The cherry tree drops its blossoms and leaves while it cycles water and makes oxygen; the ant community redistributes nutrients through the soil. We can follow their cue to create a more inspiring engagement-a partnership-with nature.

Expressed in designs that resonate with and support natural systems, this new partnership can take us beyond sustainability-a minimum condition for survival-toward products and commercial enterprises that celebrate our relationship with the living earth.

We can create fabrics that feed the soil, giving us pleasure as garments and as sources of nourishment for our gardens.

We can build factories that inspire their inhabitants with sunlit spaces, fresh air, views of the outdoors, and cultural delights; factories which also create habitat and produce goods and services that re-circulate technical materials instead of dumping, burning, or burying them.

We can tap into natural flows of energy and nutrients, designing astonishingly productive systems that create oxygen, accrue energy, filter water, and provide healthy habitats for people and other living things.

As we have seen, designs such as these are generators of economic value too. When the cradle-to-cradle principles that guide them are widely applied, at every level of industry, productivity and profits will no longer be at odds with the concerns of the commons. We will be celebrating the fecundity of the earth, instead of perpetuating a way of thinking and making that eliminates it. We will be creating a world of abundance, equity and health and well on our way to an era of sustaining prosperity.

This is not a path one must travel alone. GreenBlue, a new non-profit organization established to encourage the widespread adoption of cradle-to-cradle thinking, is now providing the theoretical, technical and information tools required to transform industry through intelligent design. Its mission is to make commercial activity an ecological and socially regenerative force, and its tools are designed to empower designers to participate in this transformation.

And so we invite you to join us in leaving behind design strategies that yield tragic consequences and taking up a strategy of hope, a strategy that allows us to create a world of interdependent natural and human systems powered by the sun in which safe, healthful materials flow in regenerative cycles, elegantly and equitably deployed for the benefit of all. Doing so is ultimately an act of love for the future, an act that allows us to take steps toward not simply loving our own children, but loving all of the children, of all species, for all time.