“Goodness Will Have a Brand…”

From c2ccertified.org:

And that brand will look a lot like Cradle to Cradle CertifiedCM.

That’s the conclusion reached by Eric Schmidt,executive chairman of Google and vice president of the Schmidt Family Foundation in the inaugural Schmidt-MacArthur lecture at London’s Royal Institution of Great Britain. The evening saw a prestigious gatherings of sustainability and innovation thought-leaders, including Institute co-founders William McDonough and Michael Braungart (Cradle to Cradle), Janine Benyus (Biomimicry), Walter Stahel (the Performance Economy), and Ellen MacArthur (Circular Economy).

With the merger of these concepts, said Schmidt, “you are going to see something that looks like a lot like Cradle to Cradle Certified. In other words … goodness, ultimately, will have a brand.”

An audience of 450 business leaders, academics, and entrepreneurs also included the first year’s class of Schmidt-MacArthur Fellows taking part in program established to “develop the skills and innovative thinking required to map out the next economy.”

Introducing her husband, Schmidt Family Foundation president and Institute director Wendy Schmidt said, “Eric shares with me the faith that the transformation we are talking about is not only possible and necessary, it’s inevitable. We are both optimist.  We say we can’t win the fight against climate change and we can’t turn back the tide of rapacious extraction of raw materials from this planet, the thoughtless destruction of the earth’s life support system without the kind of innovation that will come from programs like this fellowship.”

Ms. Schmidt also paid tribute to the assembled visionaries, with special a special nod to McDonough and Braungart for planting “the seed that has grown into what we are doing now. They published their book in 2002 and it remains the thought leader, the most seminal book, the most complete philosophical statement of the work that is launching the circular economy.”

Citing the planet’s limited resources as “the key understanding we have come to in this century”, Schmidt called for a worldwide conversation about sustainability. “It’s time to have some innovations in product design, in the supply chains, in manufacturing techniques that the world needs if we are going to maintain a standard of living for those of us who have a high one and if we are going to increase the standard of living for the rest of the planet.”