William McDonough. (Isaac Hernández)

Imagine a world where disposable plates were made of rice husk, implanted with seeds. In this world, the signs would read, “Please litter,” as the plates would fertilize and plant new crops.

William McDonough has fully imagined this world. Using examples from nature, he wrote “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things,” with German chemist Michael Braungart. The book itself is made of completely reusable plastic. Dip its pages in hot water, and the biodegradable ink comes off so that you can print something new.

McDonough dreams of a world in which ecology, economy and equity go hand-in-hand.

“Industry still believes that sustainable and green is not economical,” McDonough says. “Many business people listen to these ideas with interest, but then say, ‘It looks good, but how much is it going to cost me?’ I keep telling them that innovation is not only good, but very profitable in the midterm, plus it makes your company socially and environmentally relevant.”

In our current “Cradle to Grave” model, we approach the world with eco-efficiency, meaning a slower destruction of our environment. “Instead of making our impact less bad, why don’t we focus on making it 100 percent good?” asks McDonough. Our current practices of recycling are really “down cycling,” because the quality of the material worsens in the recycling process, and in many cases it requires the use of toxic chemicals, he says.

Why can’t we be like ants, which have a larger biomass than human beings in this Earth and have been industrious for millions of years, yet they nurture plants, animals and soil? In contrast, as he says in the book, “human industry has been in full swing

Why can’t we be like the cherry tree, which takes from the environment and at the same time feeds it? A cherry tree is not efficient, it produces more blooms than it needs, but it’s effective. Rather than eco-efficiency, the authors invite us to take on eco-effectiveness.

“Efficiency’s become a sacred word. What if we’re doing things wrong, even if they’re efficient?” McDonough asks. “In nature nothing is disposable, and everything forms part of a regenerative cycle. That’s true efficiency, with one purpose: to maintain the ecosystem and make life possible. In nature, everything is a nutrient. ‘Waste’ is a human invention.”

Currently, we design packaging that lasts much longer than the products they are designed to protect. What if we could use rice husks to make the same products that are currently made of Styrofoam? Actually, it’s already being done in Korea. The rice husk packaging material can then be reused to make bricks.

In the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) concept, products are designed considering the present and the future of the materials. Everything’s a nutrient; even plastic, if we think of it as something that will feed future products, instead of just ending in a landfill. McDonough calls plastic, glass and metal the “technological nutrients”; cotton, wood and cork are “compostable biological nutrients.”

“The first requisite is to separate materials according to their metabolism,” says McDonough. “The second one, which I call nutrient management, is to decide what are we going to do with them after use. The third is that they’re manufactured with renewable energy. The fourth is to minimize water use, and maximize its reutilization. The last, and not least, is that products are made with social responsibility.”

McDonough has worked on C2C designs, such as the Think chair from Steelcase, made with 37 percent recycled materials, and with 98 percent of its content being “upcyclable.” So far, about 300 products have gained the C2C certification.

Many other products such as complete buildings, construction materials, carpets, artificial turf, roofs, diapers, etc., have been designed following this standard. China’s now adopting the C2C concept, as well as India, some parts of Europe and the U.S.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if, rather than bemoaning human industry, we had reason to champion it?” asks the authors. “If environmentalists as well as automobile makers could applaud every time someone exchanged an old car for a new one, because new cars purified the air and produce drinking water. If new buildings imitated trees, providing shade, songbird habitat, food, energy and clean water. If each new addition to a human community deepened ecological, cultural, as well as economic wealth?