Environmental Issues

The Truly Healthy environment is not merely safe but stimulating. - William H. Stewart.

Introduction
True to the quote, Cradle to Cradle, a book by by German chemist Michael Braungart and U.S. architect William McDonough, puts forward a non-accusatory and innovatory approach to stimulation along with sustainability, to consumerism, and to fabrication. It recommends that environmentalists and industry can complement and support each others goals. The mental nutrients are as enticing as the biological and technical nutrients they are offer as examples. According to the authors, humans should try to explore natural systems instead of trying to do more with less resources.

The authors follow the policy Practice what you preach and hence the pages of the book present a prototype for future books. They believe that their book, which is printed on polypropylene paper, is a model for the next industrial revolution. The pages are prepared using plastic resins. Being waterproof, the pages are bright white, and the ink has been designed for reuse. The pages can be washed off and the ink can also be recaptured for future use. Recycling can be done in most communities. Al though not perfect, at least it manages to be a role model for the upcoming implementations.

Premise or Thesis
Sustainability is todays buzzword in design. The green market is expanding rapidly and eco-friendly design is helping companies to stand out from the competition. Green designers  a new breed of environmentally conscious engineers and architects  are rethinking entire product life cycles, from the industrial manufacturing processes, to what happens at the end of the life of the product. They aim to build non-polluting factories, which make products that are safe for the environment and 100 percent recyclable, by designing new industrial methods and scrutinizing every raw material that goes into fabrication. The assertion in the book explores designing products that, once deemed no longer usable by the consumer and can no longer be recycled, it re-enters the environment releasing all of its nutrients to either a biological community or a technical community. Materials to be recycled are either brought to a collection center or picked up from the curbside, then sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials bound for manufacturing. The authors say that one should allow the industry to enrich ecosystems by producing materials that contribute beneficial nutrients to the ecosystem and hence discontinue depleting our limited resources as well as polluting our environment with toxic waste. Another prime subject of the book includes accepting that materials used in industry are actually part of a nutrient cycle and finally designing for reuse and disassembly which involves encourages easier maintenance as well as recycling product components. They suggest that every product (and all packaging they require) should have a complete closed-loop cycle mapped out for each componenta way in which every component will either return to the natural ecosystem through biodegradation or be recycled indefinitely.

Describe the evidence the author presents to support the thesispremise, including the eventsissues examined, their extent, impacts and potential solutions.

It is time for our civilization to rethink the way we live, work, travel, design, build and consume. To think that we are doing our part simply by driving a hybrid car and recycling our paper, bottles, and cans is a dangerous illusion. For years, environmentalists have been telling us to do more with less in order to make change happen. This is simply not enough. We are going to have to fundamentally change the way we design our products, industries and cities. Our current recycling methods are inefficient and only serve to perpetuate the cradle-to-grave manufacturing model that weve been using for hundreds of years. C2C certification, is the brainchild of one of the leading lights of the movement, the authors vision differs from that of traditional environmentalist. Rather than seeking to reduce consumption, they want to help bring about a new Industrial Revolution the reinvention of industrial processes to produce clean solutions and create an industry where everything is reused  either returned to the soil as nontoxic biological nutrients, or returned to industry as technical nutrients that can be infinitely recycled. The goal is to remodel industry and architecture to emulate the balance found in natures ecosystems. It may sound an impossible dream, but hard-headed Fortune 500 companies are already working with him. In 2002 the Swiss textile manufacturer Rohner Textil made headlines, cut costs and won new business when the company teamed up with Mr. McDonough and U.S. textile design firm Designtex to produce a biodegradable upholstery fabric that they describe as safe enough to eat. While Rohners textile mills already complied with Swiss environmental regulations, its fabric trimmings had been declared hazardous waste. To produce the new fabric, Climatex Lifecycle, a fundamental re-design took place in every aspect of production, from the factory work space, to the elimination of all toxic dyes and chemicals, to the sourcing of raw materials. It is woven from the wool of free-range New Zealand sheep and from ramie, an organically grown fiber from the Philippines. The manufacturing process generates no pollutants. Extensive testing identified just 16 out of 1,600 color dyes that met the consortiums sustainability criteria. As a result, Rohner claims that its factory waste water now tests cleaner than the water coming into the plant. The fabric trimmings are recycled with a consortium of strawberry farms, which use the biodegradable scrap as mulch for ground cover and plant insulation. Moreover, the elimination of regulatory paperwork reduced production overheads by 20 percent.

Argument
The idea that growth can be good is anathema to most environmentalists. Take a look at nature, the pair says, and youll see that growth is not only good, but necessary -- that natures very abundance is what environmentalists (and the rest of us) depend on and celebrate. The key is the right kind of growth -- and the key to that is better design. To understand what that means, take the book itself The plastic itself can be reused at the same or a higher level, rather than down cycled, which is what a lot of recycling really is. (Down cycling is reusing a product at a lower quality level, usually because of degradation or contamination by other materials. Office paper becomes toilet paper, for instance.).

Despite the unusual materials, reading McDonoughs and Braungarts manifesto will be a familiar experience to environmentalists, because the book, like the larger struggle to preserve the environment, is alternately remarkably encouraging and deeply depressing. The authors analysis of recycling is very bad. For example, recycling plastic bottles into that groovy fleece jacket means bringing toxic antimony into contact with your skin. Oops. Being less bad is not being good, McDonough told the National Press Club last spring. If you want to go to Mexico, and youre driving toward Canada, even if you slow down youre still going to Canada. But just when youre beginning to despair about environmental solutions, you encounter an idea that makes you sit up in your recycled plastic chair beneath your compact fluorescent light bulb. We often view a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision.

Is it convincing
It is not just convincing but also complimenting and provoking the readers to implement if not all but few. We all know the mantra, the 3Rs. Life-cycle analysis, green chemistry, and economic experts are among the many assessing the destructiveness of this cycle. What if we could rethink, or reinvent the entire process When we recycle the process is destructive, nutrients are not returned to any system, and the final product is of a lesser quality. Degradation of the nutrients or resources occurs at each step of production. Waste also occurs at each transformation. Can the degradation and waste be eliminated and can enrichment occur Something I read the other day relates to this process. Rather than always fighting ants and killing them to keep them out of the house, wouldnt it be just as effective and less harmful to tempt them away. The concept is as simple as rethinking my management of the problem.

The authors elaborate upon the Industrial Revolution describing associated social and economic benefits, but also explaining how the original Industrial Revolution placed us in this position of scarce resources and polluted, deprived environments. They challenge us to consider a new paradigm, one that provides nourishment rather than depletes.

Is this a topic with which criminologists should be concerned Why or why not
Environmental crimes, noncompliance and risks create significant harm to the health of humans and the natural world. Yet, the field of criminology has historically shown relatively little interest in the topic. The emergence of environmental or green criminology over the past decade marks a shift in this trend, but attempts to define a unique area of study have been extensively criticized. In the following paper, we offer a conceptual framework, called conservation criminology, designed to advance current discussions of green crime via the integration of criminology with natural resource disciplines and risk and decision sciences. Joining hands with C2C looks like a best option for both. While the criminologist finds the crimes, it should also due upon some importance as to what needs to be done to avoid. That is when the C2C practice comes into picture. I feel both criminologists and C2C methods should go hand in hand.
 
Would you recommend this book to (i) friends, (ii) relatives, or (iii) other criminology students Why or why not.

I recommend this book to anyone who endures frustration with the traditional 3-Rs approach and goes crazy at the amount of waste we generate yet senses that other options exist. You may or may not agree with the authors premise, you may or may not think its possible (we of little faith), but you will agree that the hypothesis presented intrigues. Today, we can learn a lot about the companies behind the items we purchase, and once we know, its hard not to make conscious -- and conscientious -- choices. Companies are starting to grasp this, and Cradle to Cradle is one blueprint for how they, and the rest of us, can profit from that consciousness. The authors conclude with a challenge, be prepared to innovate further and accept that change is always difficult but success offers rewards and can be electrifying.

Biography
McDonough, one of the authors is an architect, is the founder of McDonough  Partners and has received a slew of awards for his environmental designs. Perhaps most impressive, he was hired by the Ford Motor Company to turn the firms original manufacturing plant into a green automobile factory, a 2 billion undertaking.

Braungart, a German chemistry Ph.D., cut his teeth leading Green peaces chemical division, then went off to found the German Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency, which helps companies design products with an eye to their entire life cycle.

To McDonoughs and Braungarts credit, much of their book is devoted to explaining how to translate that theory into practice. Their strategy is eminently graspable, for it is based on the straightforward principles that waste is food, that there is no away, that everything is part of a cycle. What McDonough and Braungart add to that chorus is a cogent argument for designing our way toward that economy. McDonough and Braungart are careful not to be too glib about technical cure-alls, noting that the sort of change they propose is going to be incremental, spurred on by individual commitments to environmentally sound living. Consumers increasingly recognize that the dollars they spend support a whole system, and that they can choose between organic food and factory farms, coal burning plants and wind generation, fair trade and exploited. McDonough a