Too Much Too Often

A few things really jumped out at me when I was reading Cradle to Cradle. On page 18, McDonough and Braungart describe the Industrial Revolution retrospectively, and they write "Design a system of production that...puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved." This really struck me as an interesting and unique way to describe the problem of landfills. One of my major concerns about the environment is the abundance of garbage dumps. It just makes me sick to think about garbage piling up in massive amounts, and stories about ships sailing around with tons of trash looking for a place to dump their waste really worry me. I think McDonough and Braungart do a great job of putting this into perspective by saying that it's a needless waste of valuable materials - it just doesn't make sense that we'd want to bury valuable things and make them inaccessible to us. However, most people don't see the value of "trash," therefore they don't see the problem with throwing everything away. I was also shocked with the fact that "According to some accounts more than 90 percent of materials extracted to make durable goods in the United States become waste almost immediately." That seems insane to me, and it is very obvious that we need to redesign the current manufacturing system.

Another aspect of McDonough and Braungart's writing that really interested me was their take on using GDP as a measure of progress. In Deep Economy, Bill McKibben also wrote about the fact that some communities have very small economic growth and yet thrive in their own ways, while places with high economic growth can still have a very low quality of life for the majority of people living there. "[I]f prosperity is judged only by increased economic activity, then car accidents, hospital visits, illnesses (such as cancer), and toxic spills are all signs of prosperity." I had never considered this before, and it made me feel even more strongly about the necessity of developing different ways of measuring progress rather than through purely economic means.

One more thing that I connected with in this reading pertains to the effects that products have on us. I found it very depressing to read about how everything in our home is dangerous to us, from plastic toys to armchairs to carpets. It makes it seem impossible to live a truly healthy life. And yet it makes sense because it seems like more people have health problems than ever before. So many kids have allergies, asthma, ADD and ADHD, everyone seems to be getting cancer, etc. etc. So much research goes into finding cures for these things, but I've felt for a long time that it's more about changing everyday lifestyles than solely finding cures. My dad has always told me that I'll be healthier if I spend more time outdoors (granted, this was in Ohio where I think there's less pollution than in DC...). He told me that more people get sick in the winter because they spend a lot more time inside than outside, which isn't good for you. I believed him and saw that this often was the case, but it makes so much more sense to me now. Something that really shocked me was that "crude products - whether appliances, carpets, wallpaper adhesives, paints, building materials, insulation, or anything else - make the average indoor air more contaminated than outdoor air." This is scary!

I think it's really exciting that the new SIS building was designed by McDonough, and I wish all buildings could be so green and healthy. Unfortunately, I won't be here when it is finished :(

On a side note, I was listening to Phantom Planet's CD Raise the Dead as I was writing this, and their song "Too Much Too Often" came on. I think the lyrics "So now without stopping It's too much too often Out of the cradle And into the coffin" fit this topic perfectly!