Quotes by William McDonough

In planetary terms, we're all downstream.

Waste equals food, whether it's food for the earth, or for a closed industrial cycle. We manufacture products that go from cradle to grave. We want to manufacture them from cradle to cradle.

Honor commerce as the engine of change.

Commerce on the other hand is relatively quick
essentially creative, highly effective and efficient
and fundamentally honest
because we can't exchange value for very long
if we don't trust each other
So we use the tools of commerce primarily for our work
but the question we bring to it is
"How do we love all the children of all species for all time?"
So we start our designs with that question
Because what we realise today is that modern culture
appears to have adopted a strategy of tragedy
If we come here and say well I didn't intend to to cause
global warming on my way here-Its not part of my plan
Then we realise that it's part of our De facto plan
Because it's the thing that's happening
because we have no other plan

So if you don't have an end game of something delightful
then you're just moving chess peices around
if you don't know you've taken the king

So perhaps we can develop
a strategy of change that involves humility

So as Kevin Kelly pointed out
There is no end game, there's an infinite game
And we're playing in that infinite game
and so we call it Cradle to Cradle
Our Goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world,
with clean air, water, soil and power
-economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed-Period!
Which part of this don't you like?

Well I think
as designers
we realize that design is a signal of intention
but it also has to occur
within a world
and we have to understand that world
in order to imbue our designs
with inherent intelligence
so when we look back
at the basic state of affairs
in which we design
we, in a way, need to go
to the primordial condition
to understand the operating system
and the frame conditions
of the planet
and the exiting part of that
is the good news that's there
because the news is the news of
abundance
and not the news of limits
and I think as our culture
tortures itself now
with tyrranies
and concerns over limits
and fear
we can add this other dimension of abundance
that is coherent
driven by the sun
and start to imagine what that would be like
to share

...you have to design with positive principles and positive goals. Modern industrial culture doesn’t seem to have principles, except something like: “If brute force isn’t working, you are not using enough of it.” While its goals are unclear, its de facto goal appears to be to create ecological and human tragedy. If you play a game, you have to have a clear goal; in chess, you’re going to take a king. So we have an end game in mind because without this strategy becomes meaningless. What we seek is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean water, air, soil and power, that is economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed.

Peter Drucker has pointed out that it is a manager's job to "do things right." It is an executive's job to make sure "the right things" get done. Even the most rigorous eco-efficient business paradigm does not challenge basic practices and methods: a shoe, building, factory, car, or shampoo can remain fundamentally ill-designed even as the materials and processes involved in its manufacture become more "efficient." Our concept of eco-effectiveness means working on the right things -- on the right products and services and systems -- instead of making the wrong things less bad. Once you are doing the right things, then doing them "right," with the help of efficiency among other tools, makes perfect sense.