Concepts

At MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry) Braungart and McDonough use the following terms and concepts to describe their design paradigm and the protocol for selecting raw and other materials.

Biological metabolism

The natural processes of ecosystems are a biological metabolism, making safe and healthy use of materials in cycles of abundance.

Biological nutrient

A biodegradable material posing no immediate or eventual hazard to living systems that can be used for human purposes and can safely return to the environment to feed environmental processes.

Cradle to Cradle design

Cradle to Cradle Design is MBDC's design paradigm, based on clear principles and the pursuit of ‘value’, as well as MBDC's processes for product and material research and development, and for educating and training. At a fundamental level, the new paradigm proposes that human design can learn from nature to be effective, safe, enriching, and aesthetic. Cradle to Cradle Design models human industry on nature's processes, in which materials are viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms. Industry must protect and enrich ecosystems—nature's biological metabolism—while also maintaining a safe, productive technical metabolism for the high-quality use and circulation of mineral, synthetic, and other materials.

Cradle to Cradle design protocol

A scientifically based, peer-reviewed process used to assess and optimise materials used in products and production processes in order to maximise health, safety, effectiveness, and high quality reutilisation over many product life cycles.

Design chemistry

The incorporation of scientific and ecological knowledge into product and process design.

Design for disassembly

Designing a product to be dismantled for easier maintenance, repair, recovery, and reuse of components and materials.

Downcycling

The practice of recycling a material in such a way that much of its inherent value is lost (for example, recycling plastic into park benches).

Eco-effectiveness

MBDC's strategy for designing industrial processes such that they are safe, profitable and regenerative, producing economic, ecological and social value.

Eco-efficiency

The strategy for ‘sustainability’ to minimise harm to natural systems by reducing the amount of waste and pollution human activities generate.

Ecological intelligence

A product or process designed to embody the intelligence of natural systems (such as nutrient cycling, interdependence, abundance, diversity, solar power, regeneration).

Life cycle assessment

A technique for assessing the potential environmental impacts of a product by examining all the material and energy inputs and outputs at each life cycle stage.

McDonough Braungart Index of Sustainability

MBDC's service and design tool that evaluates a product's materials and processes so that redesign for sustainability can take place. During the process of redesign, the Index can be used to continuously track and monitor progress toward sustainability.

Next industrial revolution

This emerging movement of production and commerce eliminates the concept of waste, uses energy from renewable sources, and celebrates cultural and biological diversity. The promise of the Next Industrial Revolution is a system of production that fulfils desires for economic and ecological abundance and social equity in both the short and long terms, becoming sustaining (not just sustainable) for all generations.

Product of consumption

A product designed for safe and complete return to the environment, which becomes nutrients for living systems. Effective, clean ‘consumer’ products can be developed using the Cradle to Cradle design strategy without running the risk that their materials loose their viability at the end of their life cycle or have to be recycled.

Product of service

A product that is used by the consumer, but owned by the manufacturer. The manufacturer thus maintains ownership of valuable material assets for continual reuse while the customer receives the service of the product without assuming its material liability. Products that can utilise valuable but potentially hazardous materials can be optimised as Products of Service.

Technical metabolism

Modelled on natural systems, the technical metabolism is MBDC's term for the processes of human industry that maintain and perpetually reuse valuable synthetic and mineral materials in closed loops.

Technical nutrient

A material that remains in a closed-loop system of manufacture, reuse, and recovery (the technical metabolism), maintaining its value through many product life cycles.

Unmarketables

Materials to be eliminated from human use because they cannot be maintained safely in either biological or technical metabolisms.

Waste = food

A principle of natural systems and of MBDC that eliminates the concept of waste. In this design strategy, all materials are viewed as continuously valuable, circulating in closed loops of production, use, and recycling.