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The second half of Cradle to Cradle has been even more inspiring and enlightening than the first. I think what I love so much about this program is how much I've learned when I thought, naively, that I knew so much about these subjects. The environment and sustainability have been very important to me since early college, but I've only learned more and grown more attached to them as I've progressed through the MALS program.
One of the most interesting examples of problematic design to me was the description of shoes. One company that I mentioned earlier, Simple, is moving in a new direction with shoes.
Ever since I started to learn about products such as shoes, carpet, computers, etc that permeate our everyday lives but whose production wreaks such havoc on the environment, I've been trying to "sell" my dad on more environmentally friendly shoes. He's in downtown Asheville, I tell him, and the folks there will eat them up.
In any case, the principles of design that I think are most important are:
Occam's Razor: The simplest solution is usually the best solution. Now, when I say "simple," I don't mean the easiest, necessarily. It's much cheaper and much easier to make shoes from new, toxic materials than it is to find recycled materials, organic ones, bamboo, etc, but those materials are however the "simplest." They come straight from the earth or are already waste, therefore, they make the most sense.
Go with the flow: This idea really took hold with me in the Slow Food course that Dr. Headington taught last year, at Goat Lady Dairy with Steve Tate. Steve was very adamant about how it makes more sense to, as it's put in Cradle to Cradle, let nature do the work. If nature's already moving energy in one way, why work against it if you can work with it? Why, for instance, use single-location monoculture farming when you can use crop rotation, animal rotation, etc that harness the free power you can get from nature?
Design for re-use: This seems obvious to us by now, but this simply is not done, and I think this course and this book have made that all too obvious. Items being sold today, especially items that contain expensive and rare materials, should be designed to be completely re-used and not thrown to the dump.
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