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Recycling has been the standard practice of environmentalists for decades. But on a recent episode of Supper Club with Tom Bergeron, guest Kelly Meyer discussed how to make recycling even greener.
The term "cradle to cradle," coined by Michael Braungart and William McDonough in their book Cradle to Cradle, stands for the idea that materials made with unhealthy chemicals and unnatural substances when recycled remain unhealthy and toxin laced. However, substances that are nourishing to the ecosystem remain nourishing, rather than harmful. As Meyer explains, "if you start with crap, you end up with crap."
Authors and environmental consultants, Braungart and McDonough own McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) in Charlottesville, Va., a design firm dedicated to "the Next Industrial Revolution" through intelligent design. The firm utilizes Cradle to Cradle Design using strategies that are "eco-effective" rather than simply eco-efficient. The firm is working to create buildings that are net energy exporters, producing more energy than they consume and purifying their own waste water releasing it slowly in a purer form. In the first Industrial Revolution buildings only took away from the environment producing unnecessary waste and pollution. In the Next Industrial Revolution, building practices will be such that buildings put as much positive substances back into the earth as they originally took out.
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