Greengaged

In November 2008, Professor Michael Braungart will launch a new UK edition of ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things’, the prolific and best-selling manifesto “calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design.” Greengaged are excited to announce that the new edition will be published by Random House, and in the new introduction Michael writes;

“In the nineteenth century various writers used the phrase ‘the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world’ - and to them this meant that the way we raise our children would do more to change the world than empire-builders and new industries. The hands that rocks Cradle to Cradle today fit the phrase, I think, as our agenda is also about finding nurturing solutions very different to the often outrageous initiatives that harm the environment, sometimes by the same sort of institutions. Cradle to Cradle tried to put human being in the same ’species’ picture as other living things - and to us, a misuse of material resources is not just suicidal for future human generations but catastrophic for the future of life.” (Braungart, M. 2008. Cradle to Cradle).

On Monday evening, Professor Michael Braungart will close the penultimate day of Greengaged, with a lecture at the Royal Society of Arts that will highlight fields of materials assessment, waste and energy balances, and life-cycle design. Braungart’s lecture will be followed by a conversation with science and culture of materials writer Philip Ball.