Wow, thanks for posting it. It was truly inspirational.

Can we get more bioneers speeches up on treehugger please?

--
editor note: I'd certainly like that, but I'm not sure where to find them. If you know how, let us know.

I am a student of his co-author Michael Braungart and it is refreshing to see how McDonough's rhetoric style differs from Braungart's (which is also great but sometimes confusing to unexperienced listeners).

JKE,

I've never heard Braungart speak, but I would really like to. Do you have any videos of speeches/presentations by him?

Some big kudos to you and the captioned speaker from
Andrew Leonard/'the Way the World Works' @ Salon.
Looking forward to listening but so far am reminded of Cherrhy's
3 commandments to "have children, teach them well & take care of your planet".
Always loved that.
Nice to have THIS recycled.

Can't get sound on my G5 with the McDonough video. Any ideas?

Thank you.

You'll find Braungart speaking here:
http://www.parc.xerox.com/events/forum/archive.php

Look for Feb 16, 2005. Video is reliable and mp3's are great listening in the car.

Also check out "Solar PV: The Path from Niche to Mainstream" by the CTO of Sunpower and "Nanotechnology: New Horizons for Solar Power" by Ilan Gur from University of Berkeley who discusses the intersection of nanotechnolgy and solar power generation.

Peruse the archives. There's something for everyone. Many happy hours of listening in the car.

The video is not all good...

Advances in technology and the greening of the world are very exciting. For one, being able to distribute information like this presentation in an audio visual form to almost anywhere in the world is a breakthrough. William McDonough and Michael Braungart have without doubt contributed significantly to the the world of green design, but fall short of offering a green design solution.

As a product designer I couldn't see how green design could percolate into everyday life without a fundamental shift in public education and policy. However, in my view, architects have it easy. They have accountants on their side – an accountant can amortize the savings in heating, lighting and air-conditioning costs of a building over 40 years and conclude that a green building will be more cost efficient and worthy of investing more in green design to realize the savings - so for architects, green design is an easy sell.

Product designers have it tough because any typical consumer product has many negative impacts on the environment and society. Almost always the consumer doesn't carry that cost directly but collectively, usually through city or property taxes. If the consumer could see the cost directly, like the developers of buildings do, it would be an easy sell, but they don't - the city just takes away whatever you put in your trash or flush down your drain. So why pay more for a green product when the “I can't afford it”or the “so what if I do, it its not going to make any difference anyway” attitudes prevail.

Cradle to Cradle falls short of being the path to green because it needs to be balanced with consumption (i.e. The eco footprint which W.M. so eagerly dismisses at the end of the video.) Food = waste is a good principle in moderation. W.M.'s sell to industry is green design = more. But in reality, if we make all of our disposable containers out of starch (and consume more), industry will grow more GM potatoes and GM corn (industrial crops not fit for consumption) and grow less food, so the top of the pyramid (us) can carry on overconsuming and the bottom of the pyramid (the poor) have less food, and the waste that should = food feeds vermin (rats and cockroaches).

I have seen some of MBDC's examples of green design and they are improvements without doubt but they fall very short of what W.M preaches. Another twist I don t like is the business principles that are targeted at corporate growth, one of the reasons we have a mess in the first place. For example, while I am glad there is no antimony in my chair fabric - a green innovation - this fact does not make the chair fabric recyclable (although WM claims it does): (A) because there is no infrastructure to recycle it and (B) if the manufacturer did get the material back the technology doesn't exist yet to recycle it, let alone to remove the pigments. So while this is an improvement it is not Cradle to Cradle as advertised.

GreenEngineer---

Here's a link to some more (and recent) video of Michael Braungart speaking at a conference in The Netherlands (Nov 2007). Hope this helps.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1B8fTujfL30&feature=PlayList&p=BCF25E3E4308A4E6&index=2

EJ