I found McDonough and Braungart's Cradle to Cradle to be enjoyable and interesting for many reasons. Firstly, it was such a novelty that the cover was waterproof; it was nice to be able to read a book while waiting for the AU shuttle in the rain. Secondly, my interests, and hopefully my future career plans, are in green chemistry, and scientific fields. The work that the authors have done was inspiring, and their innovative ideas about how to redesign society to create a system that mimics nature got my wheels turning about sustainable design and the future of technology in the environmental solution. While most of the articles we have read for this class have condemned the use of science and technology in addressing climate change, it was refreshing to know that there is a place for human intellectual creativity in the debate that does not aim to just increase our growth and repair as we go, but completely overhauls our current paradigms of consumptions.

Cradle to Cradle was optimistic, but not overly so. It is the healthy dose of optimism that makes the solutions proposed in the book more likely to be implemented. While most of the readings in the class have identified the problem, but not the solution, or have presented a solution so impossible and futile that it depresses the readers, McDonough and Braungart lay out answers that are completely feasible and sensible. This provides an outlet for action, without having to change the environmental ethics of a considerably anthropocentric population.