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Making the Future

We live in a manufactured world. But is it some kind of utopia, full of iPods, Swiffers, and pre-cut fruit? Or is it a proverbial hell on earth, physically destroying half the planet while eating away at the souls of the other half? For Michael Braungart and Godfrey Reggio, both assertions are gross understatements.

101 manufacturing making the future

Braungart is arguably the world's leading environmental chemist, and the coauthor of Cradle to Cradle, which lays out an alternative paradigm for manufacturing in which everything isn't just recycled but "upcycled." It's an optimistic vision that has seduced more than a few captains of industry—including executives at Ford, Nike, and Herman Miller.

Reggio is the auteur filmmaker behind the Qatsi trilogy—three plotless, dialogueless feature films that each set a thousand images (together worth one word, he says) to a sweeping score by Philip Glass. While spectacular and seductive, their vision of the world is terrifying in its revelation of the beauty of destruction. Koyaanisqatsi, released in 1983, uses as its title a Hopi Indian word meaning "life out of balance."

They shared their opposing cosmologies of manufacturing, and what they promise for the future.

Michael Braungart

What’s the benefit of cradle-to-cradle manufacturing?

Cradle to cradle means everything that gets consumed—food, shoe soles, brake pads, detergents—is designed to be a biological nutrient. For example, we designed ice-cream packaging that’s not just biodegradable, but contains seeds from rare plants. So when you throw it away, it supports the other species on this planet.

So cradle to cradle becomes a path to sustainability?

It’s not about sustainability. Sustainability is just a minimum. If I asked you, “How’s your relationship with your wife?,” and you said, “Sustainable,” I’d say, “Oh, I’m so sorry for you!” The environmental movement has gotten to the point where we think that human beings are somehow a pain for the planet. But our first task should be to become native to this planet. The biomass of ants is four times greater than the biomass of human beings. But they’re not an environmental problem, because they’ve learned how to process nutrients so they’re beneficial to other species. So this isn’t an ethical problem—it’s a design problem. We can make things that are not just good for the bottom line, but good for the top line: good for the economy, good for the environment, and good for society, all at the same time.

How does cradle to cradle change what’s manufactured?

I call it total beauty. When things are made by slave labor or child labor, then I’m just not happy to have it in my hand. I don’t like it. Or when things are toxic and accumulate in mothers’ milk, it’s not just about being unethical; it’s being unintelligent. It’s chemical harassment. We analyzed Mattel children’s toys, for example, and in the worst case some of these things are chemical weapons. So if you want to look for weapons of mass destruction, you don’t need to go to Iraq—you can find them in Barbies.

How does cradle to cradle suggest changing how things are manufactured?

It’s a different relationship with your customer. It’s no longer saying, “You better not buy my products so I can be less bad.” It’s about saying, “What effect do we want to achieve?” Nike was attacked in 19tk [as per Hon’s decision] for poisoning its women workers in Vietnam. The traditional environmentalists said, “They need to put in filters!” The human-rights people said, “They need to wear masks!” And we said, “They need to use better materials.”

This is an optimistic view?

I’m into celebrating human achievement. It’s not just about sustainability. Every activity can be beneficial—either for biological cycles or for technical cycles. Cradle to cradle means that we can support human beings and nature at the same time.

Godfrey Reggio

What comment are your films making about manufacturing?

In Koyaanisqatsi, we were talking about the Wal-Martization of the planet. It was like looking at one geologic layer of commodity piled upon another. To me this is the essence of manufactured living. In the world of Powaqqatsi, we were looking at a handmade world, a world that is the very antithesis of global manufacturing—a world that is local rather than global, a world that lives in tradition, a world whose motto is “divided we stand.”

Are you placing a value on one above the other?

I’m not suggesting any answers, because I think the question becomes the mother of the answer. I’m not talking about going back to the tepee or the cave, or to an unrelentingly simple, handmade way of living. Those times are gone.

How do you see the times we live in now?

On a grand scale, we can say we are in the third epoch of human existence: the first being the natural, the organic, hunter-gathers; the second being culture, agriculture, empire. That world has come to an end in the 20th century. Now we live in the epoch of technology.

Are you using technology as a stand-in for “manufacturing,” or even for “capitalism”?

I’m not entering into the arguments of right and left. Technology is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. Einstein said, “The fish will be the last to discover water.” I can certainly say without exaggeration that the human will be the last to know technology, because it’s our new terra firma. Technology is something we live, rather than something we use. It’s become the new comprehensive host of life—like old nature was. And while the old idea of nature certainly exists, it has been reduced to the resource that we consume to inflate the synthetic world in which we live.

Is it hard to go about your daily life seeing the world like this?

I take myself as the subject of all these intensities. I am that fish that swims in the water. I’m trying to become conscious of it, by stepping outside of it, but of course that’s not completely possible. We all live in a trance-altered state, as if a spell is over us. We’re not addicted to technology—that’s a lot of bunkum—but I think the evidence is overwhelming that life is predicated on it, and that it’s homogenizing the world into a supermanufactured environment—a wonderland. But I can’t reflect on it all the time or I wouldn’t be able to live. I’d evaporate in a cloud of smoke! I just got off an airplane last night. It all seemed very normal.

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