RR07

Chapter 4 of Cradle to Cradle really seemed to get to the heart of some of the most important issues the book is attempting to convey. The idea that waste equals food is one of the central messages that sustainable design addresses. As put by the book, "Nature operates according to a system of nutrients and metabolisms in which there is no such thing as waste." (92) If industry and society were to operate in this same manner the world would likely be a much healthier and cleaner place, and we would not have to face any/many of the environmental challenges we face today.

One of the ideas within chapter 4 was regarding the societies in which the Industrial Revolution began. As it says in the book, people personify goods/products by projecting their own vitality and mortality onto them. The book then poses the question of, "What would have happened, we sometimes wonder, if the Industrial Revolution had taken place in societies that emphasize the community over the individual, and where people believed not in a cradle-to-grave life cycle but in reincarnation?" (103) I found this section of the book interesting because I had never really considered the origins of the Industrial Revolution in this way. To me the industrial revolution was an inevitable result of progress and population growth, but to stop and consider how much differently the revolution would have played out and how much differently the world would be today had its origins been in a more collectivist culture poses many interesting questions. To this end, the industrial revolution was not just some cataclysmic event with one possible outcome for the way in which it would change the world. The  means through which it did so were directly representative of the cultures from which it came.