Flutterby™! : Cradle to Cradle

On Wednesday afternoon I was in San Anselmo with a coworker late, and on the way out stopped at Whyte's Booksmith. Always dangerous. I ran across Cradle to Cradle, something I hadn't ordered because it was a $25 paperback. Finished it last night, and I've got mixed feelings.

On the one hand, I like the concept, the notion that growth isn't bad if the waste products are beneficial, that products can be viewed as processes across their complete lifecycle and that design should take into account reasonable methods for recycling, rather than, as the authors term it, the current "downcycling" that occurs with most plastics and papers.

On the other hand, while they give a few half-hearted examples, they don't get into the things that'd be necessary to make this more than just a happy manifesto: What sort of economic and social pressures could make this happen? What are the downsites of companies controlling a product through its entire lifecycle?

I'll be going through it again, I think the ideas are important enough to try to suss more out of it, so I've got mixed feelings.