Thinking Green: Rethinking Materials

Rethinking materials is one of the sections in the Book "The Designers Atlas of Sustainability". This is a great book, written like an atlas with different sections and ideas on this subject. It gives information for the user to take and interrupt. One of the subjects and concepts in the ecology section is "Rethinking Materials".

The idea in this section recommends that we "..adopt the idea of metabolisms for human material flows. The scheme involves classifying all materials as either organic nutrients or technical nutrients." This would be classifying materials / products into categories, ones that can go back into the ecosystem (organic nutrients, example: brick, wood and leather) and ones that need to be in a closed-loop system (technical nutrients,examples metals, plastics and glass) and continuously be recycled.

With these designation we would know what items can go back into the ecosystem without contamination. There are some organic materials that should not be thrown out as they have been corrupted during the manufacturing process and then would have to remain in the closed-loop system. By having both Cradle to Cradle materials and these designations on products we would insure a healthier Eco-system.