The Council watched as Elara dropped a piece of the outer shell into a glass of water; it began to soften, turning into a harmless starch.
She pulled a small lever, and the device blossomed open like a flower. There were no glues, no fused plastics, and no "monstrous hybrids" that trapped precious metals in unrecyclable casings. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Elara, a young industrial designer, stood before the city’s Council of Makers. She held a sleek, sapphire-blue laptop. "This," she announced, "is the Iris-7. It is not designed to be owned; it is designed to be borrowed." The Council watched as Elara dropped a piece
As she walked home, she passed a neighborhood park where the benches were made of compressed "technical nutrients" from old cars and the playground floor was a "biological nutrient" that smelled faintly of pine. In Oakhaven, the end of a product’s life wasn't a funeral—it was just a new beginning. Elara, a young industrial designer, stood before the
"We are no longer managers of decline," Elara said, her voice echoing in the sun-drenched hall. "We are creators of abundance. By mimicking the earth’s circularity, we’ve stopped digging holes in the ground and started growing our future."
In the city of Oakhaven, the word "trash" had been scrubbed from the local dialect. Following the principles of Cradle to Cradle , the citizens lived by a simple, radical rule: