Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

McDonough and Braungart use the tree as a symbol of the ideal manufacturing process. In looking closely at trees and the role they play in the earth’s ecosystem, the authors find the perfect “cradle-to-cradle” model: “The tree, among the finest of nature’s creations, plays a crucial and multifaceted role in our interdependent ecosystem. As such, it has been an important model and metaphor for our thinking, as you will discover” (5).

In Chapter 3, the authors examine the cherry tree at length. The praise its “regenerative abundance” (78) and the fact that, as the tree grows, it sets other beneficial processes in motion: It provides food for both humans and microorganisms, it produces oxygen for clean air, and it stabilizes the soil. As a tree manufactures “product,” the more its immediate surrounding environment is enriched. Unlike modern industry, trees are thoroughly integrated into the communities they serve: “The tree is not an isolated entity cut off from the systems around it: it is inextricably and productively engaged with them. This is a key difference between the growth of industrial systems as they now stand and the growth of nature” (79).

Also in Chapter 3, the authors tell the story of a “forbidden cherry tree,” which is when a group of residents in Hanover, Germany banded together to plant a cherry tree on their street, despite it being against community zoning laws: “What the residents viewed as delightful, the legislature viewed as a risk.