D11

After reading “Cradle to Cradle” I think McDonough and Braungart have made excellent points. In our 2^nd to last class, Professor Nicholson asked us to think of a way to combat environmental issues. My group came up with an idea similar to McDonough and Braungart’s-fixating on an industry and finding new green methods to improve production and reduce cost.

The “Cradle to grave” method is ineffective and severely hurting our environment. We should be producing things that are biological and technical nutrients. I really like their ideas. I especially like the product to service idea. A product to service is Instead of assuming that all products are to be bought, owned, and disposed of by “consumer,” product containing valuable and technical nutrients---cars, TV’s, carpeting, computers and refrigerators, for example---would be reconceived as services people want to enjoy. IN this scenario customers would effectively purchase the service of such a product for a defined user period---say ten thousand hours of TV viewing, rather than a tv itself. When they finish with the product, or are simply ready to upgrade to a newer version, the manufacturer replaces it, taking the old model back, breaking it down, and using its complex materials as food for new products.

I don’t see the product to service idea being implemented in the near future, but I think it is a very smart plan. It makes economical sense to reuse old products. Reusing old products will only save money, but research has to be implemented to figure out how to do that.

I really liked McDonough and Braungart’s point about the chemicals being used in every product we interact with. It is scary to think about how whatever we touch, wear, or eat have chemicals on it. I thought McDonough and Braungart’s research in finding healthy textile chemicals for a nursery was a smart plan. It makes me worried to think about the potential harms these untested chemicals will have on my family and me.

MCdonough and Braungart are on the right track and their optimism is not misplaced. However that does not mean their ideas are ever going to be implemented into mainstream production and consumption techniques. I think for their ideas to work, more chemist need to start doing research on the science behind consumption. Their needs to be dozens of McDonough and Braungart’s, who can help pave the way for new technologies and ideas of consumption. There will have to be more cooperation between companies on sharing technology and ideas. Governments will also have to get involved and provide economic incentive to implement their ideas. Tax breaks are always effective. McDonough and Braungart optimism is not misplaced, change can happened, it just isn’t going to be easy.

-Tracey Swan

D12

Sorry, have to resend so you can read it!!

I found this assignment really funny because my family is very environmentally conscious. I was at Thanksgiving dinner for about an hour before my Mother started talking about recycling. She mentioned how she hated the East Coast recycling systems, because they never had any public bins to recycle cans and bottles. She then proceeded to talk about how atrocious New York was with its recycling. I found this conversation amusing, because I did not even have to bring up the subject of environmentalism and global warming. Here was a typical family conversation about the environment.

My family normally looks at recycling as the best most efficient way to save the environment. I brought up the fact that recycling did produce waste and that the system was inherently flawed. They liked this point, but I still said it was the best method we have currently.

I discussed Braungart and McDonough thinking that we should not waste but rather should look at new ways to produce from biological and technical nutrients. My family was very receptive to this argument. It was easy talking to them about the environment, because they agree on all these perspectives we’ve been discussing in class. They liked Braungart and McDonough’s argument, but did not think it was very realistic. We are cynical and so we believe that the system of consumption and waste or “cradle by grave” is too strongly grained in the foundations of our society. My mother thought that product to services was a great idea, but would never actually happened.

I also discussed with them Maniates viewpoint of the “Trinity of Despair.” My mother thought it was a really good point that social movements don’t occur by popular support. Civil Rights was a struggle by the African American community, but most of America was in support of segregation. She thinks that the problem here is that global warming is calling on the world to change their entire foundation. Segregation was an easy fix, if you think about it. It didn’t cost a lot to integrate people. But for the United States to change from a coal and gas emitting country to a green emitting country, it is going to cost large amounts of money and affects all businesses across the board. With that to consider, and the fact that international cooperation has been very difficult to achieve-global warming is a problem with many hard decisions that need to be made.

D12

I found this assignment really funny because my family is very environmentally conscious. I was at Thanksgiving dinner for about an hour before my Mother started talking about recycling. She mentioned how she hated the East Coast recycling systems, because they never had any public bins to recycle cans and bottles. She then proceeded to talk about how atrocious New York was with its recycling. I found this conversation amusing, because I did not even have to bring up the subject of environmentalism and global warming. Here was a typical family conversation about the environment.

My family normally looks at recycling as the best most efficient way to save the environment. I brought up the fact that recycling did produce waste and that the system was inherently flawed. They liked this point, but I still said it was the best method we have currently.

I discussed Braungart and McDonough thinking that we should not waste but rather should look at new ways to produce from biological and technical nutrients. My family was very receptive to this argument. It was easy talking to them about the environment, because they agree on all these perspectives we’ve been discussing in class. They liked Braungart and McDonough’s argument, but did not think it was very realistic. We are cynical and so we believe that the system of consumption and waste or “cradle by grave” is too strongly grained in the foundations of our society. My mother thought that product to services was a great idea, but would never actually happened.

I also discussed with them Maniates viewpoint of the “Trinity of Despair.” My mother thought it was a really good point that social movements don’t occur by popular support. Civil Rights was a struggle by the African American community, but most of America was in support of segregation. She thinks that the problem here is that global warming is calling on the world to change their entire foundation. Segregation was an easy fix, if you think about it. It didn’t cost a lot to integrate people. But for the United States to change from a coal and gas emitting country to a green emitting country, it is going to cost large amounts of money and affects all businesses across the board. With that to consider, and the fact that international cooperation has been very difficult to achieve-global warming is a problem with many hard decisions that need to be made.

-Tracey Swan

Favorite Quotes

1. “The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.”---Leopold Pg 132

2. “Consumption occasionally enters the discussion, but only in non-threatening ways, and most often in the form of calls for “green consumption” or in support of some moral imperative to consume recycled or recyclable products.”----pg 2 Princeton

These quotes covered a range of topics we discussed in class. I like the Leopold quote because it shows how we perceive the environment and how we need to change our perception to a more environmentally conscious one. I like the Princeton quote because it shows how often times we view being environmentally conscious by consuming green products, but this is a backwards thinking. We should not view being environmentally conscious in terms of consumption. We should cut back on our consumption.

-Tracey Swan

favorite quotes

my two favorite quotes from this semester are

1)"We need to be looking at fundamental change in our energy, transportation and agricultural systems rather than technological tweaking on the margins." by Michael Maniates

2)"being less bad is not being good" in Cradle to Cradle

These quotes depict our attitude on the environmental problem. We only do easy things by being less bad. However, doing easy things and being less bad would never solve the problem.

Favorite quotes

Here are my two favorite quotes:

"Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do," (p. 16 of Cradle to Cradle)

and the last paragraph of The End of the Wild:

"The end of the wild does not mean a barren world. There will be plenty of life. It will just be different: much less diverse, much less exotic, far more predictable, and -given the dominance of weedy species -probably far more annoying. We have lost the wild. Perhaps in 5 to 10 million years it will return."

Favorite Quotes from the Semester

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from the semester, as well as explanations as to why they are my favorites.

1) This quote comes from page 396 of Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman. This is from the speech by the 12 year old girl from Canada, Severn Suzuki, at the plenary session of the Rio Summit.

"My dad always says, 'You are what you do, not what you say.' Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you. Please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you."

I really like this quote because it comes from someone who is young, and educating the young people will be instrumentally important when it comes to making a real difference for the environment. Also, the way this quote gives us all a challenge and a way to go forth is truly inspiring. I think that this quote is thoughtful and insightful, and it really stuck out to me when reading Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

2) This quote comes from page 186 of Cradle to Cradle by McDonough and Braungart.

"What would it mean to become, once again, native to this place, the Earth--the home of all our relations? This is going to take us all, and it is going to take forever. But then, that's the point."

I really like this quote because it really hits at the heart of the problem: we as humans no longer see ourselves as a part of the planet and as just one of its many creatures, and instead we go around trying to mow down and change the Earth to fit our needs. I love how this quote brings us back to that understanding that we are a part of the Earth, that the Earth is a part of us, and that we and the Earth need to coexist in harmony.