Be More Good, Not Less Bad

I attended a talk last night by author William McDonough titled Cradle to California, hosted by the Commonwealth Club. He wrote his book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, 8 years ago. To hear his voice and his passion on those same topics was really inspiring. He really means it, he really feels it. My take away from last night: We need to stop being less bad because it’s simply not working.

His point is if your intention is to travel North and you’re driving 100 miles per hour South, you will not solve your problem by reducing your speed to only 20 miles per hour. You are still going in the wrong direction. We are still going in the wrong direction. We need a new design plan, and we need to define our intentions. His rallying cry is to instead design our buildings and our products to be like trees (nutrient producing, energy renewing, diversifying, evolving). If we don’t create a world that includes and loves all 9 billion of us, then those that grow up hating the world will destroy it. We’ve already managed to go down that path.

It’s all in the book, you should read it if you haven’t. Or read this Vanity Fair article about it. It’s fascinating, and it is all good common sense. He’s launched the Green Products Innovation Institute to create a database of good materials, a team of assessors, and a product certification. The challenge was very well underscored to me last night. It was written 8 years ago. We designers, clients, entrepreneurs, teachers and consumers need to make the shift and commit to creating more good.