Not a buzzword. Has nothing to do with "aggressive recycling". It's a true paradigm shift. Much better explanation comes from Michael Braungart and William McDonough's Cradle to Cradle book explaining what the difference is.

https://www.amazon.com/Cradle-Remaking-Way-Make-Things/dp/14...

Cradle to Cradle (2010) is a great read on this subject, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0012KS568 . It's written by a couple industrial designers and I suspect it would be widely interesting to the HN audience.

I recommend 2 older books on the topic:

Cradle to Cradle

Natural Capitalism

Appreciate other recommendations.

The wild part, in the grand scheme of things, is that their message is significantly true. They're not convincing consumers that they're being anti-consumers; they're actually consuming less by buying more durable goods that last longer and have a better lifecycle.

It's not only true, the truth of it makes it incredibly authentic, and if there's anything that appeals to the market these days, it's authenticity.

The supposedly 'crazy idea' that sustainability is, in fact, economically sustainable and even beneficial is a pretty amazing thing. It's a way to be more successful; it is not a cost. For more, check out Bill McDonough's excellent book "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things" -- http://www.mcdonough.com/speaking-writing/cradle-to-cradle/

Side note, I grew up extremely close to Patagonia for about 25 years (literally—went to kindergarten there), my father was highly influential in the leadership and direction of the company, helped come up with the "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign and led many sustainability efforts. Ask me anything.

Even metal is very difficult to recycle, especially cars - it's often very difficult to separate the non-recyclable materials from the recyclable materials.

Cradle to Cradle (McDonough) addresses these concerns. The book is printed with a hot-water soluble ink on infinitely recyclable plastic.

Most recycled plastic bottles end up in carpet, which cannot be recycled again - and is thrown out.

Paper I wouldn't be so concerned about if we used something a little more environmentally friendly to farm and process - like hemp (the processing step for tree-paper contains many noxious chemicals that are unnecessary in processing hemp for paper).

A lot of plastic recycling isn't recycling - it's downcycling. Plastic bottles become carpet becomes landfill fodder. It just delays the inevitable.

A lot of this has to do with the dyes used in plastics manufacturing. It also has to do with the limited mutability of most plastics - the quality of the plastic after one cycle of recycling (in this example, plastic bottle -> carpet) is reduced. Once it's turned to carpet, it becomes difficult to recycle this again due not only to this reduction in quality, but also because it becomes difficult to remove the plastic carpet material from the carpet backing. Attempting to recycle it again would result in a further inferior product - and it would be much more expensive (diminishing returns).

I'll say it again: Recycling as we know it is downcycling. It's good, in that it reuses the raw materials - but only for so many cycles. Eventually it ends up in the landfill.

The only true solution would be to manufacture consumables as if they're in a closed ecosystem - either able to easily be reused, or easily put into the natural ecosystem. Read "Cradle to Cradle" by William McDonough for more information (the book itself is printed on special infinitely recyclable plastic paper; the ink can be removed by boiling the book).

Cradle to cradle, by William McDonough & Michael Braungart

http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm

About environmental design of, well, everything. Might fall into the "technical" category, though.

The problem with products is not that they're made from materials like aluminum or silicon or glass but that these materials are combined in ways that make it very difficult to extract them from the finish product when recycling.

Apple has gone a long way to making parts that are more "pure", where, for instance, the chassis of new computers is milled from a solid piece of metal that, once removed, can be shredded and reformed with no more difficulty than a drink can. The same goes, in principle, for the glass.

The plastics in most computers are made from an exotic blend of materials and are not easily reprocessed.

What we need more than cardboard computers is standards on how to manufacture products so they can be unmanufactured in the end and rebuilt into other things. The goal here is for 0% loss in the recovery cycle. Anything below 100% is not, by definition, sustainable.

If that sounds impossible, consider that the natural ecosystem in which we all live tends towards a 100% recycling rate. There are very few natural byproducts that do not have a recovery path. For instance, most trees produce enormous amounts of "garbage" in the form of leaves but these are almost immediately recycled.

Given that the natural world has been doing this for literally billions of years, there is much to be learned.

A great book on this subject is Cradle to Cradle (http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm) which proposes radically re-thinking our industrial cycle.

I highly suggest reading the book "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" by Michael Braungart & William McDonough. Essentially the book explains how things currently are made in a "Cradle to Grave" style, meaning products are sourced from the earth and then deposited back in an unusable form. Cradle to cradle would be where a product is made and when it's life is up we reuse the product's materials to build a new product. This is not how recycling works. Recycling could be better described as "downcycling" in that every time say plastic is recycled it's grade is lowered and it becomes less useful due to being mixed with other plastics and contaminates. The book explains this much better than I and is also a great primer on material science.

Here's a simple example of how a consumer product can be created in a cradle to cradle fashion.

1) Raw materials are sourced from the earth.

2) Raw materials are manufactured together in a way where they can easily be seperated.

3) Product ends up with a consumer.

4) Product lifecycle ends.

5) Manufacturer pays consumer for the product.

6) Manufacturer uses product's raw materials for step 2.

I read a book recently called "Cradle to Cradle" (http://amzn.to/Y9iRqm) and it argues against the existing, linear cradle-to-grave lifecycle of consumer items. That instead of taking the "reduce reuse recycle" approach to sustainability, sustainability needs to be achieved from the most basic foundations of design.

It asks the question, what if instead of avoiding waste, we could “eliminate the concept of waste” altogether? What if instead of “working hard to be less bad,” we could create things with completely positive intentions and effects?

Muji is going the right direction with small and achievable design changes to address "high hanging fruit" that actually create substantial impact, though more importantly, they invite the notion that we can live in a sustainable world without reducing our ability to produce and consume to the fullest extent.