Green Machine
Portrait: William McDonough
Rohner Textil had a problem. The Swiss manufacturer was on the cutting edge of environmentally friendly manufacturing. Even so, the government was telling the firm that clippings from its bolts of fabric were too full of poisonous dyes and chemicals to bury or burn. What the Swiss regulators were saying, in effect, was that the furniture being shipped to offices around the country was upholstered with toxic waste.
That was 1993. Today, thanks largely to the work of American architect and designer William McDonough, Rohner is a model of Earth-friendly commerce. McDonough and his team systematically analyzed almost 8,000 commonly used chemicals for toxicity--not an easy task since most suppliers considered the information a trade secret. They narrowed the list down to a mere 38 that they graded "environmentally intelligent"--substances that weren't just nontoxic but actually had a positive impact on the environment. When the new line of natural-fiber fabrics first went into production in 1995, the factory was as impressive as the cloth it produced: Workers no longer had to wear protective clothing. The wastewater was cleaner than the local drinking water. A garden club had started using the factory's waste as mulch. And demand for the new Climatex Lifecycle fabric boomed.
It seems counterintuitive--good for the environment, good for people, and good for the bottom line? But as far as the 51-year-old McDonough is concerned, working with business is the only way to change the world. In his new (and totally recyclable) book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, coauthored with German industrial chemist and former Greenpeace activist Michael Braungart, McDonough is working to convince environmentalists and capitalists they have a common cause. What sets the architect apart is his rejection of traditional environmentalist attitudes. He discards as simplistic the notion of growth vs. no growth. "Most environmentalists are saying be less bad," he says. "We think growth is good. It just has to be something you would be happy to see growing." What makes him happy? Truly recyclable materials (as opposed to "downcycling," the common type of recycling where each incarnation of the material is lower quality until it ends up in a dump) and buildings that find an equilibrium between environmental sensitivity, livability, and the bottom line.
Son of invention. Born into the world of commerce--his father was an executive in the Seagram's liquor company--McDonough is no stranger to the culture of business. But it was as a Yale architecture student during the energy crisis of the early 1970s that he became concerned about the business world's indifference to the environment. "The professional architecture world did not have the word `ecology' in their textbooks," he says.
McDonough sketches his philosophy in a triangle, with economic returns, social good, and environmental benefits at the three corners. Instead of the either-or trade-offs typically associated with the environmental movement--build green or build cheap--McDonough believes it is possible to aim for the middle of the triangle, maximizing all three factors. Traditional thinking is that the way to build green is to, say, build a sealed box that costs less to cool because you can't open the windows and it's dark inside. But McDonough is convinced that with creative architecture and design, appealing workspaces can coexist with environmental efficiency and remain sound business decisions.
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