Cradle-to-cradle or Cradle-to-grave
I always thought I had a fantastic environmental conscience and I had doing everything right and much more than most people did about the environment. I remember when I was a kid to watch programs about natural environment. Then came the classes on Environmental Law when I have introduced non-organic materials recycling to my home, and then the German classes, when I have been introduced to the severe effects of globalization and technology: the export of technological waste to countries, like Ghana, in Africa, where people (mostly children) manipulating the garbage pursuit for noble metals. Often these metals are fused to other materials, and for this we have to process them to separate them, which creates toxic smoke, not only to the environment, but also to those poor souls who are victims of our consumerism.
Video about – It is possible activated English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycliIDxknGE
Illustration: https://blogs.bsg.ox.ac.uk/2016/08/17/the-advent-of-south-south-cooperation-in-dealing-with-global-e-waste-challenge/
Electronic trash is not only sent to Africa. As shown in the figure below, the main destinations are in Latin America, Africa, and in the poorer or more populous countries of Asia (China and India).
Well, friends, the problem is not just theirs, it's ours too.
The industrial model adopted more than 200 years ago is linear production, ie, extraction - manufacturing - use - disposal (today, sometimes recycle, other incinerate - Europe mainly).
But take away where? Everything is here, within our planet, from which we expect rain to supply us with water, and earth to grow our food.
With that in mind, the Cradle to Cradle concept has emerged. “A phrase invented by Walter R. Stahel in the 1970s and popularized by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their 2002 book of the same name. This framework seeks to create production techniques that are not just efficient but are essentially waste free. In cradle to cradle production all material inputs and outputs are seen either as technical or biological nutrients. Technical nutrients can be recycled or reused with no loss of quality and biological nutrients composted or consumed. By contrast cradle to grave refers to a company taking responsibility for the disposal of goods it has produced, but not necessarily putting products’ constituent components back into service.” (http://www.sustainabilitydictionary.com/cradle-to-cradle/)
"Being less bad is not being good - Sustainability today is synonymous with minimizing negative impact, reducing ecological footprint, neutralizing emissions, being efficient ... that is, continuing to do things the same way, only with less intensity. Slowing down without changing direction only transfers problems to the future: Being "less bad" is not being good. (Taken from Cradle to Cradle in Brazil - http://www.epeabrasil.com/?page_id=23)
The methodology proposed by the Cradle to Cradle "has already been adopted by companies such as Puma, Philips and Alcoa, and has inspired buildings such as NASA's Sustainabilty Base and the Ford River Rouge industrial plant, as well as the urban development of regions of China (Huangbaiyu) Netherlands (Venlo) and Denmark. From the results obtained, C2C has been considered a powerful tool for the construction of a Circular Economy - inspired by the understanding that cyclic logic is the only one that can be sustained in the long term on our planet. " (http://www.ideiacircular.com/c2c-cradle-to-cradle)
VENLO: FIRST CRADLE-TO-CRADLE REGION IN THE WORLD:
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