I read Joel Makower’s interview with William McDonough on Green Biz and felt that I had met a kindred spirit—about packaging, that is.

McDonough is a designer, an architect, an entrepreneur, and a leader in sustainable development. He co-founded Cradle to Cradle, which developed a system to rate and constantly improve products: “The Cradle to Cradle product certificationCM framework first asks what is the given product’s function: food for natural systems or food for industry. In our world, everything is conceived of, and designed to be, food.” (From “Zero Is Not Our Hero” on the “What Is Cradle to Cradle?” page of the website.)

As a proponent of Zero Waste, I don’t love that headline, but I do like C2C’s focus on the restorative potential of design and industry. I would love to live in a world in which all products contributed to the environment instead of using it up—which is what many of them do.

Anyway, it seems that McDonough is doing all sorts of cool things, so read the interview and follow a link or two.

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Note: The link at Zero Waste goes to Eco-Cycle. I used to volunteer for them and still recycle lots of stuff at the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials (the CHARM).