Page 55 from: April 2015

55April 2015

German chemist Professor
Michael Braungart has gained a
high profi le as the lead author of
the best-seller ‘Cradle-to-Cradle
– Remaking the way we make
things’.
The book, which he wrote together
with his best friend and research
partner William McDonough in 2002,
challenges the one-way-street man-
ufacturing model that ‘dates to the
Industrial Revolution and casts off as
much as 90% of the materials it uses
as waste’.

Healthy business case
Braungart looked to nature for his
inspiration. He argues that waste in
nature acts as a fertiliser to create
new life, like with trees. ‘Nothing is
superfl uous,’ he observes. Sustain-
able design could yield the same
result, with product components of
the future envisioned in such a way
that they enable optimal reuse and
recycling. ‘It is not enough to mini-
mise waste; that is the wrong objec-
tive,’ says Braungart. ‘We have to
be better than that. We have to pre-
vent it.’
Blown away by the new concept, actor
Brad Pitt launched the Make it Right
Foundation in 2007 which constructs
homes for people in need according
to the highest green standards of
building. Such philanthropic ventures
argue a healthy business case because
cradle-to-cradle is ‘extremely profi t-
able’, Braungart stresses.

Early adopters include start-ups and
pioneers like European textiles man-
ufacturer Desso, which launched the
EcoBase range of carpet tiles that are
both toxic-free and up to 97% recy-
clable or reusable. Meanwhile, Ecov-
er won the 2014 Innovator Award for
Product Design and Leadership in
recognition of its PlantPlastics bottles
made from 75% sugar cane and
25% post-consumer high-density
polyethylene.

‘Cradle-to-Cradle passport’
At present, more than 2500 products
have received C2C certifi cation from
Braungart and McDonough’s non-
profi t Cradle to Cradle Products Inno-
vation Institute. Well-known support-
ers of the C2C standard include
Maersk Line, which has created a
‘Cradle-to-Cradle passport’ for its
latest Triple-E vessels – ‘a fi rst for the
shipping industry’ entailing an online
database that provides a detailed
inventory for identifi cation and recy-
cling of components ‘to a higher
quality than is currently possible’.
Following critical acclaim for the
Braungart/McDonough book and the
generous support of A-list celebrities,
cradle-to-cradle has become an ideal
stronger than a standard. Although
humbled by the positive response,
Braungart adds: ‘It’s like the industry
has discovered that the world is not
actually fl at. You can’t go back from
that. You can only go forward.’
www.c2ccertifi ed.org

Most specialists reach the top
of their game only once they
have been in the game for a
while. This is not the case with
Dutch visionary Boyan Slat, who
at barely 18 years of age invent-
ed a device that might just hold
the key to recovering the huge
volumes of plastics from the
world’s seas.
His solution is The Ocean Cleanup, a
venture that hinges on using the
power of the oceans’ currents to
enable ‘passive collection’ for recy-
cling.

High capture
This approach requires a different
mentality, stresses the former aero-
space engineering student. ‘Why
move through the oceans if the
oceans can move through you?’ he
asks pointedly. By attaching an array
of fl oating barriers and platforms to
the sea bed, plastics can be concen-
trated prior to extraction from the
water. This collection principle would
be ‘100% driven by the natural
winds and currents’ and would
essentially see the so-called Great
Pacifi c Garbage Patch ‘completely
clean itself’.
Slat predicts his method could free
the oceans of some 55 containers
worth of material per day. ‘Using

computational fl uid dynamics simula-
tions, we calculated that approxi-
mately 80% of the plastic encounter-
ing the boom will be captured,’ he
notes. Better yet, the scalable array
of moorings and booms is designed
for large-magnitude deployment,
covering millions of square kilome-
tres without moving a centimetre.
‘Thanks to its projected high capture
and fi eld effi ciency, a single gyre can
be covered in roughly 10 years,’ the
young entrepreneur explains.

Storm-resistant
‘It will only cost Euro 4.50 for every
kilo of plastic to be removed,’ he
stresses. This makes Slat’s current-
driven system potentially 7900 times
faster and 33 times cheaper than
conventional methods. Furthermore,
the clean-up system is said to be
storm-resistant. ‘Using both computer
simulations and scale model tests, we
engineered a boom that can operate
in over 95% of conditions,’ he says.
Slat he has been recognised as one
of the 20 Most Promising Young
Entrepreneurs Worldwide and
secured a United Nations Champions
of the Earth award. He also raised
over US$ 2 million via a crowd fund-
ing campaign to kick off the pilot
phase of his project.
www.theoceancleanup.com 

Boyan Slat:
harnessing the power of nature

Michael Braungart:
doing more, not less

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