Design 21: Social Design Network

First of all I would never recommend "Cradle to Cradle" as a trustworthy source of information on the environmental impact of particular materials. “Cradle to cradle is a manifest-like publication that tries with success to balance the pessimistic and the optimistic approach to environmental design. There is nothing wrong with that nor am I critical about the self-promotion that is so well interwoven in the text, but it is not a scientific publication and many of the statements are simply wrong, including the justification on the use of polypropylene as printing material. This being said, most biodegradable plastics like the starch based plastics you featured are a mixture of petroleum based plastics combined with a starch based structure. The structure will over time turn into compost, but the plastic remains. Of course it has no integrity left and takes on a powder like form, but the original quantity is still there. I am familiar with the so called behaviourist argument. People throw plastic around and so instead of changing their bad manners let’s do something about the consequences of bad behaviour. Yet the result is an increased competition between food and material or energy crops, and an encouragement for continued bad habits and waste of a valuable material. Another aspect bothers me. I agree that it is difficult to spread all the available information on materials and their environmental impact. But your contribution on these water bottles gives the impression that we have solved a problem and that the rest is a question of implementing it; which is not the whole story. Much like glass, that is often considered completely recyclable and is never though of as a material that each and every time you recycle it requires the initial amount of energy that was needed to make glass out of sand and soda in the first place. Glass by the way is also thrown out and to a large extend never recycled. Do we hear about attempts to make biodegradable glass? If we want to get somewhere on the proper use of materials we have to start ignoring selective information and require full information. Green washing is growing exponentially and especially among professionals we should be aware of it and fight it!