For publishers in Portland, Oregon

Book Review: Cradle to Cradle

It's no secret that our industry is not an environmentally friendly one. Even though there are many books about saving our forests, we still cut trees down to print them on. Between the ink, glue, bleach, and paper, it's a messy industry. While most of us have just gritted our teeth over this and kept going, there are some who are finding innovative new ways to move forward.

Enter "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. Their theory is that if we reconceive (even my spell check is having trouble with that word!) new solutions we can create a system where everything is designed with the greatest possible benefit. Take aluminum cans for example, they can be recycled, but since the bevel edge is a slightly different alloy (so it can be stronger) than the rest of the can, the melted down mix produces a much weaker "down-cycled" aluminum. The same goes for paper with the fibers getting weaker each time they are recycled. This book proposes that we find new ways of doing it that let us create materials that can be recycle of the same strength.

The proof of concept: the book itself is made out of recyclable plastic. It's pages are thicker than the average book, and boy is it heavy, but for a prototype of a new system, this is brilliant! Its pages are waterproof—a nice convenience here in Portland. This book is definitely something to check out. I think the "paper" could benefit from a little texturing and they'll have to get that weight down somehow without compromising the opacity, but this book really is a book publisher's Holy Grail.