Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.
A great read about the fallacy of recycling and how few things are any greener than before, written by industrial engineers. The overriding ideal is a belief that the only way to make people use things that are really recyclable is to make them even better than what exists. No tradeoffs. No downcycling water bottles into “green” plastic park benches or amorphous speed bumps. Water bottles should break down into new water bottles.
An extreme stance, but the book itself isn’t even printed on paper. The pages are made of a strange matte, plastic-resin hybrid that can safely be put through the normal paper recycling process or dropped in a bathtub without ruin or eaten without ill-effect. They’re serious. (And they do discuss how that technology compares to a material-less eReader.) If you see it in a bookstore, pick it up just to feel it.
The highlighted line is my personal, cynical go-to when listening to current events.
