Three stars doesn't quite do justice to this book. Its ideas merit five stars, but the text sags a bit and tends to repeat itself a lot, thereby losing some power. What the text lacks in eloquence, however, it makes up for in tactility. I couldn't stop petting this book. Its "synthetic paper" pages felt so resilient and smooth and sleek. The authors chose to make a recyclable, "treeless" book from from plastic resins and inorganic fillers. It is waterproof and with a certain treatment its pages can be wiped clean and reprinted with a new text. It has the capacity to be recycled as a book many times over or it could be reincarnated as another plastic item... ....To my experience only vellum and leather beats the overall sensory experience this text offers.I first learned of McDonough--an architect with an amazing, cavernous mind--when I read a sermon he delievered at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City entitled "Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things." The piece is brilliant and beautiful and I wish everyone would read it. It contains many of the ideas presented in Cradle to Cradle in a much more compelling, succinct way. Here is a link to an awkardly formated, but well-proofed pdf of the piece:Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things by William McDonoughThis is an HTML version that might be easier to look at in some ways but is sloppy with lots of typos:Design, Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things by William McDonoughIn Cradle to Cradle, McDonough (an American architect) and Braungart (a German chemist) uncover the way that bio-destructive practices permeate every aspect of our lives. They describe how toxic materials are hidden in almost everything around us: our fabrics and textiles, our machines, our food containers, our food!, our toiletries, our technology, our furniture, our buildings, etc, etc. It's truly staggering. Their section on water was also particularly memorable. I learned that households are responsible for much more water pollution than I had previously thought. (I formerly saw water pollution as primarily an industrial transgression.) But no, we flush loads of chemicals down the drain in the form of household cleaners/soaps, other home maintenance materials, art supplies, etc. Additionally, we flush chemo, hormones, and other medicated effluents into our waterways from our homes and hospitals. And now, with our culture's obsession with "antibacterial" cleansers, we're suffusing our waste water with bacteria-killing elements that prevent the breakdown of our sewage and slop. ***After reading this section, I went out and bought all non-toxic, biodegreadable (this is key!) soaps and household cleaners: I'm particularly in love with Mrs. Meyers and Method products. For antibacterial action, I've heard it's best to stick with good old fashioned alchohol (applied with friction), which does the job and then becomes inactive in 15 minutes.****Though McDonough and Braungart expertly outline the disastrous, bio-destructive systems we have created, their book is only about these problems insofar as it seeks to understand them--because it believes we can fix them all through good design. Good design (in an environmental sense) has been nearly dead for over one hundred years and McDonough and Braungart are trying to revive it. Because the industrial revolution furnished us with the fossil fuel power to override natural systems and natural energy flows, design has paid little attention to natural systems and natural energy flows for the past century. For example, architects no longer situate buildings, their windows, and surrounding trees with regard to the patterns of the sun, instead they disregard this free and powerful energy source and design our buildings with artificial systems--electric lights, AC, central heat, etc.--to regulate light and temperature indoors. And this is how we design most things and most products... But, we pay through the nose to live this way--to live within poor, unintelligently designed infrastructure that is ignorant of the natural systems and energy flows in which it exists (like a foreign body or alien cancer)--sacrificing huge financial resources, large swaths of land, our health and the health of other living things....even (I believe) sacrificing the peace of nations. In a grand metaphorical sense, this book wants to take us back to the old New England saltbox house. One that was intelligently built of natural, local materials, with south facing windows and nearby stand of deciduous trees that allow copious sunlight in during the winter months (when the sun is low and the trees are bare) and then alternatively blocks the sunlight during the hot summer months (when the sun is high and reflects off the deep eaves of the roof and is absorbed by the fully maned trees). And I for one want to go there.