Cradle-to-Cradle Design
Winners of EPA/MBDC Cradle-to- Cradle Design Challenge announced at Pack Expo Las Vegas

How can e-commerce shipping packaging and its associated logistics be designed to work together to solve--rather than increase or even avoid--environmental problems?

This was the premise for a design challenge issued by the EPA Office of Solid Waste, in partnership with McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC): The Cradle-to-Cradle Design Challenge for E-Commerce Shipping Packaging and Logistics. The goal was to develop more sustainable packaging services through the design of environmentally preferable packaging and the complementary systems needed for value recovery using cradle-to-cradle principles. The Web-based design challenge was issued in April 2003 (www.mbdc.com/challenge). Submissions received by the due date of August 21 were judged in September. Winning entries will be announced at Pack Expo on Monday, October 13, outside the Design Challenge booth (S-5624) in the Showcase of Packaging Innovations. William McDonough and an EPA senior official will present each winner an award from EPA. The student entry winners will also receive prize money donated by FedEx.

"In funding this project," says Marjorie Buckholtz, director, EPA's Office of Innovation Partnership and Communication, "we were looking for innovative thinking about environmental challenges throughout EPA, with particular focus on reducing or eliminating waste. We believe that this design challenge--which was a partnership between EPA and MBDC--will help spark continued design innovations and enhance customer awareness of their role in helping to advance pollution prevention and resource conservation in the IT and packaging world. We are hopeful that through the combined expertise, cooperation and commitment of all actors involved in the packaging chain, we will be able to work towards reinventing the packaging system in the U.S."

Support for the design challenge came from EPA's Office of Innovation Partnership and Communications. While there are many packaging design competitions each year, the Cradle-to-Cradle Design Challenge recognizes that an integrated approach between the system logistics (proposed life cycle), material selection, and packaging design is needed to ensure truly sustainable material flows. Using a design challenge to solicit ideas from the industry regarding the creation of solutions to address packaging as a significant solid waste and resource issue was a new approach for EPA, and one that acknowledges the critical role of design in addressing environmental issues. One of the goals of the design challenge was to highlight those life cycle considerations that need to be included at the design stage of product/packaging development if truly sustainable packaging services are to be developed.

Students, educators, professional packaging designers, industrial designers, and manufacturers from North America and Europe submitted entries. Designs explored ideas for turning packaging production and use, and other industrial activity, into ecologically intelligent systems using cradle-to-cradle principles.

The challenge specifically targeted the shipping packaging associated with the suburban home delivery of Internet-purchased books, including the systems for packaging recovery. Emphasis was placed on life cycle considerations and the role of design to influence ecological impacts throughout the life of packaging. Designs considered the systems needed to facilitate cyclical material flows; the ecological and human health characteristics of materials; and how physical design facilitates reuse and recyclability.

Cradle-to-Cradle Design is a proactive, positive approach to environmental sustainability based on the proposition that industrial activity can be redesigned to have only positive environmental impacts, following principles found in the systems of nature. Rather than seeking to minimize environmental harm, Cradle-to-Cradle Design aims to maximize social and ecological health, as well as economic productivity, through human activity that is intelligently designed. This includes viewing materials and products as healthy nutrients to be safely reused and circulated in the 'metabolism' of either industry (a technical metabolism) or nature (the biological metabolism).