William McDonough Quotes

We have carbon in the atmosphere. That is a material in the wrong place problem. It's just like what I said about the lead. Lead in the biosphere is not good. Carbon in the atmosphere (over natural levels) is a problem.

Recycling is more expensive for communities than it needs to be, partly because traditional recycling tries to force materials into more lifetimes than they are designed for - a complicated and messy conversion, and one that itself expends energy and resources. Very few objects of modern consumption were designed with recycling in mind. If the process is truly to save money and materials, products must be designed from the very beginning to be recycled or even "upcycled" - a term we use to describe the return to industrial systems of materials with improved, rather than degraded, quality.

In the end, the question is not, how do we use nature to serve our interests? It's how can we use humans to serve nature's interest?'

We realized we don't have an invention, that's why we gave it away.

This idea that things are designed to go back to nature or industry for ever which is our articulation of these two metabolisms are actually a discovery not an invention.

Design is the first signal of human intention.

If you continue to act like an artist as you get older, you'll increasingly feel pressure. People will question your actions.

The surest way to heal an eco-system is to connect it to more of itself.

Waste equals food, whether it's food for the earth, or for a closed industrial cycle. We manufacture products that go from cradle to grave. We want to manufacture them from cradle to cradle.

Modern culture appears to have adopted a strategy of tragedy. If we come here and say, I didn't intend to cause global warning, it's not part of my plan, then we realize it's part of our defacto plan because it's the thing that's happening because we have no other plan.

I suggest we take our heads out of the tar sands and look up to see the sun. We don't own it, but it provides us all with great, endless value. So, too, the wind. These free, renewable sources of 'energy currency' are perfect partners to what we own together.

The eco-effective future of industry is a world of abundance that celebrates the use and consumption of products and materials that are, in effect, nutritious - as safe, effective, and delightful as a cherry tree.

How do we love all children, of all species, of all time?

I think the job of an original designer is to inspire.

Not everything needs to be recycled.

Schumacher posited that people must make a serious shift in what they consider to be wealth and progress: "Ever-bigger machines, entailing ever-bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever-greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom.

And to use something as elegant as a tree? Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, makes complex sugars and foods, changes colors with the seasons, and self-replicates. and then why don't we knock that down and write on it?

Richard Meier told me, 'Young man, solar energy has nothing to do with architecture,'

If anybody here has trouble with the concept of design humility, reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage.

I am very focused on large-scale deployments of renewable power and how we're going to get this done. Imagine our military bases covered with solar thermal collectors that could generate steam and electricity.

Ultimately a regulation is a signal of design failure ... it is what we call a license to harm: a permit issued by a government to an industry so that it may dispense sickness, destruction, and death at an "acceptable" rate.

Sustainability takes forever. And that's the point.

I am working right at both the levels- with the most wealthy clients in the world, but also the poorest. I spend half my time designing for people that have nothing.

Designing renders visible our hopes and dreams. It is the first signal of human intentions.

How do we love all the children of all species for all time?

Honor commerce as the engine of change.

I see that idea that we need a new form as something critical. I mean, we do need to invent and not be benchmarking all the time. That's important to me.

All these corporate reports say they want zero carbon. Well that is ridiculous, because you are not telling us what you are, you are telling us what you are not.

Carbon in your body - that's good thing. In a tree, it's good. In the atmosphere, it's a bad. Nature wants to sequester carbon in biota. And when we burn it, we release it. It's the wrong system.

As long as human beings are regarded as "bad", zero is a good goal. But to be less bad is to accept things as they are, to believe that poorly designed, dishonorable, destructive systems are the best humans can do. This is the ultimate failure of the "be less bad" approach: a failure of the imagination. From our perspective, this is a depressing vision of our species' roles in the world. What about an entirely different model? What would it mean to be 100 percent good?

Designers are inherently optimistic people who try to make the world a better place

Art is about going a little nuts ... Kids do art for fun. It's playing.

I think as designers we realize design is a signal of intention, but it also has to occur within a world and we have to understand that world in order to imbue our designs with inherent intelligence.

The problem I have with carbon as a bad thing issue, is that people go out and say they want to be zero carbon. You see it everywhere.

If you don't like carbon, if you want to be zero carbon, then you might as well shoot yourself, dry up and blow away because you are carbon.

We achieved our mission to the moon. Let's look home from that lofty perch and reimagine our mission on Earth - that is what we need to do here. Together, we can upcycle everything. The world will be better for our positive visions and actions.

Imagine walking into a grocery there is a jar sitting there with a lid on it saying it's not carbon. That is ridiculous. It's an empty jar.