William McDonough Quotes

Quotes about:

• To eliminate the concept of waste means to design things-products, packaging, and systems-from the very beginning on the understanding that waste does not exist.

  William McDonough

  Mean, Design, Understanding

  96 Copy quote

• 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?

  William McDonough

  Nature, Food, Writing

  94 Copy quote

• The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

  William McDonough

  Thinking, Age, Stones

  "Eco-designs on future cities" by Jo Twist, news.bbc.co.uk. July 14, 2005.

  65 Copy quote

• 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?'

  William McDonough

  Use, Climate Change, Ends

  55 Copy quote

• Sustainability takes forever. And that's the point.

  William McDonough

  Forever, Sustainability

  29 Copy quote

• 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.

  William McDonough

  Earth, Want, Waste

  65 Copy quote

• Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do.

  William McDonough

  Nature, Taken, Animal

  William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2010). “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, p.16, Macmillan

  67 Copy quote

• Here's where redesign begins in earnest, where we stop trying to be less bad and we start figuring out how to be good.

  William McDonough

  Trying, Be Good, Earnest

  William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2010). “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, p.177, Macmillan

  52 Copy quote

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

  William McDonough

  Dream, Design, Firsts

  70 Copy quote

• If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.

  William McDonough

  Thinking, Design, Forever

  "William McDonough: Godfather of Green". WNYC Studio 360, March 18, 2008.

  34 Copy quote

• 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.

  William McDonough

  Community, Mind, Trying

  71 Copy quote

• Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.

  William McDonough

  Air, Water, Goal

  "God Is Green: Why ‘Less Bad’ Is Not Good" by Cathleen Falsani, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 2, 2010.

  51 Copy quote

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

  William McDonough

  Way, Heal, Eco

  40 Copy quote

• 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.

  William McDonough

  Motivation, Inspiration, Humility

  59 Copy quote

• We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision. What if humans designed products and systems that celebrate an abundance of human creativity, culture, and productivity? That are so intelligent and safe, our species leaves an ecological footprint to delight in, not lament?

  William McDonough

  Creativity, Intelligent, Vision

  55 Copy quote

• We are proposing buildings that, like trees, are net energy exporters, produce more energy than they consume, accrue and store solar energy, and purify their own waste, water and release it slowly in a purer form.

  William McDonough

  Water, Tree, Energy

  6 Copy quote

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

  William McDonough

  Business, Optimistic, People

  23 Copy quote

• We celebrate the cherry tree not for its efficiency but for its effectiveness - and for its beauty. Its materials are in constant flow, and all those thousands of useless cherry blossoms look gorgeous. Then they fall to the ground and become soil again, so there's no problem

  William McDonough

  Nature, Fall, Effectiveness

  32 Copy quote

• I can't imagine something being beautiful at this point in history if it's destroying the planet or causing children to get sick. How can anything be beautiful if it's not ecologically intelligent at this point?

  William McDonough

  Beautiful, Children, Intelligent

  "William McDonough: Godfather of Green". WNYC Studio 360, March 18, 2008.

  7 Copy quote

• Design is inherently optimistic. That is its power.

  William McDonough

  Optimistic, Design

  27 Copy quote

• Honor commerce as the engine of change.

  William McDonough

  Change, Honor, Commerce

  William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2010). “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, p.150, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  William McDonough

  Thinking, Order, Design

  14 Copy quote

• Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!

  William McDonough

  Fun, Environmental, Fusion

  32 Copy quote

• You don't filter smokestacks or water. Instead, you put the filter in your head and design the problem out of existence.

  William McDonough

  Inspiring, Water, Design

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  William McDonough

  Tragedy, Culture, Warning

  25 Copy quote

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