By William McDonough FAIA, IntFRIBA
I am an architect who, in 1984, called a major U.S. carpet manufacturer and asked what was in its carpet and glue, and whether it would “offgas” once installed in a space I was designing for the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) in New York. The answer I received surprised and shocked me. Basically I was told, “It’s proprietary, it’s legal, don’t worry about it.”

But I had to worry about it; we and our clients wanted to do the best job we could and concerned ourselves with environmental issues large and small.

Indoor air quality was high on our list of concerns about all the products we wanted to specify because people spend the majority of their time indoors, and air quality matters. Little did I know then, but this would start a journey on which I still find myself every day: the search for intelligently designed products that are good for human and ecological health. And little did I know, too, that it would be a search intertwined with a major transformation of the carpet industry, the very industry where I started my search.

First, a little context: In 1984 there were very few places to go for information on indoor air quality. ASHRAE seemed to be just getting into the issue, and the state-of-the-art funded research seemed to be coming courtesy of the tobacco industry, which was busy trying to show us there was no danger from second-hand smoke in the workplace. So it was not unusual to hear a manufacturer of carpet or paint or glue or furniture say they did not have information on the subject, much less information they would share.

We kept searching for the best products and information we could find and joined other architects in the quest. By the end of the1980s we had formed the AIA’s Committee on the Environment. But it wasn’t until 1989 that I had another EDF-like experience that would set my personal course in this arena. My firm won a competition to design a “low entropy” solar powered daycare center in Frankfurt, Germany—as I put it then: “A building like a tree.” While we were doing our research on daycare centers I noticed all the children were putting their mouths on everything and everything into their mouths, and I wondered just what they were ingesting with these everyday little acts. I determined to find an eco-toxicologist who could help me think this through to help us with our specifications. My curiosity about eco-toxicology lead to a 1991 meeting with someone who would change my entire perspective on the making of things: Dr. Michael Braungart.

Braungart had a background as a serious chemist who was also an environmental activist. He had also developed, starting in the mid-’80s, a protocol for products he called “The Intelligent Product System” where he characterized products into two categories: biological and technical.

To over-simplify the idea, biological products were those that could ideally decompose into safe soil and technical products could ideally return to more safe technical products. Further, technical products could be seen as “products of service” where the customer would enjoy the service of the product until they wanted it replaced, at which point they would return it to the manufacturer or a recycling system and it would be reprocessed into a safe new product ad infinitum.

Another key to the concept is the word safe. Clearly these products needed to also be safe for human and ecological health. So Braungart and I began a journey of discovery together, weaving together design and chemistry. A journey that would lead to our book “Cradle to Cradle - Remaking The Way We Make Things” (2002) and an intimate relationship with the making of carpet.

In the early ’90s, Collins & Aikman, under the leadership of Charlie Eitel, invited the AIA’s Committee on the Environment to come to Georgia and comment on its manufacturing process for carpet tile. C&A had been focused on the indoor air quality issue and wanted feedback from the group. I remember asking Charlie and his team if they could take back their old carpet and make new carpet backing with it, and I remember the excitement we all felt as we examined the possibilities. Aside from the obvious chance to recycle something that was being “thrown away” there was the chance to reconnect with the old customers and offer a new and unique value proposition.

By 1994, Charlie had moved to Interface, and Ray Anderson, Interface’s chairman, wanted to assemble a team of sustainability leaders to help take his company into the future. I joined this team and very exciting changes occurred at Interface, where it took this leadership position, not just in the carpet arena, but in the larger context of industry in general. Ray Anderson became an effective spokesperson for the larger idea of sustainable industry where manufacturers took back their old products, streamlined their operations to minimize waste and save money, and connected to the larger social purpose inherent in a responsible corporation. The other carpet companies followed suit and built their own sustainability programs. The carpet industry, writ large, began to lead other industries in the search for sustaining manufacturing protocols.

In the meantime I had continued to speak about and build on the promise of the cradle-to-cradle approach working with the auto, furniture, textile and other industries, and working with Michael Braungart had created McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), our product and process consultancy. We had amassed a large database of chemicals assessed and characterized for their ecological and human health characteristics and relationships.

Then we got the call from Steve Bradfield at Shaw Industries. I will never forget this call because, basically, Steve said: “I think you should come down to Dalton to see what we have done; I think it has great promise of leading to the true cradle-to-cradle product you’ve been talking about and hoping for.” He was right. Shaw had figured out how to get old backing to become new backing (EcoWorx) and old face fibers to become new face fibers (Evergreen). The backing is a thermoplastic polymer and the face fiber a nylon that is chemically recyclable back to caprolactam and face fiber.

MBDC and I joined the Shaw team and learned about the Shaw process, saw all the investments they had made in new tooling, and got to work learning about the deep chemistry of the product using MBDC’s chemicals profiling system. In 2004, we and the Shaw EcoWorx Project Team received the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. This high honor and national recognition was a testimony to the innovation Shaw had accomplished.

Braungart and I continue to refine the cradle-to-cradle promise with our new Cradle to Cradle Certification process (www.c2ccertified.com), and the Shaw product and system was the first carpet to be certified. We are now assessing hundreds of products for their ecological and human health characteristics in biological and technical cycles, reverse logistics, use of renewable energy, clean water and social fairness. This includes all sorts of objects of human artifice from simple chemicals to consumer products to complex products and systems.

When I now look at the new design collections I have done for Shaw, where we not just look at what’s in the product but what it actually looks like, I am amazed at the journey afforded our species by the leadership in the carpet industry. This is commerce at its best seeking worthwhile solutions to society’s problems while competing in an open marketplace.

Who knew when I asked that carpet manufacturer the simple question for the Environmental Defense Fund where it would lead? And the journey still feels like it has just begun.