Imagine

The imagination is a very powerful thing. And one man's imagination has the ability to change the course of mankind.

Could these be the people that change the way we produce, consume and dispose? William McDonough with his colleague, the German chemist Michael Braungart, have been working hard at doing just that for many years now. McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry based in the US, have been letting their imaginations run riot. Cars with 5 year life spans, books made from lightweight plastic paper, a fabric safe enough to eat, toilets that don't need flushing - all with bio-degrading and upcycling at the heart of their design.

Another of their concepts is 'cradle to cradle' design. This is product design where everything is reused—either returned to the soil as nontoxic "biological nutrients" that will biodegrade safely, or returned to industry as "technical nutrients" that can be infinitely recycled.

One of their biggest projects is in China. They are consulting with the Chinese Housing Industry Association who have the responsibility of building homes for 400 million people over the next 12 years. Which will mean designing 7 new cites. And they've got some pretty incredible ideas -

"We're identifying building materials of the future, such as a new polystyrene from BASF [with no noxious chemicals]. It can be used to build walls that are strong, lightweight and superinsulating. The building can be heated and cooled for next to nothing. And it's silent. If there are 13 people in the apartment upstairs, you won't hear them."

"We'll have bamboo wetlands nearby to purify the waste—and the bamboo, which grows a foot a day, can be harvested and used for wood."

"The Chinese are afraid urbanization will reduce productive farmland, so we'll move farms onto rooftops. At least, that's what I'm proposing. The farmers can live downstairs. And when you look at the city from a distance, it will look like part of the landscape."

"I want to see solar power cheaper than coal, but to get the speed and scale to do that fast, you need a place like China. We're not talking about dinky solar collectors on roofs. Think of square miles of marginal land covered with them. This could drop the cost of solar energy an order of magnitude. And for every job making solar panels, there are four jobs putting them in place and maintaining them. We could import these panels, and for every job the Chinese give themselves, we get four."

Wow.
And that's all planned for the next decade?

Insania

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has spoken, the politicians have uttered their platitudes, environmental activists call for action, the flat earthers remain in denial and the rest of us go shopping"

So says Fazlun Khalid of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences on the BBC website. And isn't he right. With all the legislation and action currently being considered by the Governments, NGO's and think tanks the world over, how much action is being taken by the likes of you and me? How many compromises are being considered? How many employees are trying to change the attitude of their colleagues?

I had a meeting with Westminster Council yesterday. They showed me some interesting images they had captured from rubbish trucks they were searching. Within these trucks 22% of the rubbish turned out to be newspapers heading straight for the landfill sites east of London.

• 4 officers analyzed 1 tonne of street cleaning waste on 29/11/2006. The waste was presented loose from litter bins and in sweepers bags. The contents of 166 sweepers bags were segregated.

• 219 kg of newspapers collected. 22% of the waste sorted was newspaper.

Some of the photographs they took featured unopened newspaper bundles. Papers that had not even been distributed.

Do we not have a responsibility to call to an end this insanity? For how much longer can we all turn a blind eye each and every day to all the unnecessary waste going straight to landfill?