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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [111] Line —— 4.0p —— Norm * PgEn [111] tim lindgren Composition and the Rhetoric of Eco-Effective Design It is not every day that judging a book by its cover turns out to be the best form of literacy criticism, but that is what William McDonough and Michael Braungart would have us do with their book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Even before you begin reading, you know there is something weighty, something substantial, about the book. It is heavy for its size, and the pages are a bit thicker than normal. On the cover you notice a small round graphic in the bottom right corner with the words “Water Proof Durabook” inscribed in it, indicating that the book is particularly well suited for reading in the hot tub or at the beach. You get the sense that the medium is the message, and that the book’s argument begins when you pick it up. Cradle to Cradle is an argument for eco-effective design, an approach assuming that the environmental problems we face today are ultimately a result of poor design choices. It is not enough to consume less and recycle more; we need nothing less than a second Industrial Revolution, one patterned on the effectiveness of nature. If we use nature as our design model, the authors argue, it is possible that “the production and consumption of goods can be a regenerative force” rather than a destructive one. McDonough and Braungart make it clear that eco-effective design is important not just in a technical sense—because it saves energy or creates healthy relationships between products and the environment—but because it is more rhetorically effective than much mainstream environmental discourse . In this sense, it presents both a challenge to and source of common ground for ecocompositionists and ecocritics who see rhetoric as playing a central role in finding solutions to our current environmental crisis. However, by communicating their vision of the future in a book that is attractive , durable, and infinitely recyclable, they also remind us that it matters what material form this argument takes and that reading and writing are ultimately products of design. McDonough and Braungart present eco111 112 tim lindgren 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 [112] Line —— 0.10 —— Norm PgEn [112] effective design as a concept that has implications not just for the products and buildings we make but also for the rhetorical artifacts we create, and not just for traditional design fields like architecture and engineering but also for humanities fields like composition and rhetoric. As recent work by such scholars as David Orr, Gunther Kress, and Mike Sharples suggests, ecocomposition and ecological design may already be kindred fields. When examined in light of scholarship that increasingly views “writing as design,” the rhetoric of Cradle to Cradle reveals design principles that could inform an eco-effective approach to composition, one that views writing as a form of sustainable design. Moreover, while ecocomposition —and ecocriticism more generally—tend to be closely aligned with the biological sciences, McDonough and Braungart’s approach suggests that ecological design could also serve as a source of metaphors, terms, and practices capable of broadening our ability to help our students imagine and design more hopeful futures in their writing. Eco-Effective Rhetoric Like most environmentalists, McDonough and Braungart do not shirk from laying out the bad news, and like many composition instructors, they ask us ask tough questions about how culture gets constructed and to whose advantage. Take a look at things around you, they write. As descendants of the Industrial Revolution, we have come to accept as normal an industrial paradigm in which our products, routinely made with toxic chemicals, hurtle through their short lives toward landfills, there to wait until our grandchildren are forced to deal with them. And recycling is no solution since most products are not meant to be recycled; their “cradle to grave” design means their materials will eventually end up in the landfill like everything else. Such a system of production creates the...

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