Cradle to Cradle® (C2C) is a paradigm-changing innovation platform developed in the 1990s by Michael Braungart and William McDonough et al. Extensive books, cover stories and documentary films have been published and broadcasted about C2C since the 1990s and translated into at least a dozen languages.

However, many planners are not yet familiar with how to integrate C2C features such as beneficial materials. A rapid acceleration occurred from 2008 to 2010 in the numbers of planners, architects and engineers introducing C2C concepts into planning and construction. Government agencies made it a priority to translate C2C into renovation and new construction of buildings. Those needs resulted in the publication of “Cradle to Cradle® Criteria for the built environment,” by Douglas Mulhall and Michael Braungart.

The purpose of the 20-page booklet is to provide planners with guiding criteria for developing a building with measurable C2C features. The focus of these criteria, distinguishing them as C2C, is to maximize beneficial impacts instead of just minimizing negative ones.

Douglas Mulhall is a senior researcher at Prof. Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle® academic chair at DRIFT, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and is co-founder of O Instituto Ambiental, based in South and Central America and the Caribbean. Michael Braungart is a chemist and co-founder of the Cradle to Cradle Design Paradigm, co-author of the best-selling Cradle to Crade: Remaking the Way We Make Things, as well as founder of EPEA Internationale Umweltforschung GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, and co-founder of MBDC McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in Charlottesville, Va., U.S.A.

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