Cradle to Cradle, post #1 (p.60)

Hey guys,

Whether or not we've *officially* started reading Cradle to Cradle, I went ahead and began reading it. Thanks, Ani, for the recommendation. I'm finding it very easy to read and informative. It's simple and straightforward in a way that most books about serious topics like the environment and design principles almost never are. Sometimes the flat way the authors have of describing things leads to excellent lines, such as "Even something as benign and necessary as clean drinking water can be lethal if you are submerged in it for more than a couple of minutes" (p.42).

Sometimes I find myself wishing for more statistics,more verifiable numbers. Of course, having just finished Damned Lies and Statistics, I know that numbers are as easy to manipulate as people. The fundamental change suggested in the book makes inherent sense. Do I really need to see any more numbers about how much food and water and oil is left on the planet? As long as our resources are finite we need to stop using them like they're never going to run out.

The thing that's most freaked me out in my reading thus far has been about the amount of toxic material we consume on a daily basis. At first, when I started reading about the way our shoes and exercise equipment are subtly poisoning us, I thought, Yeah, whatever, I've heard this before. Everything causes cancer. And while that's pretty much true the authors have an excellent point: If we can avoid poisoning ourselves, if there is an alternative way of living our lives, shouldn't we? Not just by avoiding the shampoo or deodorant or whatever that was most recently shown to cause cancer in lab rats, but by changing the way we make things in the first place.

So anyway, I haven't gotten to the part where they (I assume) talk about ways we can change things, but I am preparing to be inspired. Can't wait to hear what you guys think.

Love, Thea

p.s.-I have a proposal for another rule. I think, so that we're all on the same page, so to speak, we should put either at the top of a post or in the title what page of the book we're on. That way we can make sure we're caught up before reading a post. Not that I think Cradle to Cradle has any major plot spoilers, but hey, you never know.