earthome

Invitation to a Revolution
The Next Industrial Revolution

We live in a time of increasing environmental concerns. Doomsday scenarios abound based on an increasing human population competing for ever scarcer natural resources. Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart offer a different vision of the future -- one where humanity works with nature, where technical enterprises are continually reinvented as safe and ever renewing natural processes.

Can't happen?
It's already happening.
It's part of what architect Bill McDonough and his partner chemist Michael Braungart call The Next Industrial Revolution.

Serving nature without sacrificing profitability: a sampling of McDonough-Braungart projects depicted in
"THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION."

NIKE, Inc.:
Changing Corporate DNA

To make products safe for natural systems, McDonough and Braungart have developed a protocol that asks: "are these materials safe for children, not just human children but the offspring of all species?" Using the McDonough-Braungart Protocol, Nike is creating a "green" materials palette - testing the more than 5,000 chemicals used to manufacture their products and systematically eliminating harmful ingredients.

HERMAN MILLER FURNITURE:
Perfect Attendance

Sunlight, fresh air, and design that enhances community and connections, Herman Miller Furniture's factory in Holland, Michigan won the first "Good Design is Good Business" award from Business Week and Architectural Record. Energy savings and productivity gains paid back the building's $52 per square foot cost within the first year of operation. And the company gained a workspace so enjoyable that more than half the workers maintain 100% attendance records.

"If you respect the environment," said one Herman Miller employee, "it turns out you respect people. And if you really respect people, you respect the environment."

ADAM LEWIS ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES CENTER, OBERLIN COLLEGE:
A building like a tree.

A building that not only cleans its own wastewater and produces more energy than it consumes, the Lewis Center has also become a magnet for campus activities -- attracting students with its combination of visionary design and comfortable connection to nature.

DESIGNTEX, INC./Rohner Textile, AG:
Good enough to eat

This leading U.S. commercial fabric firm teamed up with a textile mill in Switzerland and McDonough-Braungart to design and produce an upholstery fabric so toxin free that the local garden club uses factory trimmings as mulch. When Swiss inspectors tested the mill's effluent, they thought their instruments were broken-the water leaving the factory was as clean as when it entered.

FORD MOTOR COMPANY:
Rethinking mobility

Ford Motor Company

Ford has commissioned McDonough to direct the transformation of its giant River Rouge plant into a sustainable manufacturing facility in a restored river ecosystem, a two billion-dollar project with a 20-year timeline. Ford's Volvo division is developing sustainable cars that demonstrate a bold rethinking of personal mobility in harmony with the planet.

William McDonough and Michael Braungart have not just envisioned a more hopeful, sustainable future. They are working with individuals and corporations to design and build it right now. THE NEXT INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION offers audiences a realistic, positive message of hope and action -- one that gives people a place to begin building a fundamentally different human economy -- one that works with nature, not against it.