From Cradle to Grave

From Cradle to Cradle gives a great description of one of the many problems with landfills:

Imagine what you would come upon today at a typical landfill: old furniture, upholstery, carpets, televisions, clothing, shoes, telephones, computers, complex products and plastic packaging, as well as organic materials like diapers, paper, wood and food wastes. Most of these products were made from valuable materials that required effort and expense to extract and make, billions of dollars' worth of material assets. The biodegradable materials such as food matter and paper actually have value too - they could decompose and return biological nutrients to the soil. Unfortunately, all of these things are heaped in a  landfill, where their value is wasted. They are the ultimate products of an industrial system that is designed on a linear, one-way cradle-to-grave model.

What wasting! We're throwing away value resources and commodities, plus not making use of the second-life of so many things. The whole book is about transitioning from a cradle-to-grave model to a cradle-to-cradle model, where products provide nourishment for something else after their own lives are done. This is nature's model, of course. What a great example we have all around us. We too can design like nature does. And so we shall, in order to save the planet and life on it.