About the Author

William McDonough is an architect and the founding principal of William McDonough + Partners, Architecture and Community Design, based in Charlottesville, Virginia. From 1994 to 1999 he served as dean of the school of architecture at the University of Virginia. In 1999 Time magazine recognized him as a "Hero for the Planet," stating that "his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that--in demonstrable and practical ways--is changing the design of the world." In 1996, he received the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development, the highest environmental honor given by United States.

Michael Braungart is a chemist and the founder of the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA) in Hamburg, Germany. Prior to starting EPEA, he was the director of the chemistry section for Greenpeace. Since 1984 he has been lecturing at universities, businesses, and institutions around the world on critical new concepts for ecological chemistry and materials flow management. Dr. Braungart is the recipient of numerous honors, awards, and fellowships from the Heinz Endowment, the W. Alton Jones Foundation, and other organizations.

In 1995 the authors created McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, a product and systems development firm assisting client companies in implementing their unique sustaining design protocol. Their clients include Ford Motor Company, Nike, Herman Miller, BASF, DesignTex, Pendleton, Volvo, and the city of Chicago.

Reviews

"Environmentalists too rarely apply the ecological wisdom of life to our problems. Asking how a cherry tree would design an energy efficient building is only one of the creative 'practices' that McDonough and Braungart spread, like a field of wild flowers, before their readers. This book will give you renewed hope that, indeed, 'it is darkest before the dawn'." --Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club "Achieving the great economic transition to more equitable, ecologically sustainable societies requires nothing less than a design revolution--beyond today's fossilized industrialism. This enlightened and enlightening book shows us how--and indeed, that 'God is in the details.' A must for every library and every concerned citizen." --Hazel Henderson, author of Building a Win-Win World and Beyond Globalization: Shaping a Sustainable Global Economy "[McDonough and Braungart's] ideas are bold, imaginative, and deserving of serious attention." --Ben Ehrenreich, Mother Jones magazine "[A] clear, accessible manifesto... the authors' original concepts are an inspiring reminder that humans are capable to much more elegant environmental solutions than the ones we've settled for in the last half-century." --Publishers Weekly "A readable provocative treatise that 'gets outside the box' in a huge way. Timely and inspiring." --Kirkus Reviews "Our planet is alive and the wondrous web of biodiversity provides us with all we need -- clean air, water, soil, and energy, as well as food, medicine, resources. Whatever we do, that's what should be the highest priority for protection and we have to adapt everything else to that end. With this book, McDonough and Braungart open our eyes to the way to genuine sustainability by the study of nature and mimicking her ways. This is a groundbreaking book that should be the Bible for the Second Industrial Revolution." --Dr. David Suzuki, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia