The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability–Designing for Abundance by William McDonough and Michael Braungart

William McDonough is the best thinker and doer of our age. His work with Michael Braungart on Cradle to Cradle followed by this book offers an effective way to view the world and its ecosystem and economy. His creative combination of biology and technology yields practical concepts and products thatdon’t make things better, they make things good.

His attack on “zero” as a goal is refreshing as he replaces “reduce, re-use and re-cycle” with “redesign, renew and regenerate”. His intent for buildings, for example, is not to reduce their use of water but to generate water beyond what they use…the idea is not to make things less bad, but to make them re-generative.