Cradle To Cradle

Today I was reading

Crade to Cradle by architect William Mcdonough and I had an idea.

In the cradle to cradle model, a product is specifically designed so that it can be completely recycled at the end of its life cycle.

This closed loop system gave me an idea: Why not create a packaging company that sells containers designed to be shipped back to the company? The packages could be shaped to be shipping friendly and could have postage and shipping information printed right on the package.

In this scenario, Package Co. sell a container *service* to its customers – not the actual container. A consumer buys the packaged product in a store and uses the product. Then the consumer give the package to the mail carrier. The Package Co. is then able to recycle the package material into other packages.

With the help of my fellow bloggers I would like to think through the pluses and minuses of this type of system.

I like that it closes the loop on recycling. Think about the tons of packaging going into landfills that would now go back to its manufacturer!

I also like the idea of using the postal system to close the loop.

The postal system ships packages all day long. If some of those packages are empty bottles – so what. There is no concept of trash in this system.

I look forward to any comments people have about this idea. Thanks!

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