All sustainability, like all politics, is local. Those are the words of William McDonough, a veteran of the green architecture movement and a man who sees the new Obama administration as a harbinger of the sea change going on in sustainable development.

"It's critical to have a large-scale strategy for the reindustrialization of the country," says McDonough.
McDonough, founding principal of the William McDonough + Partners design firm, based in Charlottesville, Va., helped launch the green architecture movement in the early 1980s. In 2002 he and Michael Braungart, a German chemist and Green Party leader, co-authored "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" (North Point Press) to advocate the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design. In fact, the book was even printed on a synthetic "paper" made out of plastic resins and inorganic fillers, so it can be recycled just like polypropylene.

The Cradle to Cradle concept informs everything McDonough does, from designing industrial buildings to helping clients create profitable, environmentally intelligent products and systems through McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), a design firm he co-founded with Braungart in 1995.

"When you take materials into closed cycles and treat them as nutrients, you discover that reindustrialization becomes a critical part of the new paradigm," he said. "Materials are better utilized close to home than being sent halfway around the world to be reformatted in cheap labor markets, and then returned into this market."

Brownfields in a green world
McDonough estimates that half of the work his architecture firm performs involves brownfield sites because many projects are in urban areas—"it literally comes with the territory," he says. "Working in cities, we find ourselves working on sites that have had significant (pre-existing) human activity."

Ford Motor Co.'s River Rouge truck plant in Dearborn, Mich., is a perfect example of how ecological design can help turn a brownfield into an environmental asset. William McDonough + Partners served as sustainable design consultant for the plant, which opened in 2004. The 1.16 million-square-foot site now houses an assembly plant with a 10-acre "living roof" (the world's largest) that provides a habitat for birds and other species while it functions as the centerpiece of the site's storm water management system by retaining rainfall.

"Conventional engineering for that site alone for storm management [would have cost] $48 million," says McDonough. "Ecological engineering was $13 million, so Ford saved millions in capital expenses from Day 1. It makes a very strong economic case for ecological design."
McDonough also sees brownfield redevelopment as an ideal opportunity for addressing community social issues. "For example, big-box retail that is derelict, or no longer active, represents tremendous opportunities for future development," he says. "Often the infrastructure has [already] been developed for them. These are terrific sites for affordable housing, or a dead big-box could become a recycling center."

Certifiably green
One of the newest areas McDonough has moved into is certifying products and materials that qualify as environmentally intelligent, though his MBDC design firm. Nearly 200 final products have met the 19 health and environmental health requirements to qualify for Cradle to Cradle certification, from flooring to roofing tiles to insulation. Certified products must use environmentally safe and healthy materials; be designed for material reutilization; use renewable energy and incorporate energy efficiency; use water efficiently; and institute strategies for social responsibility.

In late January, MBDC launched its new Cradle to Cradle Approved Ingredient certification program for materials. To qualify, materials must be able to be recycled or composted, and cannot include chemicals that have ill effects on people or the environment. Lists of Cradle to Cradle certified products and materials are available on the MBDC Web site at www.c2ccertified.com .

Elizabeth Brewster is a regular contributor to Brownfield News & Sustainable Development; To read the complete, unabridged version of this Profile, please log on to www.brownfieldnews.com