Selling Ecological "Revolution"

Green architect Bill McDonough is on a roll. After persuading CEO Bill Ford Jr. in 1999 to let him oversee the $2 billion rebuild of Ford Motor Co's River Rouge factory complex, McDonough has been on the road constantly, making motivational speeches to executives, political officials and university students about his grass roofs and sun-drenched factories in speeches that compare the toxic off-gassing in new office buildings to the Nazis' gas chambers.

McDonough denounces ill-conceived design and pollution with the passion of David Brower and the confidence of Ayn Rand's Howard Roark -- none of which has been bad for his business. In addition to Ford, McDonough counts as future and past clients Nike, Gap, BASF and high-tech firm Aspect Communications.

None of this has happened by accident. McDonough is an indefatigable marketer. His promotional DVD is narrated by Susan Sarandon and includes executives gushing praise for his work. Ford calls McDonough "one of the most profound environmental thinkers in the world."

McDonough's new book, "Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things" (North Point Press, 2002), was co-written with his business partner Michael Braungart, a German chemist. The book is an entertaining manifesto that summarizes the best of McDonough and Braungart's ideas and projects. Shaped like the "Worst Case Scenario Handbook" and made from recycled plastic instead of wood, "Cradle to Cradle" condemns the threats to our bodies from toxic pollution and describes how to make things -- from shoes to wheelchair covers to buildings -- using processes that mimic the natural world.

Their book has been the occasion for publications from Business Week to The New Yorker to write eerily similar puff pieces about how the 51-year-old "prophet" (in the words of Time and Wired) helps companies protect the environment and turn a profit at the same time.

In the hoopla to describe McDonough's vision of consumer products that can become "mulch for the local garden club," reporters have breezed a contention at the heart of McDonough's analysis: that "regulation is signal of design failure." If corporations were more conscientious about how they make their products, McDonough says, there would be no need for regulation.

It's a vision that endears McDonough to American executives at companies like Ford, IBM and the Gap, which work to undermine the government's oversight of their impact on workers and the environment. In the Spring of 2002, CEO Ford Jr. helped lead a coalition of automakers that defeated a modest attempt to raise vehicle fuel-efficiency standards in Congress. Soon Ford may join other automakers in suing the state of California for mandating lower carbon emissions from vehicles.

At a time when environmental NGOs are focused almost entirely on defending the laws like the Endangered Species and Clean Air Acts, pioneering green architect Sym Van Der Ryn said he finds McDonough's message "overly optimistic and uncritical," a politics "perfect for George W. Bush."

So perfect in fact that the Bush Administration's EPA has hired one of McDonough's companies, McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, to create a new standard for reusable book packaging. Once the design is ready, the EPA will give it away for free to companies like FedEx and Amazon.com.

The EPA project is just the beginning, according to Joe Rinkevich, McDonough Braungart's vice-president. The EPA's larger vision is for McDonough Braungart to help drive the transition away "from a command-and-control culture to one that encourages positive creative activity."

"Instead of the EPA coming in and saying, you're bad, we need to regulate you," McDonough adds, "what if they came in and said, 'Hey you guys, you might want to try a new design protocol that doesn't require us to regulate you.'"