william mcdonough at his virginia office photo © martien mulder

roger cox an attorney in the netherlands who is one of green architect william mcdonough’s most ardent fans and who also happens to been leading holland’s ‘cradle to cradle’ movement is now launching a campaign against his hero to open up the c2c movement to all.

over the past two years the dutch have become enraptured by william mcdonough and michael braungart’s blueprint for a waste-free society. however, designers there are also itching to practice their very own c2c design, which doesn’t jibe with mcdonough’s legal ownership of the term.

‘there’s a need for the founding fathers of c2c to change their closed and proprietary approach of c2c. urgently,’ says cox

cox’s plea is for mcdonough to partner with the dutch government in order to create a public private partnership that would include a c2c certification institute, governmental regulation, and the ability for businesses and governments to practice c2c design. despite mcdonough’s global fame, in reality only ‘some 150 products were certified in the last 8 years’-a drop in the bucket in terms of impact compared to the urgent ubiquitous change mcdonough preaches. read more

in october 2008 green guru gone wrong was published commenting on how mcdonough’s endeavour has not been a succesful one. https://www.designboom.com/awareness/william-mcdonough-green-guru-gone-wrong

trashing the idea of waste! designboom published an article in 2002 on william mcdonough/mcdonough braungart design chemistry https://www.designboom.com/eng/funclub/cradle.html