cradle-to-cradle | creating abundance

The most impeccable examples of design you’ll ever see are right outside your window. An oak tree drops piles and piles of leaves, twigs and seeds each year, which it then uses the next year to grow bigger and stronger and produce more. Waste simply doesn’t exist. This is the concept behind Cradle to Cradle design, introduced by William McDonough and Michael Braungart and embraced by Shaw Contract Group. To make things bigger, stronger and in abundance, without wasting a single acorn.

Cradle to cradle is our approach to the way we make things. It's not about limiting the amount of bad that we do in the world, it's about doing something that's incredibly good - creating high-quality products that sacrifice nothing and actually benefit the environment.

Here's how it works: You use raw materials to make a product. That product gets purchased and used. After it's served its useful life, that product gets broken down into raw materials again and used to make the very same kind of products.

So raw materials make commercial carpet, which gets broken down into raw material, which gets used to make carpet. Again and again. Forever.

This does two things: It drastically reduces the amount of used material going to landfills. And since that material is now returned to the manufacturing process, it drastically reduces the amount of raw materials we use, too. Instead of garbage, old products become chemical nutrients which nourish the production cycle endlessly.

Eco Solution Q fiber and EcoWorx backing are among the first Cradle to Cradle products in the world. In fact, Shaw offers an environmental guarantee stating that it will pick up any EcoWorx-backed material, free of charge, and recycle into more EcoWorx.

It almost seems to good to be true. But it's actually happening - right now. That's the Shaw Green Edge |