Cradle to Cradle

Airports tend to be a blight on the landscape and ecological disasters. Many kilometres of paved runways, jet exhaust, and every effort to scare away "nuisance" wildlife. To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, we "pave paradise and put up an airport terminal."

This week the lovely Terminal Two (see above) at Pearson airport was closed and is soon to be demolished. The interesting story here, from my perspective, is that the buildings will be recycled. Up to 98% of the material in the complex will be recycled rather than consigned to landfills. Concrete will be crushed and used elsewhere on the airport grounds. In fact, much of the material will never leave the site.

In our culture we aren't very good at "reduce, reuse, recycle" because we figure we don't have to be. We have assumed that there are lots of places where we can dispose of our garbage. Of course that notion is being put to the test these days, particularly in the GTA.

There is a book called Cradle to Cradle http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm
which challenges us to develop a different mindset, a stewardship perspective, that asks what the life-span of the material goods we purchase and discard will be. If it's possible to recycle an airport terminal, surely we can be more care-full about asking whether we need our stuff in the first place, the longevity of our possessions, and who will have to deal with our discarded junk in the long-run.