For 14 years, Dr. Braungart has taught process engineering at the University of Lüneburg in Suderburg, Germany, also serving as director of an interdisciplinary materials-flow management masters program. Even before he was became a renowned scientist and professor, Dr. Braungart spearheaded the formation of the Chemistry Section of Greenpeace International and became leader of the Chemistry Section in 1985. “I would like to be a Chemistry teacher. I love logical systems of chemistry” comments Braungart. He also spent years ‘climbing on dirty chemical plant chimneys’ and even lived in a tree once all as protest against man’s destruction of our environment.

Through all his experience and activities, Braungart has developed tools to design eco-effective products and business systems and has worked with a number of organizations and companies in a range of industries.  Braungart emphasizes that “It’s not about minimising the carbon dioxide emissions. We will not be successful with just doing that. It’s about rebuilding the ay we do things. When we lose 5,000 tones of topsoil then we need to rebuild topsoil first. So we work in the Netherlands, for example, on projects which we call horizontal chimneys. The carbon dioxide is just too rare to put in the atmosphere so we use the carbon dioxide directly to grow micro organisms, to grow water plants and we feed them to shrimps, yeah?”

In 1995, Dr. Braungart and architect William McDonough joined forces to create McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, a consultancy firm that has helped giant corporations like Nike, Ford and Hermann Miller conform to the Cradle to Cradle concept. “The idea behind cradle to cradle is to return everything we make to either the biosphere—as soil or atmosphere or water—or the technopshere—for use in devices” explains Braungart. When asked about the role these giant corporations play in creating a sustainable future Bruangart comments “We need to make systems and products which are not just sustainable, but products which are good. Which are not just a little less bad, but which are good, which are beneficial. And therefore it goes beyond sustainability. It's really about innovation.”

He coauthored the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things with William McDonough in 2002, a book that has revolutionized the way products are created and disposed of. Dr. Braungart explains the Cradle to Cradle concept simply, “Traditionally people think from cradle to grave: so they take things, they make things, and they bury things. Which means that the whole planet turns into a big graveyard. So cradle to cradle says ‘let’s plan to make things, design them from the beginning, and plan the next life of the biosphere’. It’s no longer about reducing waste, it’s not about reducing the footprint, it’s not about minimising or avoiding. It’s about being good.” He breaks this production into two main focus areas namely “Things which are consumed, like food, like detergents, like shoe soles, like any type of thing which gets upgraded, or physically and chemically changed when you use them. These things need to be redesigned, recycled and returned so that they are good for the biosphere. And everything that is used as a service, like a washing machine, like a window, like radio or a TV set—that you don't consume—it needs to be designed to go to the technosphere.”

Both of Dr. Braungart’s companies, EPEA and MBDC, share a common set of values that embrace intelligent, aesthetic, and eco-effective design.

In 2003, he was awarded the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for his work with EcoWorx carpeting tile. He has also accepted a visiting professorship at the Darden School of Business, lecturing on such topics as eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness, Cradle to Cradle design and Intelligent Materials Pooling, and he continues to teach at institutions of higher learning all over the world

Dr. Braungart will be talking (via skype) and with Catherina van Zyl from the Braungart Institute at the Buy-Environmental trade show and conference 9-10 June 2009 on the global perspective on production and the environment and the Cradle to Cradle methodology.

For more information contact Megan Van Horsten 021 674 5964