What If the Goal Isn’t a Smaller Footprint, but a Better One?
Rethink, Reinvent, Redesign: Lessons from the Cradle to Cradle Congress
I took part in the Cradle to Cradle Congress at TU Berlin, and I left with pages of notes, new research to explore and quite a few assumptions challenged.
The Congress brought together Cradle to Cradle thinking with research looking at what circularity actually means when we try to implement it — from reusable packaging systems and product design to Digital Product Passports (DPP) and material recovery.
As a person who has read his books, I was excited to see Professor Michael Braungart, co-founder of the Cradle to Cradle concept, keynote presentation.
His presentation challenged something that sits at the centre of almost every sustainability conversation we have today:
What if our goal shouldn't be to reduce our environmental footprint, but to create a positive one?
One of Braungart's first provocations was:
“Would it be best if we did not exist?”
He showed the statement:
“The greenest house is the one which was never built.”
If our definition of sustainability is primarily based on using fewer resources, producing fewer emissions, consuming less and creating less waste, there is a strange logic behind this thinking: the best environmental outcome would ultimately be to produce nothing.
“Neutral is only possible if you don't exist. Have a positive goal instead.”
Braungart challenged us to move away from simply trying to minimise the human footprint and instead think about how we could celebrate the human footprint.
Not by ignoring our environmental impacts, but by designing human activity to create positive environmental, social and economic outcomes.
Eco-efficiency versus eco-effectiveness
Much of sustainability today is based on eco-efficiency:
Use less material.
Use less water.
Consume less energy.
Generate fewer emissions.
Produce less waste.
All of these things matter, but Braungart's argument is that efficiency primarily makes an existing system less bad.
If a product is fundamentally poorly designed, making 20% less of it doesn't necessarily make it good.
Cradle to Cradle instead talks about eco-effectiveness.
The question changes from:
“How can we reduce the damage?”
to:
“How can we design this to create value?”
That is a very different starting point for sustainability.
Reduce, reuse, recycle… or rethink, reinvent, redesign?
For years, the sustainability conversation has revolved around:
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
Braungart challenged this with:
Rethink. Reinvent. Redesign.
Because recycling something that was poorly designed in the first place does not necessarily solve the problem.
A package might use less plastic. It might contain recycled content. It might have a lower carbon footprint. It might even technically be recyclable.
But what materials are actually in it?
What additives, coatings, inks and adhesives are being circulated?
What happens to their quality after recycling?
And, importantly:
Was the next use of those materials considered when the packaging was designed?
Everything is a nutrient
This leads to one of the fundamental principles of Cradle to Cradle:
Everything is a nutrient.
Instead of designing something and then asking what we should do with the waste, we should already know where its materials belong after use.
Materials should be designed to safely return to a biological cycle or remain valuable within a technical cycle.
This changes the conversation from managing waste to designing material flows.
Braungart also challenged the idea of simply “thinking in circles”. One of my notes from his presentation was:
“Not a cycle — it's a sphere.”
Circularity isn't only about getting one material back into a loop. Products interact with chemistry, manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, people, ecosystems, economics and many other systems.
He mentioned many practical examples that I ebleiev we usualy don't look at, such as:
Isn't growing organic food irrigated with PVC pipes distroying the food integrity?
The other one was about a large hotel chain that have just replaced hundreds of bedsheets with polyester sheets because the carbon footprint is smaller. Now we sleep in plastic, how is this better?
The textile label showed a combination of polyester, viscose and elastane.
It immediately raises the question: what happens to this combination of materials afterwards? This cannot be separated or recycled, and will remain in our environment FOREVER!
Another moment where Michael Braungart left us thinking was giving the example about the automotive industry. His message was striking:
“To this day, a car has never become a car again.”
A modern car can contain up to 46 different steel alloys and more than 60 different metals. Although a significant proportion of a vehicle may be recovered at end of life, this does not necessarily mean those materials return to the same application at the same quality.
Braungart used the EU’s 85% reuse and recycling requirement for end-of-life vehicles to illustrate the problem. The recycling rate is largely measured by weight, not by preservation of material quality. In his example, 1 kg of automotive body steel and 1 kg of reinforcing steel used in concrete can both contribute equally to the recycling rate, despite having very different technical properties and value.
This distinction is fundamental to Cradle to Cradle thinking. If a highly engineered material is recovered but subsequently used in a lower-value application, the material has not remained within an equivalent technical cycle. A high recycling rate can therefore coexist with significant downcycling.
The same question is highly relevant to packaging. Saying that packaging is recyclable, or even demonstrating that it is recycled, does not automatically make the system circular. We also need to ask: What happens to the material after recycling? Is its quality preserved? Can it return to the same or an equivalent high-value application? And how many times can that cycle realistically continue?
This shifts the conversation from simply measuring how much we recycle towards understanding what we preserve through recycling.
Circular Economy versus Cradle to Cradle
You probably think that Cradle to Cradle is a concept like the Circular Economy, it has even been interchanged. Braungart summarised the difference through a series of comparisons:
Circular Economy | Cradle to Cradle (C2C) |
Thinking in circles | Thinking in spheres |
Efficiency, Sufficiency | Effectiveness |
Minimise the human footprint | Celebrate the human footprint |
Reduce, reuse, recycle | Rethink, reinvent, redesign |
Waste reduction | Everything is a nutrient |
Lifecycle of a Product | Products have no life |
Longevity | Defined use periods |
Right to repair | Right to intactness |
Climate neutral | Climate positive |
Economic advantage | Social, ecological, economic - diversity! |
Triple Bottom Line | Triple Top Line |
Less bad | More good |
So much of what we currently call sustainable packaging is still defined by reduction: less plastic, less carbon, less waste, less virgin material. These are important goals, but they are ultimately about reducing negative impacts. What would packaging look like if we changed the design brief from simply being less bad to actively creating more good?
From Triple Bottom Line to Triple Top Line
Most sustainability professionals are familiar with the Triple Bottom Line: economy, society and environment. We often approach these dimensions as impacts that need to be balanced, with environmental and social considerations acting as constraints around economic activity. Cradle to Cradle proposes a different perspective through the Triple Top Line: designing economic, environmental and social value into a solution from the beginning.
This connects closely with my PhD research at the University of Technology Sydney, and was actually the reason I was at the Cradle to Cradle Congress in September (I had the opportunity to share my research about Evaluating the social and ecological impact of emerging bio-based packaging materials through a place-based approach). Considering environmental, social and economic dimensions together and, importantly, how these outcomes change depending on where and within which systems a material is produced, used and managed at end of life.
The "Kreis Statt Krise" slogan translates to "Circle instead of Crises".
For packaging, this shifts the starting question from “How can we make this package more sustainable?” to “How can this packaging system create environmental, social and economic value within the context where it will actually exist?” That change in perspective could lead us to very different solutions.
From Cradle to Cradle theory to implementation
Together with the Congress, a symposium was held where many different PhD studies were presented. Interesting for me was seeing research exploring what happens when we try to translate circularity from an ambition into something that actually works.
Across very different research topics, I noticed a common theme:
Having a circular solution does not mean that the system exists to make it circular.
Reusable packaging is a systems problem
The work presented by Viktoria Esker of the Wuppertal Institute examines the challenges of scaling reusable packaging systems in Germany, drawing on the perspectives of the MEHRCE innovation community. MEHRCE brings together more than 200 stakeholders, including reusable-system operators, manufacturers, retailers, researchers, municipalities and NGOs.
The research starts from an important premise: a reusable package only works when there is a functioning system around the package. Germany’s Packaging Act definition itself reflects this, describing reusable packaging as packaging designed for multiple uses for the same purpose, where actual return and reuse are enabled through adequate logistics and appropriate incentives.
Consequently, moving from single-use to reuse requires simultaneous changes across several dimensions: environmental and economic feasibility, technical infrastructure, consumer behaviour, logistics, business models and regulation. These barriers are not independent. They form causal chains, meaning that solving one problem can influence several others — positively or negatively.
This is why the researchers applied Qualitative Systems Mapping, based on Hanger-Kopp et al. (2024). The approach combines elements of causal-loop diagrams, cognitive mapping and concept mapping. Instead of asking simply “What are the barriers to reuse?”, it asks:
How do the different factors within the reuse system influence each other?
The resulting interactive map contains 93 elements connected through 185 relationships, including 66 main variables and 29 drivers. Eight major focus areas emerged: operating costs, effectiveness of regulation, environmental impact, prevalence of reuse among consumers, stakeholder cooperation, digitalisation, standardisation and logistics.
One of the clearest dynamics identified is what the researchers describe as a lock-in between costs, scaling and distribution.
A reusable system needs sufficient scale to reduce operating costs. Lower operating costs make reusable options more viable and increase their availability. Greater availability can then increase participation and volumes, creating further economies of scale.
But the same mechanism operates in reverse.
Low volumes → high operating costs → limited availability → low adoption → low volumes.
This helps explain why technically viable reuse concepts can struggle commercially. The barrier is not necessarily the package itself; the system may simply never reach the scale required to make the economics work.
The broader research published by the participating institutions similarly identifies collection volumes, operating costs and product availability as particularly important factors in successful reusable systems.
Standardisation and collaboration are system-level levers
The mapping also shows how standardisation, collaboration, logistics and environmental performance interact.
Limited standardisation and collaboration can increase transport distances and reduce return rates. That increases operating costs while potentially worsening the environmental performance of reuse.
Conversely, standardising dimensions, materials, return processes and data can allow packaging to move through shared infrastructure rather than proprietary systems. The researchers specifically highlight common information such as packaging location, hygiene status and availability of empty containers as useful for integrating packaging into broader reuse networks.
This leads to an important distinction: optimising an individual reusable package is not the same as optimising a reusable packaging system.
A beautifully designed reusable container operating within an isolated proprietary loop may perform worse than a relatively simple standardised container circulating through a highly utilised shared network.
Digitalisation is connected to physical infrastructure
Another useful finding is that digitalisation should not be considered separately from logistics.
Tracking containers, managing deposits, understanding inventory locations, predicting returns and coordinating cleaning capacity can improve system efficiency. But digitalisation alone cannot compensate for fragmented infrastructure.
The map therefore connects financial feasibility + digitalisation + standardisation + logistics optimisation rather than treating them as separate innovation areas.
This is particularly relevant when companies approach reuse primarily by developing an app, QR-code system or smart container. The research suggests that the question should instead be whether the technology improves the performance of the whole return network.
Regulation can enable the system — but can also create friction
Regulation emerges as another powerful system lever.
Effective regulation can increase participation, encourage standardisation and cooperation, reduce sorting complexity and weaken some of the structural advantages enjoyed by established single-use systems.
However, the map also identifies a potential counter-effect: poorly designed or overly complex regulation can increase bureaucracy, discourage participation and incentivise organisations to search for exemptions or resist implementation.
So the relationship is not simply:
more regulation → more reuse.
It is closer to:
well-designed regulation → coordination + standardisation + scale → more effective reuse.
This is particularly relevant as reuse requirements become increasingly embedded in European packaging policy.
How this research could be used in practice
The most useful aspect of this research is that the map can become a decision-making tool rather than simply a description of barriers. The researchers themselves position it as a knowledge repository: its purpose is not to prescribe one solution to a complex problem, but to organise the community’s understanding of how interventions interact.
For a company considering replacing single-use packaging with reuse, I would use the approach before conducting detailed packaging development or even an LCA. Map the proposed system and ask where the critical feedback loops sit.
For example:
Reusable packaging → return accessibility → return rate → circulation cycles → packaging required per use → operating cost → economic viability.
Then add the logistics loop:
return network density → transport distance → logistics cost + emissions → environmental/economic performance → ability to scale → network density.
Suddenly the decision is no longer simply “Which reusable container should we buy?”
It becomes “What conditions have to exist for this container to circulate enough times, at sufficient return rates and within sufficiently short transport distances, for the system to work?”
That is a much more useful question.
The same approach could be applied by policymakers when designing reuse targets, by retailers when deciding whether to operate proprietary or pooled systems, and by system providers when identifying where investment will have the greatest effect. Rather than intervening in isolated variables, the map helps identify leverage points where one intervention could influence several parts of the system.
It also offers an important lesson for environmental assessment. Reusable packaging should not automatically be assumed to be environmentally preferable because it is reusable. Transport distance, return rate, number of rotations, cleaning, packaging weight, loss rate and reverse-logistics efficiency all influence the result. Existing reuse literature similarly stresses that environmental and economic outcomes depend heavily on system configuration rather than reuse alone. Explore the interactive MEHRCE systems map here.
The gap between corporate commitments and actual design
Another research project that caught my attention was “The Big Thick Fridge Problem.”
The researchers examined why manufacturers' Cradle to Cradle commitments do not necessarily translate into concrete product-design practices.
One statistic highlighted on the poster was particularly striking:
Decisions made during the design phase dictate roughly 70–80% of a product's environmental footprint and 60% of its lifetime cost.
Yet implementation can still be constrained by multiple interconnected barriers.
The research grouped these into:
economic; social and organisational; regulatory and institutional; and ecological/technical barriers.
One conclusion particularly resonated with me:
The transition depends less on inventing new technologies than on connecting existing solutions across the product lifecycle.
We often assume innovation means finding a new material or technology.
Sometimes the real innovation needed is making the existing pieces of the system work together.
Digital Product Passports as circularity infrastructure
How can digital platforms, enabled by Digital Product Passports (DPP), support resource matching between electronics companies to advance circularity?
This was interesting because we currently hear so much about Digital Product Passports from a regulatory and compliance perspective.
But this research looked beyond compliance.
Industrial symbiosis requires one company's material or by-product to become another company's resource.
The barriers include information asymmetry, confidentiality, lack of trust, inconsistent product data, geographical constraints and uncertainty about material quality.
Digital Product Passports could potentially provide standardised information on material composition, hazardous substances, reparability and other product characteristics.
That means DPPs could become much more than a regulatory documentation exercise.
Product information could actually help materials find their next use.
For me, this is one of the most interesting possibilities created by the regulatory push towards product traceability.
Why even gold doesn't automatically circulate
Another poster asked a deceptively simple question:
“Worth it? Gold in smartphones.”
Smartphones contain gold and other valuable materials. You would therefore expect a strong economic incentive to recover them.
Yet the research found that closed-loop gold recovery is still not operationally achieved at scale, even among design-forward manufacturers.
Again, the barriers were not simply technical.
They included technical and design, economic, regulatory and organisational factors.
Products may be difficult to disassemble. Collection can be fragmented. Recovery processes can lose material. Responsibility across the value chain may be unclear.
It demonstrates something important:
A material having value does not guarantee that the system will recover it.
Other research that caught my attention
There were several other research areas I noted during the Congress that I want to explore further.
One looked at circular design for mobile phones, including modular design approaches and closed-loop systems.
Another examined economic incentives for Cradle to Cradle implementation in Germany, including how policy can influence business behaviour and the role of mandatory Digital Product Passports.
There was also research into circular-economy jobs, looking across Europe, the UK and the US, and how the transition towards circular systems affects employment.
Across these very different topics — packaging, electronics, appliances, digital information and labour — the same message kept appearing:
Circularity isn't one intervention.
It is an interaction between design, materials, economics, regulation, infrastructure, information, business models and people.
From “less bad” to “more good”
The Congress also made me reflect on the research I am currently doing for my PhD on emerging bio-based materials for packaging. We often assume that moving from fossil-based plastics to algae, seaweed, agricultural residues or other renewable feedstocks is inherently a step towards sustainability. But the origin of a material tells us only part of the story. It does not tell us whether the resulting packaging system is circular.
The more important questions come next. How is the biomass produced and processed? What substances are introduced along the way? Can the material safely return to a biological cycle, or remain valuable within a technical cycle? Does the collection and processing infrastructure actually exist where the packaging is used? Can the proposed end-of-life pathway operate at meaningful scale? And what environmental, social and economic value does the system create locally?
This is exactly why place matters in circularity, and why a place-based approach is central to my PhD research. A material does not exist independently of the infrastructure, people, policies, markets and ecosystems around it. The same material can lead to very different outcomes depending on where and how it enters the system.
I went into the Cradle to Cradle Congress thinking about circularity, packaging systems and emerging materials. I came away thinking more fundamentally about what we are trying to achieve through sustainability. We spend enormous effort trying to reduce, minimise, avoid and offset. Those actions are necessary within the systems we have today, but perhaps they should not define where we want to end up.
Michael Braungart’s presentation raised one important question: how do we move from “less bad” to “more good”? The research presented at TU Berlin added another: how do we build the systems that allow “more good” to actually happen?
For packaging, I think these questions belong together. A different feedstock can be an important starting point, but changing the material alone does not create circularity.
Because changing a material is relatively easy. Redesigning the system around it is where circularity really begins.
Want to learn more about Cradle to Cradle?
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