11. Backcasting Using Principles for Implementing Cradle-to-Cradle

This chapter explores the strategic implementation of the cradle-to-cradle concept and suggests backcasting using sustainability principles as a systematic way to support decision-makers. The cradle to cradle concept seeks to learn from nature and to design using principles that emphasize the conversion of waste into food, the use of solar energy inputs, and the celebration of diversity. As such, it facilitates organizational transition toward enabling a societal infrastructure by participating in cyclical supply chains – a valuable complement to the green supply chain approach to organizational collaboration for sustainability. The specific contribution of this chapter to the cradle-to-cradle literature focuses on the integration of cradle-to-cradle design within a systems approach that permits analysis from a strategic sustainable development perspective. After usefully comparing cradle-to-cradle design principles with FSSD principles for sustainability, the authors integrate science-based principles with value-based principles as an asset to support backcasting using overarching sustainability constraints drawn from scientific principles for socio-economic sustainability. This framework is one that decision-makers can use flexibly to make mid-course corrections in the march toward a societal infrastructure that supports a targeted system in which all material flows are either part of a biological or a technical metabolism.