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If you look at a tree and think of it as a design assignment, it would be like asking you to make something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, provides habitat for hundreds of species, accrues solar energy's fuel, makes complex sugars and food, changes colors with the seasons, creates microclimates, and self-replicates.

— William McDonough

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More quotes by William McDonough

There's probably 5000 times more solar energy than the humans will ever need.

If we think about things having multiple lives, cradle to cradle, we could design things that can go back to either nature or back to industry forever.

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

I can't imagine something being beautiful at this point in history if it's destroying the planet or causing children to get sick. How can anything be beautiful if it's not ecologically intelligent at this point?

I think it’s clear now that energy has to be clean. . . . And we should do it in ways that give jobs to everybody. . . . There’s so much to do in renewable power, there is so little to do in coal.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William McDonough (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.