Imagine a world where every waste is food, factories release oxygen in the atmosphere, and supermarkets provide shoppers with edible shopping bags. This is the world that architectural leader William McDonough is working to create. McDonough calls for an end to designed obsolescence. The presence of regulations governing how we design common things like buildings or a television set is a sign of design failure.

In this lecture given at the Center for Social Innovation, McDonough urges his audience of Stanford business students to think beyond the reduction of business externalities when designing industrial and commercial processes, services or products. The goal shouldn't be to do the wrong thing less badly but to do the right thing. McDonough compares our relationship with the environment to the relationship of a couple. It better be more than just sustainable.

He offered part of a new strategy by outlining the fundamental design principles used at his firm, MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry), when creating everything from non-toxic fabrics to new soles for running shoes that leave nutrients in the soil instead of neurotoxins. Among these fundamentals, based on the fecundity and effectiveness of natural systems, are:

• Waste equals food
• Use current solar income
• Celebrate diversity

The strategy leads to the design of substances that are not simply recycled, but are designed from the outset to be completely reused. "The carpet industry is taking this up with great vigor," he said. When it is time for a new carpet, or new computer, or even a new car, the consumer can send in the old one and it will be reconstituted into its new design, without any waste.

McDonough, who some call a prophet of the "New Industrial Revolution," reminds us that the concept of away has gone away. We used to be able to throw things away, but where is that now?