Cradle to Cradle Explained

The Cradle to Cradle Certification is one of the strongest environmental certifications in ecomedes and represents products that meet the strict requirements identified by the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute. The Institute is a global non-profit dedicated to transforming the safety, healthy and sustainability of products through their certification.

The certification process is based on the Cradle to Cradle® design principles established by William McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart and the circular economy concept. The process evaluates five standard categories, each having a list of requirements to evaluate developed through a stakeholder engagement process with input from technical experts, market leaders, and the public.

The five categories include:

Material health: Assures that no chemicals from The Banned List of Chemicals
Material reuse: Can products remain in perpetual cycles of use and reuse from one product use cycle to the next, showing that as little waste is being generated through the production and disposal of the product.
Renewable energy and carbon management: Assures products are manufactured using renewable energy to reduce greenhouse gases due to the manufacturing.
Water stewardship: Water is value and this category assesses whether the product keeps this concept in mind throughout the manufacturing process; and
Social fairness: Assures that business operations honor the individuals and natural systems used to make the product.

Cradle to Cradle Concept

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During evaluation by a certified assessor or Institute staff, a product is assigned an achievement level (Basic, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum) for each category. The product’s overall certification level is the product’s lowest category achievement.

Just over 700 items (of 730,000 products) in ecomedes are Cradle to Cradle Certified™.

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Check out these five products that are C2C certified:

1. Herman Miller Cosm™ Chair (Silver C2C Certified)