THE CRADLE TO CRADLE MOVEMENT.

• Author: Braungart, Michael

Journal of International Affairs (JIA): You first became involved with Greenpeace in the 1980s, helping them establish a chemistry section. How did you get started with this? What did your work look like?

Michael Braungart (MB): Chemistry is amazingly primitive when it comes to environmental health. When I was younger, I started to protest against chemistry because it was polluting rivers and destroying species diversity. I started to analyze human breast milk to find out what chemicals actually accumulate in biological systems. And with that, I joined Greenpeace. I was the first activist in Greenpeace who had a scientific background and could climb chimneys, operate rubber boats, and organize protests. For example, I blocked ships dumping waste in the oceans by swimming around them. Waste was often dumped in the North Sea or the Atlantic. New York City in the 1980s was still dumping municipal waste in the ocean. They just put it in a boat, went out 50 miles, and dumped it. It was quite toxic and dangerous work, but we thought this would be the only way to protest against what was being done.

One of the last protest activities that I coordinated and organized was against the chemical industry in 1986. The chemical company Sandoz had a big fire and basically destroyed the whole life of the river Rhine for more than 200 miles. All the fish were dying and the water turned pink. This protest was different from ones in the past. Normally, there was security, and when they could reach us, they would beat us. We climbed up a chimney of the company Ciba Geigy and the company behaved differently. It was cold and dangerous, so the company promised us if we climbed down at night, they would let us climb up again the next morning. That gave the situation a completely different culture of dialogue. When we ended our protest, the company told us they were interested in sustainability. I told them, Albert Einstein said "no problem can be solved by the same type of thinking which generates the problem."

In 1976, when I was a high school student, the company Seveso in Northern Italy had a big chemical accident. The whole region was contaminated by dioxins. Before that, the United States was using pesticides to destroy Vietnam's vegetation. We still see people suffering today from these disasters. With chemistry's terrible reputation, I thought there was nothing greater than protest. We were risking our lives stopping people from doing these terrible things. But at a certain point, I thought it was time to turn to developing solutions.

In 1988, I left Greenpeace and formed an organization called the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency...