The financial page; waste away.(architect/author William McDonough)(The Talk of the Town)

Seventy years ago, the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge factory, in Dearborn, Michigan, was the show horse of the second industrial revolution. Spread out over a thousand acres, it included a steel mill, a power plant, glass and cement factories, and an assembly plant. Coal, iron ore, and sand were hauled down the Rouge River on giant freighters, and were transformed first into steel and glass and then into Model A's, tractors, and airplanes.

Today, there's a new show horse at the Rouge. As part of a two-billion-dollar redesign, Ford is covering much of the roof of its new factory with a plant called sedum, effectively turning the roof into a ten-acre garden. Skylights and giant windows will flood the factory with natural light. And the complex will include acres of natural swales and wetlands. The change will please the tree-huggers but should please the bean counters, too. The "living roof" lowers energy costs by keeping the factory cooler. The skylights and windows reduce the need for artificial light. And the wetlands serve as a natural filtration system for rainwater running off the buildings. It might seem silly to build an environmentally friendly plant to turn out gas-guzzling trucks, but the new Rouge may well offer the possibility of a new industrial revolution.

Or so William McDonough believes. McDonough is an architect and product designer whose ideas inspired the Rouge renovation. He is also something of an environmental heretic. In his new book, "Cradle to Cradle," McDonough (with his co-author, Michael Braungart) argues that the battle between environmentalists and industrialists is as outmoded as Earth Shoes. "The growth/no-growth argument is specious," he said last week. "Growth is good. The question is, how do you want to grow?" McDonough's guiding principle seems simple enough: the source of our environmental woes is waste. There is nothing wrong with cars, TV sets, and running shoes. What's wrong is the waste -- chemicals, heavy metals, CO2 -- that's produced when we make them, use them, and, eventually, throw them away. Eliminate that waste, and you eliminate the problem.

Right, and why not cure cancer while you're at it? Last time we checked, waste -- landfills, smog, river sludge -- was the price we paid for a healthy economy. McDonough doesn't see it that way. We don't need to make less stuff. We only need to make stuff differently. In McDonough's future, there would be only two kinds of products. The first would be made of natural substances -- he calls them "biological nutrients" -- and they'd be perfectly biodegradable. Had enough of those pants? Just toss them out the window, like an apple core. The second would be made of "technical nutrients" -- steel, plastics, polymers, silicon, glass -- and would be endlessly reusable; old shoes would become new shoes, old cars would be turned into new cars. Everything would be raw ...