The book Cradle to Cradle's main premise is that the natural world has processes that are truly sustainable. Even the 'wastes' are used for other purposes. This is in contrast with industrial society, in which we take something, use it, and throw it 'away.'

A wonderful example that they used was the cherry tree. Some may call it wasteful that it produces many cherries that never grow into trees. However, every cherry finds some other biological purpose, whether it is as food for an animal, or if it decomposes and fertilizes the soil.

Humanity unfortunately mixes biological and technological products together so that they can not decompose properly, nor can they be reused. Furthermore, recycling does not preserve the integrity of the material. The authors refer to it as downcycling because the quality is diluted through mixing. In reality, they say, a recycled bottle may become nothing more than a speed bump because that is all the downcycled material is capable of doing.

The authors say that we need to find materials that can be used many times in many different forms without being diluted. We need to think of all the consequences of our products. We need to preserve the ability of our products to biodegrade. Although this is an ambitious goal that may seem unattainable, they have proven with their book that it is possible. They do this by printing their book on such materials and clearly enumerating the reasons why. They show that their vision of the future is possible, and it is important that we listen to them and start to think of our products and lives as cradle to cradle, instead of cradle to grave.