between 15 percent and 40 percent of the content of American landfills is construction waste—seven tons per typical 1,800-square-foot house.31

technical devices to production systems to companies to economic sectors to entire cities and societies.

Increasing degraded soil’s carbon content at plausible rates58 could absorb about as much carbon as all human activity emits.

A fleet of 200 mpg, roomy, clean, safe, recyclable, renewably fueled cars might keep drivers from running out of oil, climate, or clean air, but they’d instead run out of roads, land, and patience—the new constraints du jour.

BIOMIMICRY. Reducing the wasteful throughput of materials—indeed, eliminating the very idea of waste—can be accomplished by redesigning industrial systems on biological lines

Rainwater-holding cisterns are affordable when measured against the water-supply and storm-water-drain investments they make unnecessary.

switching from chemical engineering to biological techniques

to one another with the product kept in continuous flow. The goal is to have no stops, no delays, no backflows, no inventories,

economy needs four types of capital to function properly: • human capital, in the form of labor and intelligence, culture, and organization • financial capital, consisting of cash, investments, and monetary instruments • manufactured capital, including infrastructure, machines, tools, and factories • natural capital, made up of resources, living sy