William McDonough and Michael Braungart argue that the old environmental slogans of reduce and recycle no longer work, and the film follows their alternative: design products so that everything discarded becomes either raw material for industry or biodegradable matter for the biosphere. The two coauthors of Cradle to Cradle explain the theory in interviews, then the film tests it against actual factories. It visits a Swiss textile mill and a German clothing manufacturer retooling their chemistry, Nike's headquarters discussing shoe production, a Herman Miller furniture plant built around McDonough's GreenHouse design, and Ford's River Rouge complex, redesigned with his input. A government housing project and a model village in rural China show the concept applied at the scale of urban planning rather than a single product line. Executives and engineers describe what they call eco-effectiveness, weighing cost against toxicity and waste at each stage. Director Rob van Hattum keeps the focus on these working sites rather than abstract argument, letting the factories and buildings make the case for themselves.