Author, designer and leading expert on sustainability William McDonough, has partnered with Waste Management, Inc., to become catalysts for change. The team’s goal is to help leading companies become innovators in the areas of product and package design.

The initiative—the Waste Management McDonough Sustainable Innovation Collaborative—will serve producers, manufacturers, retailers and suppliers of packaged goods and products, while striving to advance their sustainability objectives and results.

David P. Steiner, president and CEO of Waste Management, said: “We’re prepared to help nurture and support further progress not only in sustainable packaging, but also in addressing the full product life-cycle, with a practical eye toward waste elimination, reducing environmental impact and increasing value from waste.”

McDonough added: “Designing up from the dumpster is one reason why I am personally very excited to launch the Sustainable Innovation Collaborative with Waste Management. Working together, we will use the tools of design, science and principled business practices in collaboration with manufacturers, retailers, distributors, consumers and recyclers of products and packaging to profitably work toward eliminating the very concept of waste.”

He continued, “We can link healthy, safe materials and sophisticated logistics, and this allows us to bring a uniquely valuable perspective for continuous innovation and quality improvement with supply-side and demand-side collaborators.”

McDonough is best known for his book that launched in 2002, co-authored with Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. His latest book launched this year, The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability—Designing for Abundance.

Waste Management, Inc. is based in Houston, Texas, and is the leading provider of waste management services in North America. Through its subsidiaries, the company provides collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. It is also one of the largest residential recyclers and a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States.