often turned into waste well before their physical lifetimes are up. On the other hand, despite the apparently rapid, arbitrary and wasteful change carried out by the development industry, buildings are not all that easy to change. Critics like Stewart Brand (1994) have gone so far as to argue that the design and building professions are actually mobilized against change, making adaptation all the more difficult, wasteful and expensive. What is true about buildings is equally true about materials: that is, they are also not designed for adaptationthat is, for recycling and reuse. Today there is some effort to recycle materials like old tires and plastic pop bottles into the production of carpeting, flooring, and upholstery. But despite many positive intentions, this may cause new environmental problemsfor example, generating indoor pollution and aggravating chemical sensitivities because these materials were not designed with these uses in mind. In most cases, such examples of recycling are actually examples of downcyclingof employing the materials in a degraded form that will extend the materials lifecycle one brief round before they become a disposal problem (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). It is certainly true that implementing more ecological relationships is an incremental process, and that many compromises must be made to make the best use of existing materials. In beginning, in order to mine the waste stream, we will necessarily have to do the best we can with toxic or composite materials that were not intended for recycling. But it is also essential that we keep the ultimate goal in mind because the most fundamental solutions lay in product and building design. In all too many cases today, superficial forms of recycling are being used to reinforce, or divert attention from, larger anti-ecological patterns that should be altered. In this chapter, I want to look at some of