We all know of the old adage “Cradle to Grave” which captures the notion of “extending throughout one’s life, from birth to death”.
This also applies to other phenomena, such as a product’s life cycle, the proverbial cradle to grave which encompasses the origin of an product from it’s initial creation/instantiation through the discontinuation of same.
However, the nature of this post is to capture the notion that is more broad than that. The postulate “genes to beans” is based on the real world notion of “genes”, the genetic material that contains and imparts a biological organism’s “blueprint” that only later/eventually “becomes” an organism BASED on that material, given a suitable environment for it to gestate. This continues all the way to the “end” (and further) beyond that artifact/organism’s existence, specifically such that the decomposed remains of the artifact or organism can be used to “grow” something in it’s (or unimpaired by it’s) “remains” (e.g. growing beans in that compost).
As an aside, there is actually (OK, somewhat) a “protocol” for this as defined by the International Standards Organization’s specification 14000 which any ecologically minded organization should abide by (see ISO 14000).