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Sustainable
product prototyping
If we are to move towards sustainability, we
need to imagine what a more sustainable world will be. Most of us really
haven’t thought that through. Quite understandably, the majority of people do
not understand the academic concept of sustainable prototyping. Indeed,
research for the Department of Environment in the
How do we
translate these issues back into something applicable to product and service prototyping
and design? A key issue is we must not forget customers. Many companies have
forgotten to talk to customers and have focused inwardly on the technological
and engineering improvements required for, primarily, eco-design i.e. using
less energy, using fewer components, using less packaging, etc.
The Kambrook
kettle is a good example of an attempt to create a dialogue with customers and
understand customer behavior. The market research led to a new perspective,
which led to the prototyping of a greener solution (JSPD, Issue 2).
The lawn
mower is an interesting example. The first question is do we need it? Behind
this is a key question: what are needs? Maslow developed a 'hierarchy of needs'
which illustrated a series of levels that could only be attained when the
previous level has been satisfied:
• Physiological
• Safety
• Belongingness
• esteem
• Self-actualization
From a
Northern perspective much of the discussion over sustainable product prototyping
and design (SPPD) and eco-design relates to self-actualization (essentially,
developing oneself to your fullest potential). However, from a Southern
perspective, SPDD relates to basic needs i.e. food to live and ‘design for
necessity’, i.e. shoes from car tires. There are shifts happening in the North
where some are asking themselves ‘do we really need it?’ This may mean that
green consumers in suburbs shift from using solar-powered lawn mowers with no
human intervention to being rural or semi-rural sustainable consumers using
mechanical lawn mowers that cut the grass and keep you fit!
Lawn mowers:
power systems
• Human-powered
• battery
• solar
• clockwork?
The process
of product creation starts with an idea and develops into a concept. Therefore
if people who generate ideas have no concept of sustainability, then we may
only get random advances.
Allowing for
constraints of 'time to market', costs, etc. there should be wider stakeholder
input into the product prototyping process, with sustainability thinking
injected as early as possible into the process. Considering the issues at the design
stages is too late, as many decisions will have been made and opportunities
missed.
SPDD is a
much broader agenda and requires innovation across e3s issues (environmental,
economic, ethical, social). This means not just developing innovative new
products, but innovative and new ways of using and re-using products i.e.
shifting ‘products to services’. SPDD will mean developing new processes to
deliver those products/services whilst working and cooperating with internal
and external partners much more closely.
Ursula
Tischner and Professor Ab Stevels focus on designing for environmentally-driven
sustainability, and particularly highlight designing for eco-efficiency.
Professor Stevels suggests that there are four sequential steps of eco-design,
with the fourth level being longer-term design for a sustainable society.
Jonathan Williams provides an example of a new tool that has been developed
that analyses product-related eco-efficiency, particularly amongst electronic
products.
Annica Bragd
analyses the lessons learnt by a Swedish gardening equipment manufacturer, when
developing, marketing and launching battery and solar-powered lawn mowers. A
key lesson learnt is that stakeholder education is essential, particularly
amongst customers and distributors. The interview with Professor William
McDonough starts to broaden out the SPDD agenda to include a more holistic concept
that includes social and ethical considerations. Colin Beard and Rainer
Hartmann highlight some new perspectives on sustainable design, in which
environmentally-positive (e+) design thinking will become a more creative and
influential avenue for designers.
O2 Global
Network pages update readers on new eco-design prototyping, including Philips
decision to progress its 'end of life' management strategies. There is a focus
on O2 Japan, including a report on the Tennen Design conference that
highlighted the need to consider 'values' in eco-design thinking.
The Journal
continues to search for case studies and articles explore both eco-design, and
particularly new and ‘blue sky’ thinking in the areas of sustainable
consumption and sustainable product prototyping and design. The aim is to build
the Journal’s international focus as a platform for debate and analysis.
Feedback and
comments are always useful.
Learning from
the introduction of green products: two case studies from the gardening
industry Research Assistant, Gothenburg Research Institute,
Annica Bragd
is a Research Assistant at Gothenburg Research Institute, (
The prototyping
of environmentally sound products or green products is being increasingly
considered as an important strategic issue by Swedish companies. But so far
very few companies have detailed practical experience of handling these
projects. This indicates that there is a real need for systematic documentation
of the experience and knowledge generated in the green product prototyping and
marketing process.
This article
presents a study of a Swedish manufacturing company in the gardening industry,
with examples of technologically innovative products and the problems and
opportunities associated with the green product prototyping process. The study
highlights that the learning associated with green products seems to be
different in comparison to conventional products. Therefore the article argues
that there is a more complex and multi-dimensional learning process taking
place in the introductory phase of green products.
Introduction
What are
green products?
In reality green products do not exist: products are either more or less green, or greener; all consumer or industrial products cause environmental harm.
Therefore it
is easier to describe products as having green characteristics such as being
non-polluting, energy efficient, recyclable, and noiseless, etc. Over the last decade
there have been a range of green products that have been launched into a wide
variety of consumer and ‘business to business’ market sectors.
What
experience have companies’ generated from developing green products? Of course,
the answer(s) to this question are of considerable interest to companies
working with green products today. During 1996 an empirical study (Bragd &
Wolff, 1996) was carried out, where the above question was the central theme.
The aim was to obtain a general view of the management of green products, in
the context of the corporate learning.
Solar Mower
Environmental
considerations break down traditional lines of responsibility
Within the
company and change the boundaries in relation to its external environment. This
process, based on the rationale that continuous improvement, new technology and
innovation are essential prerequisites for the prototyping of environmental
activities. The empirical study comprised 70 interviews from two manufacturing
and one sales company. The interviewees were product developers, marketing
staff, environmental co-coordinators, purchasing staff, product line managers,
project members, retailers and customers. This article is based on the findings
of this study and will focus on
Background
Environmental
activities of proactive Swedish companies
The
complexity of environmental activities and the new approaches taken by Swedish
companies explains why academia and business are interested in further
exploration. Environmental considerations break down traditional lines of
responsibility within the company and change the boundaries in relation to its
external environment. Corporate environmental activities taken as a result of
green issues are as a result of both externally regulated processes and
internally-driven forces. Environmental driving forces can be very different,
for example they can be competition-driven to obtain ‘first mover’ advantage,
or consumer-driven, regulation-driven, or media-driven i.e. over environmental
risks. For example, at the beginning of the 90s in
A key aspect
of the prototyping of the green product market in
In the
following section,
From a
‘technology orientated’ gardening company to the demand for shorter product prototyping
time, shorter introduction processes and quicker ‘time-to-market’ has put
increasing pressure on companies in the gardening industry, and more broadly on
Swedish industry. To increase their competitiveness many companies are becoming
increasingly technology-orientated. These companies strive to produce high
quality products and continuously improve products, as they believe their
customers strive for quality.
Therefore the
production of marketing plans comes second to the prototyping of the
technology. Research has highlighted many examples of limited internal
communication between the marketing and the product development departments,
which leads to an inefficient use of resources. In the long-term the technology
is unlikely to be fully utilized or transformed into a competitive advantage,
if there is no understanding of the customer. The absence of marketing
concepts, the lack of long-term product strategies and bad product cost
estimations are also evidence of a bias towards strong technology-orientated
strategies.
The second
case study, the Solar Mower is an example of weak market orientation. A key lesson
was that, in order to make the customer pay a higher price it is not enough to
just present the raw technology. The presentation of the technology must be
supported by an appropriate image i.e. modern and environmentally-sound. In
addition, it must be aimed at a specific target group. The experiences gained
from this product made the company aware of the need to revise current
marketing and selling practices as well as explore different forms of
distribution.
A move
towards a ‘market-orientated’ gardening company
One reason
for re-focusing on a more market-orientated approach was that the company could
not act on all market opportunities and satisfy every customer’s need. However
focusing on tight target marketing does not guarantee the success of every new
product. It is more likely to act as a risk reduction exercise and contribute
to an earlier discovery of product failures, if market research and information
has been gathered effectively. This was highlighted by the author’s research
which indicated that green products appeared to need a higher level of market
differentiation. To take advantage of opportunities, organizations developing
green products will need to be adaptable to both technological change and
market changes. The organization must also learn to understand green customer
preferences and environmental legislation in different markets. Also, the
marketing and communications activities associated with green products need to
be adapted to locally-based green consumer demand and to the level of
environmental awareness not only linguistically, but also conceptually.
Case studies
The case
studies present two green products: a battery-powered lawn mower and a
solar-driven lawn mower. The structure of the case studies is a short background
followed by a description of the driving forces, the product prototyping
process and the marketing activities. The experiences gained from the prototyping
of the products conclude the studies.
Battery-powered
lawn mower
At the
beginning of the 90s, a fierce public debate took place in
Case study
one: the battery-powered lawn mower
Background
The
battery-powered lawn mower was the first so called green lawn mower launched by
• decreasing
prices of lawn mowers
• fierce
competition
• the product
is easy to mass distribute and does not need a maintenance service
• new mass market
distributors have entered the market for battery-driven tools and machines.
This product
is a business success in that it corresponded to a market need, but was priced
high due to high production costs. The ‘second generation’ of Husqvarna’s
battery-driven mowers was launched in 1996. From a green point of view, the
product prototyping work was different compared to the ‘first generation’. The
product development group decided to develop a machine that used minimum energy
without loss of performance, quite contrary to the ‘first generation’ lawn
mower, where ‘horse power’ was an important part of the selling argument.
Driving
forces
At the
beginning of the 90s, fierce public debate took place in
Another
driving force was the prototyping of new battery-driven tools, where producers
of electrical supplies and tools were pushing the prototyping of the
technology. A key issue was the visionary leadership of the managing director
who strongly believed in the prototyping of batteries and encouraged the staff
to progress research and development in this area.
In 1995,
‘Carb 95’, the Californian state’s legislation on engine emissions i.e. lawn
mowers came into force. It lead the company to look for alternatives to
conventional lawn mower engines, as the US was an important export market and
the Californian market was an important ‘reference group’ for future product
success.
Product prototyping
and development
The selling
arguments used were touted as a rechargeable battery-driven
mower, which
does not disturb the neighbours, is light weight,
equipped with
vibration damping grip, does not emit exhaust fumes and has a low noise level.
The
technological experiences gained from the ‘first generation’ were not passed
onto the ‘second generation’ due to a management decision to shift product prototyping
and production from
Experiences
of the battery-powered mower
The following
seven points present implicit and explicit experiences from the introduction of
the battery-powered mower. These experiences have emerged from the interviews
and are an interpretation of the material. The core of the debate was that a
lawn mower pollutes more during one hour than a car travelling between the two
biggest cities in
from a
strategic point of view this experience may be the most important. Because of
satisfactory sales and faith in the prototyping of battery technology the
company chose to continue with the battery-driven mowers, which contributed to
the discontinuation of electric mower prototyping.
“Time-to-market”
is both resource and quality demanding’ – in this case the product was resource
intensive. The ‘time-to-market’ issue was an essential consideration due to the
seasonality of the gardening market. The industry is fragile because if the
product is not in outlets by the Spring, there is a risk of missing a season of
sales, which clearly can jeopardise the success of the product. The balance
between increased ‘time-to-market’ and quality aspects for the launch of new
products is a difficult task.
Re-learning
of marketing experience and knowledge’ – this includes the distribution network
and the development of new learning and re-learning processes within
Cost estimations of green products are misleading’ – cost estimations and pay-back are inaccurate measures of the overall impact of the product. The problem is related to the lack of predictability of future revenues of green products. There is also a need to develop new accounting practices that ‘factor-in’ externalities i.e. use of natural resources.
Case study
two: The Solar Mower
The product:
The Solar Mower
This case
study describes the launch of a solar-driven mower. The technology of using
daylight as fuel to drive a lawn mower is an incremental step towards
environmentally sound products, as it does not use fossil fuels or electricity
in generating power. Therefore it does not emit exhaust fumes or other
pollutants in generating power either in the garden or at the power plant. The
product is a robot, which mflows at random and looks after itself without human
intervention. The product starts automatically in the morning when there is
enough sunlight. On cloudy or rainy days it takes things a little easier,
depending on the available light. The working zone of the mower is bound by a
hidden, low voltage wire loop, which is powered by a discrete solar panel.
Course of
events
The original
product patent was acquired in 1993 and was introduced in the same year as a
prototype to the distributors. This generated enormous interest from the public
and media. However, production did not start until 1995 due to production
adjustments, with sales to the final customer starting later that year. The
product is a business success because it has increased brand awareness but due
to high pricing the product has not been a sales success.
Driving
forces
In the
beginning of the 90s the gardening business started to become a mature market
with falling margins, with new product introductions incorporating minor
product modifications. In the research survey, interviewees stated that the
gardening industry was ‘standing still’ and that ‘we were waiting for something
to happen’. The company had been looking for future alternatives for a long
time and the concept of a solar-driven mower embodied the modernity and vision
that management was looking for. When the product’s inventor presented the
proto-type at a trade fair in 1991 the whole industry laughed and said ‘there
is not a market for that yet’, ‘that looks like a toy, can it mow?’
However
Product prototyping
The new solar
technology shifted the focus from horsepower to watts as an energy source (with
the product using the same power as an electric bulb). A micro computer is programd
to mow randomly with small razor knives instead of a traditional rotating
knife. The solar technology required new competence and attracted several
external consultants and distributors who wanted to take part in the generation
of the technology.
The product
The lessons
were extensive. The Solar Mower is a niche product is a new
and required specific
marketing. The product is a new concept,
concept, which
requires customers to change their perceptions of how
which
requires to cut grass. The marketing had to be based on symbolic aspects,
customers to
which had to be visible to the customer i.e.modern and futuristic. The product
had to perform, but it had to give the perception of functionality and
usefulness. change their perceptions
The Solar
Mower reflected its consumers, and communicated
of how to
that they are modern and/or environmentally conscious.
mow grass.
To help the
customer appreciate the product, it was not enough to present the raw
technology, it had to create an image that related to the target market. The
product required demonstration and demanded more information compared to
conventional products, simply because customers had no experience of
solar-driven mowers.
Experiences
The following
five points present implicit and explicit experiences from the introduction of
the Solar Mower. The experiences have emerged from the interviews and they are
an interpretation of the material.
‘Bridge the scepticism of distributors and
customers’ – the project presented evidence of the need for product
demonstration to generate sales. The distributors learnt this before
‘Form of distribution is a key factor’ – the
form of distribution in
‘Identification
of target groups and markets’ – the profile of the target market for the
product was unknown before launch. The process of launching helped uncover the
customers, their needs and how much they were willing to pay. The marketing
department tried to cover too many markets and launched the product at the same
time with the same concept. In retrospect, the product should have been tested
on a ‘reference market’ and market research should also have been conducted.
The
distributors should have been involved on a larger scale to ‘check the market’
before launching. The launch was an educational process for the company in
which valuable information and knowledge was discovered. Today it is possible
to detect target groups for the product such as professionals and ‘business to
business’ markets such as, industrial areas, holiday camps, hotels and
recreational areas. The product is a niche product’ the marketing of the Solar Mower should have
been treated differently from mainstream products, especially the communication
and selling practices.
‘The product
is an “image maker”’ – the company were able to position the Solar Mower at the
innovative end of its green product portfolio i.e. at the ‘easy’ end are
products such as the lawn mower with a catalytic converter. The company’s brand
awareness has increased because of the product. The product signals to the
customer the vision of the company, as one which develops new innovative
products. In addition, the customers are now also aware that the company also
works in the gardening product industry, and is not exclusively a manufacturer
of chain saws and forestry products.
Discussion –
what, where, and how to understand green products?
What can we
learn from the case studies?
• there are
different driving forces for green products compared to conventional products.
• green
products require a different form of communication and information profile
• there is a
degree of insecurity over the marketing of environmental messages
• it is
important to find forms of distribution that fit the requirements of the
product’s characteristics.
• new
knowledge can be found amongst customers, in different organizational
departments and within distributors.
Where can we find
new experience in the company?
Project
groups, environmental coordinators and distributors have generated new
experience and knowledge as a result of the green product launches, but the
knowledge is limited to each person. Members of project groups have acted as
‘intrapreneurs’ and have searched for information and knowledge in different
parts of the organization.
The
‘individual search process’ takes time and resources, and has not lead to the
diffusion of knowledge. So, the company faces the task of trying to facilitate
the knowledge transfer processes, especially the transformation from
‘individual knowledge’ to ‘organizational knowledge’. This will be the first
step towards improving the organizational learning structure in relation to
green product prototyping.
How can a
company increase its organizational learning?
The main
element of organizational learning is the ability of the entire company to
create knowledge, and to diffuse and use it in products, services and systems.
When organizations learn, they learn from individuals in other departments,
subsidiaries, or from other organizational arrangements (Kim, 1993). Procedures
are needed to collect and diffuse experience and knowledge so that it becomes organizational
knowledge.
The study
indicates that learning processes resulting from green product prototyping seem
to be different in comparison to the learning resulting from conventional
products more in relation to green products, ‘follow-up projects’ and
documentation must be completed as a way of making knowledge more explicit.
Experience flows it is cross-functional and cross-hierarchy group discussions
coupled with documentation, which are important elements in the knowledge
diffusion process. The study indicates that learning processes resulting from
green product prototyping seem to be different in comparison to the learning
resulting from conventional products. The organizational approach has to be
built to respond to, not only technological change, but also market changes. It
must also learn to understand green customer preferences, local environmental
awareness and environmental legislation in different markets. This illustrates
that there appears to be a multi-dimensional learning process taking place in
the introduction phase. The company needs to focus on the internal learning i.e.
learning within the company (individual and intra-functional), as well as
external learning (customers and the competition) in order to increase the
understanding of the issues surrounding green product prototyping.
Practical
examples of ‘missing links’ in the organizational learning process of green
products.
The examples
from the case studies illustrate the necessity to ‘organize new knowledge’, an
area where there is inertia. It takes time for an organization to learn and
establish a program to encourage organizational learning. However, before new
learning can take place, unlearning has to happen. Unlearning becomes
increasingly difficult the more established and integrated the cognitive
structures are (Hedberg & Wolff 1997). Green products are more information-and
education-intensive than conventional products in the introduction phase.
There are our
key actors in this process:
• Customers
• Company staff
• The marketing dept
• Distributors.
The following
examples show the lack of information and education in the introductory phase
of green products. The customers hold certain beliefs and myths about the
performance, capacity, quality and the price sensitivity of green products.
These beliefs should be dealt with at ‘point-of-sale’, as customers want answers
to their environmental questions such as ‘what is a catalytic converter’, ‘what
kind of environmental certification does this product have’, ‘how much does the
product effect the environment’, etc. These questions take time for the
distributor to answer, and they need training and information.
Company staff
appears to have great personal interest in environmental issues. There were
requests for product-related environmental information concerning the effects
of products during production and use phases, as well as the content of the
products. The existing product specification was not sufficient; it needed to
be complemented with relevant environmental information. Many of the interviewees
wanted to be presented with ‘credible’ hard facts concerning the green
products. It was felt by employees that sales arguments should not be based on
arguments such as ‘saving the Earth’.
The
distributor is a linchpin in the sale and promotion of green products.
Therefore, the training of this group is crucial to the success of green
products. This group was not fully informed of the issues before market
introduction, which had a negative effect on sales. The localization of the
distributor and the prototyping of the competence of the distributor are areas
of key importance.
The marketing
department built up its own base of environmental knowledge from scratch. In
relation to certain aspects it had to unlearn certain marketing practices. The
launch strategy was a kind of ‘green’ training for the marketing staff, as they
gained an important insight into how to market such products. The marketing
department also found that the experiences of distributors were essential in
order to adjust activities.
Conclusion
Many Swedish
companies are incorporating environmentally-related activities into their
product ranges. These companies are experiencing a learning process, which is
highlighting the need to communicate collective environmental knowledge within
the organization. The findings from the case studies indicate the need for
different approaches to developing and implementing marketing and product prototyping
strategies, when launching green products. This paper argues that there is a
more complex and multi-dimensional learning process taking place in the
introductory phase of green products compared to conventional products. Green
products require a higher degree of market differentiation. Therefore green
marketing will need to address the issue of local adjustments, with greater
efforts to educating and training those involved in the product prototyping
process, particularly those in distribution networks. Product prototyping
strategies need to be formulated to correspond to local green consumer demands.
To build on the experiences of green product prototyping effective knowledge
collection and then diffusion mechanisms must be established, particularly in
complex organizational structures.
References
Bragd, A. and
R. Wolff, ‘From product concept to market concept’. A pilot study concerning
environmental sound products.
Bragd, A,
‘The organizing of environmentally sound products’. A forthcoming licentiate
thesis.
Kim, D. H.
‘The link between Individual and Organizational learning’, in Management
Review, (Fall 1993) pp1-24, 37-50.
Hedberg, B.
and R. Wolff, ‘Organizing, learning and strategizing – From construction to
discovery.’ Contribution to the Ladenburg Kolleg on Organizational Learning,
(1997).
Acknowledgement
The author
would like to gratefully thank the company
Colin Beard
(left) is a lecturer, writer and trainer specializing in environmental issues.
He has been a training advisor to the Countryside Commission UK and was
instrumental in creating the
Rainer
Hartmann (right) is a consultant on European economy and ecology and visiting
lecturer at the
Sustainable design:
re-thinking future business products
Lecturer,
Sheffield
Hallam University,
Environmental impact reduction is starting to influence design. But ‘sustainable design’ will need to move on, to find innovative solutions to overcome the threats to global natural capital for future generations. Design, if freed from a compliance mentality, the overpowering dominance of science and other barriers to creativity and innovation, may well start to develop different patterns of thinking. Their products may actually revitalize earth systems by producing ‘e-plus’ effects, as well as saving vast sums of money. Nature itself, with billions of years of design experience, can offer many solutions. The campaigning environmental movement is pushing for a new solutions agenda, and forming partnerships with business to develop new products that do more with less earth resources. This article gives practical examples from clothes to washing machines, from cars to toothbrushes, from countries where resources are abundant to those where resources are scarce. Ideas and checklists are offered to help design re-think and to move to resource reduction and ‘e+’ products.
Introduction
This article
seeks to cultivate a ‘sustainable design’ culture that moves on from the
prevailing tendency to focus on the environmental impact reduction of a
product. Beyond design for recycling, repair, re-usability, and recovery
(Fiksel, 1996, Burall, 1991, Fussler et al., 1996) lies exciting opportunities
to re-think design, not only to produce more with lower levels of natural
resource consumption, but to design products which can create an environmental
contribution or payback.
Weizsaecker
et al., in ‘Factor Four’, a new Report to the Club of Rome, commented that
‘changing the direction of progress is not something a book can do. It has to
be done by people… motivation needs to be experienced as compelling and urgent
by a critical mass of people otherwise there won’t be enough momentum to change
the course of our civilization.’ (Weizsaecker et al, 1997, p xix).
Sustainable design
requires a greater critical mass of people
with the confidence
to overcome the notion that: ‘the prototyping of environmentally responsible
new products was regarded as a very difficult and complicated task which went
beyond the expertise and experience of the majority of personnel… (Except) …the
scientists and environmental experts.’ (Dermody et al, 1996, p 377). Business’
entrepreneurial spirit can be re-directed to promote creative thinking patterns
for the effective use of natural assets and, as de Bono suggests, to achieve
this there needs to be ‘provocative operations’ that defy logic.
Driving design
A recent
Harvard Business review article commented that ‘Businesses spend too many of
their environmental dollars on fighting regulation and not enough on finding
real solutions’ (Porter, M.E., van der Linde, C., 1995). Finding ‘solutions’ to
the environmental problems is going to be increasingly difficult. But what are
real solutions and to what extent could new thinking benefit sustainable design?
If sustainable design involves designing products that meet the needs of the
present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs, then the utilization and condition of the remaining
Natural Capital should be a fundamental concern to designers. Current estimates
by the Centre for Ecological Analysis at the
worldwide
total gross national product at £11 trillion p.a. (The Independent, 1997).
Extrapolations by Weizsaecker et al suggest that global waste is currently in
the order of £6 trillion p.a. (Weizsaecker et al., 1997). Thus we ‘waste’ more
than half of the world’s GNP at present – much of this is from inefficiency in design:
‘Business should sack the unproductive Kilowatt-hrs, tons and liters rather than
their workforce’ (Weizsaecker et al., 1997).
The
sustainable designer – a chimera of scientist, artist, and economist
The scientific
‘mindset’ currently dominates our environmental agenda and design programs;
driven by compliance, legal and technical requirements and environmental
management systems (
to be seduced
by complex data that appears as infallible as ‘fact’. BT have tried to overcome
such problems by including representatives from many sectors of society,
including school children who represent the concerns of the next generation, on
their liaison panel within their environmental management system (Tuppen,
1993). Many people around the globe could be given the opportunity to
contribute to the sustainable design process.
Scientists,
particularly engineers and chemists, head up many of the environ-mental units
to be found in Fortune 500 companies; their thinking patterns are more likely
to be associated with environmental damage limitation rather than eco-design.
Products and services are often concentrated on life cycle assessment (LCA)
with limited connection to life style change (LSC). The discourse of the latter
is not that of scientists but of the green lobby and to some extent the public
[Redclift & Benton, op cit.] Scientists may thus be spending time re-designing
the wrong products – efficiency and impact reduction dominating over
effectiveness and true sustainable design. B&Q, the British
‘do-it-yourself’ retailer that has made great strides in environmental
management, has recently completed a detailed evaluation of the global warming
effect per item of hammers shipped from
scientific
analysis and is not always possible for many companies because of the sheer
volume of their products. B&Q have over 44,000 products from 500 suppliers
(B&Q, 1995). It is virtually impossible to identify accurately the specific
environmental impact of every product. Some of the energy directed to the
meticulous and detailed analysis of impact reduction could be redirected into
innovative design. Sustainable design requires a multi-disciplinary approach;
using the best bits of the right brain creativity and left brain logic.
The
environmental impact judgment process can be simple and effective. Such a
simple system is the ABC-XYZ-approach, adopted from financial controlling
(Vollmuth, H., 1994). While the environmental impact is valued by the A, B, C
the quantitative importance is valued.
The
importance of action increases from lower right to upper left in the diagram.
The diagram flows if a high impact is combined with very low quantities it
might be much more effective to focus attention on lower impact items that have
their impact multiplied by large amounts.
Science on
its own can create design paralysis. This can be illustrated by the comparative
LCA for phosphates in washing powders conducted by the Oeko-Institut,
Social science
and design; lifestyle change, leisure and work
Boundaries of
work, leisure and charitable work are beginning to fade. Portfolio lifestyles
and ‘downshifting’ are already happening. New forms of consumer liberation are
Myths and legends: innovation or ideas?
‘Parties are
a time to drink and create fertiliser’ as was the case with the organic
gardener who asked the men to urinate in a swing bin to the rear of the house.
Strange behavior maybe, but the opportunity to collect free fertiliser was one
the gardener couldn’t afford to miss. Now translate the idea to motorway
stations and urine could be seen as an opportunity, to sell it rather than pay
to dispose of it. A Swedish company (Servator AB) entered this market recently
and now offers composting toilets promoted through the internet [Internet
1996.]
A new breed
of scrap merchants are also emerging, opportunist recycling in the wake of
telecommunications growth. Deutsche Telekom for example report that they
produce about 1.5 million tons of electronic scrap per year. What is
interesting is that just one ton of electronic scrap has the potential to
yield:
• 200 kg
copper • 80 kg iron • 1 kg silver • 0.5 kg gold!
One major
recycling company in
‘Saving paper
doesn’t save trees’. That will be the case in the future. If paper isn’t made
solely from trees then the old well known saying doesn’t hold true. Body Shop
for example supported a community initiative in
Reprinted
from an article by Beard & Hartmann in European Business Review (vol. 97,
no. 5) 1997.
Many
thousands of people creation of ‘e-plus’ or ‘environneed to shift the existing
power-each year pay to work: work paid mental positive [e+] could be a ‘retail
therapy effect’ of for twice and enjoyed as leisure! important idea for designers.
leisure shopping and spending Providers of Management Current thinking often
starts with into new directions. Such trends Prototyping programs that the
notion that everything has a will significantly influence prod-use the outdoors
are now realism-negative impact on the environuct design. The main product of that
the environment is both this is a design barrier. one of
The Trabant
Car
production in the German Democratic Republic provides us with an interesting
example of creative thought. With waiting periods of about 20 years for an
ordered car, and with car life cycles running at 8–10 years, a whole new
business emerged rebuilding the ‘Trabant’ [the ‘mini’ of the East], buying and
selling all parts for this car and rebuilding the cars after accidents or after
20 years on the road. Special refashioned body panels were being sold to make a
20 or 30 years old car look new and fashionable. The ‘Trabant’, because of a
shortage of sheet metal, had a car body made from a steel frame with screwed on
panels that were made of pressed cotton soaked with synthetic resin (Beard and
Hartmann, European Business Review, 1997). This so-called cotton in fact was
often second hand clothes felted and pressed to car body shape panels.
Innovation
and creativity was the theme of a recent 1997 Institute of Personnel and Prototyping
(IPD) conference in Harrogate and one speaker, Clifford Pinchot, described the
struggle that many of the world’s creative people have faced to get their
products to be developed fully (see JSPD Issue 1, p. 53–56). ‘Creativity and
innovation’, he comments, ‘are often suppressed’. In ‘People Management’, the
Journal of the IPD, the comment is made that ‘Innovation is experiencing a
renaissance’: the Department of Trade and Industry (Dti) actually has an
Innovation Unit and there are now MBAs in Innovation, and two thirds of
secondary schools in Singapore teach innovative thinking and in New Zealand
children as young as two are being taught to think creatively. The article also
asks how much potential invention is locked up inside ‘ordinary employees’
(Pickard, J., 1996).
Different
forms of design innovation flourish in times of war or when resources are very
scarce. Frugality produces innovative patterns of thought, as constraint drives
a ‘design for necessity’.
Innovation
lethargy is a major barrier towards the product greening process. Just as we
have learnt that the North has often attempted to design and export
inappropriate technology to the South, failing to adjust and adapt to a
different kind of creativity requirement, so we must learn from the emerging
creativity patterns of East and
The car
industry should be awash with creativity (Weizsaecker et al). However, some of
the design ideas have been a survival response to increasing regulatory
pressures to reduce the transport impact on the environment. Whereas ’German
and Japanese car makers captured early-mover advantages,US car makers chose to fight
regulations’ (Porter, M.E., van der Linde, C., 1995). Environmental regulation,
rather than voluntary change, can either be perceived as a threat to business
or in practice a positive driving force creating opportunities for innovation
and sustainable design.
Solutions
campaigning
Greenpeace
showed industry that any car produced today can be built with a 50% fuel
reduction for about the same price with no compromise on safety. The average
car fuel efficiency for new cars is still under 40 mpg. There were lots of
declarations of interest by industry and other institutions but little action.
Greenpeace eventually gave a loan of £1.1 million to the engineering company in
A growing
number of select campaigning’ to lead the way business’ are emerging as a in
some areas of eco-design potentially powerful positive social force, doing more
with its purchasing power and innovative.
Natural ideas
and product prototyping energy. At the same time campaigning organizations are
But, eco-innovation is rarely now re-focusing some of their driving patterns of
thought on energy on what has become product prototyping boards; we often fail
to known as the ‘solutions agenda’ effectively learn from evolution. moving
from detective work The earth systems have had some and the ‘politics of blame’
to the 4.6 billion years on the drawing support of innovative problem-board.
The stock markets actually solving. Greenpeace for example confirm that much of
the earth’s are investing large sums of clever product prototyping and current
money through their ‘solutions resource wealth still exists.
Solutions
campaigning central band of the earth where, unlike
Disposable
toothbrush heads
We have for
years used razors with disposable ‘heads’ but many people continue to use
toothbrushes that are totally disposable company currently trades at an
astonishing £45 a share, one of the most expensive on the stock market.
Then there is
the case of the outdoor clothing industry which has for many years struggled to
produce the ideal material that keeps us warm and dry – but doesn’t ‘sweat’.
Plants came to the rescue. Gore-tex, Sympatex, Supplex and Pertex have all
attempted to solve the problem. But in 1996 a new product was designed (partly
funded by the UK Dti) called Stomatex which warms and breathes by following the
natural design of plant stomata; sadly the copyright fee to nature will not be
paid.
Following
strict German legislation for waste handling and recycling, incineration
facilities have mushroomed within the last few years. This has created change
and opportunities for the waste industry. Only a few years ago waste was
transported around
• those who
get rid of their waste
• those who
buy in their recycled material
• the recycling stock agent who charges a
commission
• and the environment.
Seeing it
differently
We have for
years used razors with disposable ‘heads’ but many people continue to use
toothbrushes that are totally disposable. The photograph flows the prototyping
of simple re-design principles – yet disposable toothbrush heads still haven’t
reached retail shelves, i.e.
Living
buildings
Many very exciting
and innovative rooftop ideas have already been generated such as solar power,
rainwater collection, living/growing roofs and so on. But the roof is the least
interesting aspect of the high rise concrete forests currently growing at an
alarming pace in the Asian Pacific. Perhaps new construction ideas could
contribute yet more if we focus on the most significant surface areas; not on
the roof but on the sides or walls. The
The primary
energy on earth is produced by green tissues in plants. If such photosynthesis
systems could be incorporated within construction materials, it could be
possible to produce energy and bio-mass just from sunlight, water and the
carbon dioxide (CO2) of the air? Scientists have recently developed a
chlorophyll like substance, that if closed between two sheets of glass produces
roughly the same amount of electric power that silicon based photovoltaic cells
do when exposed to sunlight. This new system is at the early developmental
stage but can possibly produce much cheaper electricity than silicon
photovoltaic cells (The Open University 1996). Blue-green algae are also bred
in huge glass tubes or plastic bags producing high amounts of bio-mass. A
constant flow system could be incorporated within the panels of a skyscraper
which could provide a considerable amount of bio-mass being used for either
nutrition, bio-fuels or sugars (the raw material of future plastics) and fix
CO2 in our cities at the same time. Air born pollutants could be filtered
through the air conditioning systems supplemented with suitable filters. Living
coatings could also be introduced onto concrete surfaces to produce an ‘e+’
effect.
One-third of
European countries have relatively low availability of water i.e.less than
500m3/ person/year (Industrial Environmental Management, 1997). So as water
prices rise we will re-examine this environmental resource ‘product’ and the
purpose of the household or factory roof may change. People are not really sure
what water costs but at £0.60-0.70 per m2 compared to £2600 for the same amount
of beer it seems good value!
Conclusions
Two useful
charts are shown below giving simple steps to improve creative thinking It is
important to see the product first – by taking a closer look – and then break
it down into its constituent parts. We use washing machines that dispose of
water and detergents into the drainage system and into the water supply but we
could filter this out and dispose of it separately. We could prototype cars to
clean the polluted city air, and we can design buildings that can contribute to
pollution control and clean air. Product prototyping is getting interesting and
we have many examples of product prototyping for disassembly, product prototyping
for recycling, for repairing, for reducing pollution and so on. But product prototyping
for ‘e+’ is new.
In the near
future sustainable design will start to focus on new markets and products;
shifting from simple environmental impact reduction through a zero
social force Reproduced from an article by
Beard and Hartmann in European
thinking
(zero emissions) to environmental contribution and ‘e+’ products. The whole
basis of design will be challenged as we look to new ways to contribute, in any
way, towards undoing and repairing environmental damage. Business is producing
little ‘environmental profit’ from the earth’s natural capital resulting in a
bank account that leaves little to sustain future generations. Sustainable design
barriers exist in the form of mindsets, minimalist anti-legislation thinking,
impact reduction thinking, new needs and consumer gadgets and science as the
‘solution’. However, new green product drivers are coming into play:
≥• nature as
a designing force ≥• solutions campaigning ≥• the legitimacy of creativity,
innovation and emotion as well as science and logic.
References
B&Q, ‘How
Green is My Front Door?’ B&Q’s Second Environmental Report,
Bural, P,
‘Green Design’, (New York, Mcgraw-Hill, 1991)
de Bono, E.
and J. Pickard, ‘A fertile grounding’ in People Management, Vol.2, No 21, (
Der Spiegel,
‘Sie reißen sich um jede Tonne’, no. 39/96, 1996, pp. 40–48, 23.9.
Dermody, J.
and S. Hammer-Lloyd, ‘Greening New Product Development: The Pathway to
Corporate Environmental Excellence’, in: McDonagh, P., Prothero, A. (eds.),
‘Green Management’, (London, Dryden press, 1996), pp. 367-387
DTAG
(Deutsche Telekom AG, Environmental Affairs Office), ‘Deutsche Telekom’s
Environmental Management System’, (
Fiksel, J., ‘Design
for Environment’, (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1996)
Fussler, C.
and P. James, ‘Driving Eco Innovation’ (London, Pitman Publishing, 1996)
Hartmann, R.,
‘Environmental Management and Controlling in European Telecommunication Enterprises’,
Diplomarbeit (Masters Thesis), Fachhochschule Fulda, (
Industrial
Environmental Management, ‘Water stress in
Internet,
http://www.icbl.hw..../~cjs/trabinfo. html, p. 1, (17.10.1996)
Local
Authorities of
Pickard, J.,
‘A fertile grounding’, in People Management, Vol. 2, No 21, (
Porter, M.E.,
C. van der Linde, ‘Green and Competitive’, Harvard Business Review, (Sept.-
Oct. 1995), pp. 120-134
Redclift and
Schoon, N.,
‘What price nature? At £20 trillion a year it is truly our most precious
asset’, in The Independent, (
Stansell, J.,
‘Filter system recycles water in the home’, in The Sunday Times, (
The Open
University, ‘Renewable Energy’,
Tuppen, C.,
‘An Environmental Policy for British telecommunications’, in Long Range
Planning, Vol 26, No 5., (1993), pp 24-26.
Vollmuth, H.,
‘Controlling-Instrumente von A-Z’, 2. ed., (Planegg/München, 1994)
Weizsaecker,
E. von, Lovins, A.B and L.H. Lovins, ‘Factor Four-doubling wealth halving
resources, The new Report to the Club of Rome’, (London, Earthscan, 1997)
≥• the
possible contribution of the social sciences now entering the environmental
debate the
re-focusing entrepreneurial spirit with business as a new social force as we
shift from LCA to lifestyle change (LSC).
Filtering out
the negative environmental impact (e-) will occur in product creation and what
leaves the factories of the future will generate environmental benefit(e+).
Industry will refocus on merging economic principles to ecological ideas, and
challenge environment as an economic eternality.
Greener
businesses and greener designers will need to think differently and talk
differently i.e.transport not cars, cleaners not polluters, dirt/detergent filters
in washing machines, insulation as walls, living walls, work as leisure, waste
markets as stock markets. The momentum will gather pace as business re-focuses
itself as a social force linked up to natural ecological systems through an
industrial ecology mindset. We will think ‘natural value design’ rather than
‘volume design’ in the future.
Ursula
Tischner studied architecture and industrial design in
Sustainability
by design: new targets and new tools for designers
econcept,
Ecology and Design Consultancy,
This article
discusses the new targets for product prototyping resulting from the
‘Sustainable Prototyping’ paradigm . Solutions will have to be created that
‘meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs’. Besides consideration of economic, social
and ethical issues, this concept will demand greater limitations on the process
of technology by the state and will require designers to upgrade their
environmental knowledge and abilities. A practical requirement for designers
therefore is that product improvements must lead to a life-cycle-wide lowering
of material inputs (including the materials consumed for the provision of all
energy inputs), reduction of waste and emissions, as well as the elimination of
toxins. This practice is called ‘Design for Environment’, ‘ecological design’
or ‘eco-design’.
Besides the
eco-design of products the process of sustainable design should also deal with
eco-efficient service concepts, such as product sharing – ‘environmental
leasing’ and joint use i.e.substituting for the production of new products,
thus revising approaches of product ‘use’. Tools that help to attain these
targets are being introduced, some of which are discussed in this paper.
Introduction
Following the Earth Summit in 1992 over 100
countries committed themselves to the concept of ‘Sustainable Development’. The
World Commission on Environment and Development defined this new paradigm as ‘prototyping
that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED, 1987).
This paradigm
leads us towards a new dimension in product policy and prototyping. It is no
longer sufficient just to environmentally optimise certain aspects of a
product. To be really ecological, in the sense of sustainable development,
improvements must lead to a life-cycle-wide lowering of material inputs
(including the materials consumed for the provision of all energy inputs).
Otherwise, if considerable material additions are necessary to achieve better
performance of an isolated parameter, for instance, fuel consumption in cars,
such ‘improvements’ may become ecologically counter-productive.
Under this
new paradigm we have to deal with the concept of ‘needs’ and social aspects. A
sustainable product policy should create products that are able to meet the
needs of people, especially the essential needs of the world’s poor. And we
have to realize the limitations imposed by the state of technology and social
structures on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs. These
limitations must be reduced to a minimum.
To meet these
demands we need ‘dematerialised goods’, an ecoefficient service-oriented
economy and the revision of product use, thus – we need new scenarios of ‘Efficiency
and Sufficiency’.
What are
sustainable products and how to design them?
With respect
to the above definition of sustainable development a sustainable product could
be described as ‘a product that meets a definite need by using the smallest
amount of materials and energy and creates the smallest amount of waste and
toxins in its whole life cycle’. At the
The eco-efficiency
revolution
A technical
eco-efficiency revolution is required. With eco-efficient prototyping it is
possible to provide the same high quality service with a fifth, tenth or even
less energy and materials. The goal is in all cases to reap as many units of
service as possible from each ‘service delivery machine,’ with as little
material (and low material intensive energy) inputs as necessary. This holds
equally for tableware, cars, and railroad infrastructures, during their
manufacturing phase, through ‘use’ cycles (maintenance, operation, cleaning,
repair, collection, sorting, re-manufacturing, recycling etc.) to the
environmentally acceptable disposal (legally prescribed). In all phases,
transportation and packaging intensities need to be considered.
In order to
assess the resource intensity of goods and services in a consistent manner, and
thus to accomplish a first comparison of the respective environmental impacts,
‘
There are two
ways for designers to reach a low-
Seven Golden
Rules
• The
assessment of the environmental impacts of goods has to integrate the whole
life cycle (from ‘cradle to grave’)
• The service
intensity of processes and goods has to be increased drastically
• The
material intensity of processes and goods has to be reduced drastically
• The energy
intensity of processes and goods has to be reduced
• The
land-use through processes and goods has to be reduced
• The
emission and use of toxins have to be eliminated
• The
ecologically sound use of renewables has to be maximized.
• By re-designing
existing products and inventing new ones which meet eco-efficiency demands.
This requires the designer to consider the original purpose of the product, and
how this service could be fulfilled with the minimum of harmful environmental
effects during the product’s entire ‘cradle to grave’ life cycle.
By adopting a
more systematic approach, to reflect the reorganization of production and
consumption systems, but not necessarily resulting in a new product, but in a
new service. Such systematic solutions are usually more effective than changes
to the product. Nevertheless, they require behavioral changes on the part of
producers and consumers, thus they may be more difficult to implement.
Rather than
designing, producing and consuming more and more new products we need to create
both, new dematerialised goods and alternative ways of selling services to the
user. Concepts like product sharing, joint use, multiple purpose, and
‘environmental leasing’ are possible steps in that direction.
Steps toward
sustainable prototype and design
The first
question in a new design process should be: precisely, what kind of service
must the new good or service fulfil? and what are the problems that need to be
solved? With this in mind, the designer should search for environmentally.
Source:
Schmidt-Bleek/Tischner, 1995
sound
solutions that reduce the ‘cradle to grave’ consumption of matter and energy to
a minimum, as well as waste and harmful substances.
In designing
eco-efficient goods and services, ecological parameters should be considered
before those for health, ergonomics, safety, and beauty. This is because only
the availability of ecologically sensible goods and define the problem.
The bundle of
services which the product or service should offer must be defined as clearly
as possible.
The search
for dematerialised solutions
Is it
possible to fulfil the requirements without producing a new product? If not,
then search for new solutions which provide an appropriate service.
Select the
best ideas
Eliminate
obviously unrealistic options and choose the most promising solutions, with the
purpose of preserving the environment.
Detail the solutions
selected environmentally relevant product properties and the package of
services defined in step 1 must be considered.
Evaluation
The solutions
in Step 4 should be compared, as well as current solutions, to find which will
be the most effective. Ensure that all existing optimizations have been taken
into account. Use
Implementation
(or return to Step 2) If a new solution appears advantageous, then it should be
implemented, otherwise return to step 2 and try again. If it seems to be
impossible to find a better and more environmentally sound design, the research
should be terminated and directed towards another problem which could be solved
more efficiently.
A new planning method for eco-efficient design
services will
prevent our ecological collapse in the future, making all other considerations
less basic.
The most
important decision in an ecologically-oriented product policy process is, what
kind of customer demands and needs the company should deal with.
Does it have
to produce and sell a product to meet this demand?
Is it
possible to offer a service?
Efficient eco-design without Manufacturing
phase:
Is it
possible to offer product telling the company that this is
How long
should the lifespan are undertaking. Another is to renewable resource inputs of
the product be extended?
Find business benefits for the useful material
outputs company such as marketing waste
intensity.
Experience
Efficient use
of land area production, distribution and flows that eco-designers can water
consumption consumption system that is produce improved solutions the Use phase
connected with a good or a earlier they are integrated into material throughput
service offered by a company. the planning process, provided energy inputs and
outputs that they are able and willing to.
There are
three main reasons why water consumption deal with issues relating to why companies are interested…
weight strategic decisions of thein
ecologically sustainable or
auto-control,
auto design:
Optimization
and multifunctionality as they have problems with as effective as the people
who potential for subsequent environmental laws or other utilise it, because
apart from the uses conditions and are forced to best available eco-efficient
tech potential for joint use improve their products or nologies, we also need a
change (i.e. by several households) production processes in terms in people’s behavior.
Efficiency, longevity of ecology in
technologies alone cannot surface
properties they expect sales advantages solve the ecological problems if
anti-corrosivity by integrating environmental we continue to buy and discard reparability
and social aspects into product as many products as we do today.
Structure and
ease of prototyping and their market-Consumers also should realize disassembly
ing activities that it is not always necessary robustness, reliability to own a
product, to be able to strong personalities lead the
likelihood of
material fatigue use it. With a little organization,company and integrate
social adaptability to technical a system of sharing should be environmental
responsibility progress feasible and relatively effortless business activities
(and After first use phase for such products as cars, lawn their whole life). material
composition mowers, washing machines, elecand complexity For other companies,
which are tric drills, etc. Furthermore, the collecting and sorting not concerned about
environ-goods we own should have their opportunities mental and/or social
issues, useful life extended as long as recycling potential of designers need
to have sound possible through effective repairparts and materials business
arguments to convince ing and then through selling incineration potential
management that eco-design is them into an efficient second potential for
composting the right thing to do. That is hand market. This means a impact on
environment always easy where ecology
and change in our patterns of use,after disposal.
Economy go
together and eco-as well as increasing product efficient design leads to
cost-responsibility on the part of effective solutions. In other cases
consumers and producers alike.
FRIA – an
example for sustainable design
The FRIA is a
hybrid between a traditional larder and a modern refrigerator. Once installed,
the FRIA, unlike other kitchen furniture, remains in place. Built into a wall
near the kitchen. The FRIA remains there until the building is demolished.
During its entire life span the FRIA needs no material input apart from a small
amount for energy and minimal spare parts.
When the FRIA
is installed near an exterior wall it can utilise the outside air for cooling
in winter. Cold air is conducted into the cooling chamber if the temperature is
low enough. This method saves a great deal of energy.
The FRIA is designed
to use circulating air for cooling. There are three cooling compartments. The
two uncooled compartments are for storing canned goods and other non-perishable
items. The cooled compartments are located in the most ergonomically suitable
position, the freezer is at the top, the cooling chamber in the centre, and at
the bottom a drawer at ‘cellar temperature’ for storing items such as fruits
and vegetables. The temperature can be controlled from outside the appliance
and the cooling volume can be adjusted from 100 to 220 liters.
This makes
the FRIA adaptable to a user’s personal needs.
The FRIA’s
doors are convex, which is not just an aesthetic design feature, but a
functional element. Despite its narrow width, the FRIA has a large interior
volume and a small surface-to-volume ratio. This means that less of the low
temperature is lost through its housing, as is the case with a normal fridge,
which can lose up to 80 percent of its energy in this way.
The FRIA’s
cooling system could be a standard compressor unit, but almost any new technology
is possible. This is because the cooling system is installed independently from
the cooling chamber, which makes it easy to exchange. In this way technical
improvements could be installed at convenient intervals. Through its
installation into a wall recess the product can be insulated with alternative
chloroflurocarbonfree (CFC) materials, such as blown concrete, cork or recycled
paper. The blow-moulded doors can be filled with aerogel, which has improved
insulating properties compared to CFC-containing polyurethane foams and is
environmentally harmless. With this insulation material, the FRIA has even
better insulating properties than today’s best ‘ecorefrigerators’. This,
combined with the cold outside air being conducted into the cooling chamber in
winter and the possibility of decreasing the cooling areas individually,
reduces the FRIA’s energy consumption to at least 50 percent less than that of
a conventional fridge.
The FRIA even
considers the user’s taste, as it offers the option of matching the front of
the doors and the handles to existing kitchen furniture.
The eco-efficient
carpet sweeper
Using a fly-wheel
as a mechanical energy accumulator, the ecoefficient carpet sweeper cleans very
effectively by brushing the floor without consuming any electricity. The
brushes rotate even when the user stops moving the appliance, making it
possible to sweep into corners and under furniture. This is helped by the fact
that the brushes protrude beyond the dust box. Details such as the low height
of the box, the ergonomically-shaped handgrip and an adjustable handle make for
ease of use.
The carpet
sweeper is able to replace the conventional vacuum cleaner in most cleaning
situations. This would mean a lot of energy and material could be
saved by
using the carpet sweeper instead of a material and energy-intensive vacuum
cleaner. Furthermore, this new cleaning tool is designed for durability. It is
easy to repair and has a steel box, which can easily be recycled. All its
retail parts are replaceable, which means that it could have a life span of an
estimated forty years. That is at least four times longer than conventional
vacuum cleaners generally last.
Kambium
kitchens: individual, ecological and long lasting.
The Kambium
Furniture Workshop, Inc. is a small- to medium-sized German company with
approximately 35 employees Example of a Kambium kitchen
and a fairly
horizontal organizational structure, typical for a company of this size. The
managing directors decided very early to commit themselves to environmental
principles. This environmental optimization started with the choice of the
company’s location in an area excellent for wind farming. This was followed by
the architecture of the factory which incorporated amongst other concepts that
of building-biology. Next came the distribution philosophy: all sales within a
100 km radius are delivered with no outer non-reusable transportation
packaging.
Kambium kitchens
are situated at the high end of the market in every respect. The average price is
40,000 DM, as the quality and durability of the product is extremely high. The
use of modern computer technologies (CAD/
A research
project was undertaken by the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and
Energy together with Kambium, which analysed the kitchen designs and service.
The checklist of environmentally relevant product properties as well as
organizational
improvements were suggested to the company, some of which are to be
implemented.
Conclusions
Product designers
should accept the ‘Sustainable Development’ paradigm as a challenge and try to:
• design
useful environmentally benign products (eco-design);
• suggest
eco-efficient service-concepts and dematerialised solutions.
Thus a
technical eco-efficiency revolution and new environmentally sound consumption
patterns could be facilitated.
References
Friends of
the Earth (Ed.), ‘Towards Sustainable Europe’, (Wuppertal Institut, Germany,
1995)
Schmidt-Bleek,
F., ‘
Schmidt-Bleek,
F., ‘How to reach a Sustainable Economy?’, in Wuppertal Papers, No. 24,
Wuppertal Institut, Germany, (August, 1994).
Schmidt-Bleek,
F., and U. Tischner, Produktentwicklung. ‘Nutzen gestalten – Natur schonen’,
Wien: Wirtschaftskammer (Dosterreich, 1995)
Tischner, U.,
and F. Schmidt-Bleek, ‘designing Goods with
World
Commission on Environment and Development, ‘Our Common Future’, (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, UK, 1987).
Footnote
1. For
further information concerning
Professor
William McDonough, Dean of School of Architecture, University of Virginia, US
Joint
Coordinator, The Centre for Sustainable Design, UK
William
McDonough is an architect and industrial designer. He is principal of William
McDonough & Partners, Architects and Planners as well as co-founder of the
design and consulting firm McDonough Braungart design Chemistry in
Charlottesville, Virginia.
In September
1994, he was appointed Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of
Virginia, where he is the Elson Professor of Architecture. He received his
Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College and his
Master of
Architecture from Yale University. In 1996, he received the Presidential Award
for Sustainable Development from President Clinton.
Background
In preparation for the World’s Fair in the
year 2000, the City of Hannover, Germany commissioned Mr. McDonough to author
‘The Hannover Principles: Design for Sustainability’, a document providing design
principles for all participating architects. A founding member of the American
Institute of Architects (
In February
of 1993, Mr McDonough delivered the Centennial Sermon, entitled ‘Design,
Ecology, Ethics and the Making of Things’, at The Cathedral of St. John the
Divine. He has initiated a new approach to ecologically considered design and
manufacturing as a step towards the Next Industrial Revolution, and advocates
the formulation of Declarations of Interdependence.
Mr
McDonough’s design work ranges from products to buildings to cities to regions.
He has worked with the City of Chattanooga, initiating their Zero Emissions
Zoning Concept and leading the design of the City’s South Side Plan. For the
City of Atlanta he articulated the ‘Solar City’ concept, and for the City of
Pittsburgh he worked with the Heinz Family Foundation to craft a year-long
colloquium on the subject of Pittsburgh as the ‘Environmental City’. He designed
a furniture factory for Herman Miller that has won Business Week’s design of
the year award for 1997, and for designTex, a subsidiary of Steelcase, he
recently designed a line of environmentally safe fabrics working with Michael
Braungart and the EPEA in Germany, and the Rohner Company and Ciba Geigy in
Switzerland. The fabrics, made withbiodegradable fibers and re-engineered
chemical manufacturing processes, were awarded a Gold Medal at NeoCon 1995, the
annual showcase of the contract furniture and fabric industry, and have been
invited into the permanent design collection of the Chicago Athenaeum.
Mr McDonough
advises major corporations such as Interface Corporation and Monsanto on
sustainable industrial protocols and environmental ethics, and is active in the
conception and development of new products with chemist Michael Braungart.
What do you
consider to be the key issues that will affect business arising from the
sustainable development agenda in the next 3 to 5 years?
I think the
most exciting issue will be the prosperity and creativity considerations that
sustainability will foster. I have worked with chairpersons and CEOs of major
companies, and they are realising that one of the biggest issues they must
address is what the concept ‘sustainable development’ means for their organization.
Because when they take their leadership position and say, ‘I want to see this
sustain-ability issue get addressed’, they quickly realize they don’t know what
it is they are actually asking for, and that their people don’t know how to
respond. Everything gets very confusing very quickly, because it’s all
relatively new. Sustainable development has many different definitions; it can
really only be understood as a local phenomenon with universal implications
(there are no ‘universal solutions’). We have to make it up as we go along –
forever. It’s going to take everyone.
For example,
from Michael Braungart’s and my perspective, business has been mistaking eco-efficiency
for sustainable design. That is a fundamental problem, because eco-efficiency
is an impoverished agenda in terms of the real creative possibilities. With
eco-efficiency you’re inhabiting a world where you wake up in the morning and
feel guilty, then spend your day figuring out how to feel less guilty. A
sustainable design agenda, on the other hand, says you wake up in the morning
and feel hope. You measure your progress against locally-considered ideal
conditions which hold sustainability as only the lowest maintenance aspiration.
One must begin to humbly imagine what an ideal might look like in order to
measure progress toward it. Then it becomes a positive, creative event, not one
that simply measures a negative progress relative to the status quo. So
considerations beyond sustainability lead to a positive rather than a negative
agenda.
It is
important that business does not just look at the ‘eco’ part of any equation –
saying that part is primary, or even that it's the focus of an agenda – because
it’s really just one element of a complex set of interdependencies that we are
only beginning to understand. The agenda is much richer than the ‘eco’ element.
We all know the complete search is for propitious balances across social,
ethical, economic and environmental issues. From my perspective, business has
the important task of rendering both the goals and the processes visible.
Unless you have something visible against which you can chart your course, it
is very difficult to take these discussions much further. My colleague Michael
Braungart and I are working on an indexing process where a consensus-building
exercise helps individuals and groups imagine what going beyond ‘sustainable’
might look like in each specific arena of interest, whatever it is you are
working on, at all scales, from the region down to the molecule.
Once people
come together around a common question, it is astonishing how consistent the
understanding of sustainability can be among people with diverse interests.
They can actually identify and agree on positive characteristics and find a
common aspiration very quickly.
During this
process you hear two kinds of questions. One might be, ‘Wouldn’t it be better
if we used less of a persistent toxin?’ That would be an eco-efficiency
question. Another would be, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could drive this whole
system from our current solar income instead of with fossil fuels?’ This is a
fundamental design question and reflects the real excitement, along with the
tremendous opportunities, of the process.
Because we
are interested in a design discussion, a rich agenda of choices starts to
unfold. But first, and principally, we must understand what the nature of the
decision-making framework will be, so everyone has a
common
understanding of the issues.
The first
thing we must do, as designers in the material world, is to recognise the world
as having two metabolisms: a biological metabolism and a technical metabolism.
Then we can begin to frame the discussion that builds up the concepts of
‘products of consumption’ consumed in the biological metabolism, or ‘products
of service’ circulating in the technical metabolism (we have trademarked these
terms for use in our work). In that way, as we move into the design
discussions, we can frame the conditions in advance on the materials side. The
discussion must be driven by the opportunities of these two metabolisms. Once
people understand the concepts, then you have a framework in which you can have
a conversation. You test yourself against them and then fine-tune your design
process. The hardest part of this for people to understand is that it’s not
just about eco-efficiency: it is actually about re-design. Almost every modern
product can benefit from this exercise.
What do you
consider to be the key principles of Sustainable design for business?
I have
articulated three principles and six criteria. The principles are:
• waste
equals food
• use current
solar income
• respect
diversity.
We’ve added
new criteria to the traditional industrial revolution criteria.
The
traditional criteria are:
• cost (can I afford it?)
• performance (does it work?)
• aesthetics
(do I like it?)
Our
additional criteria, which enrich the design agenda, are:
• is it
ecologically intelligent?
(Do its
materials comply with
our
principles?)
• is it just?
(is everything
equitably
considered?) • is it fun? (do I get up in the morning wanting to do it?)
This is
something Michael Braungart and I are developing together with our colleagues.
We have
created a company called ‘McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry’ to work with
these principles and criteria. On the one hand, we look at the specific effects
of the assemblies of the molecules, which are what Michael can do in a highly
effective way, while also developing benign alternatives with the same end
result. On the other hand, we look at design and ask ourselves, ‘How do we make
this attractive and prosperous? How does this fit within our cultural
enjoyment? How does this spark the imagination and become something we want to
do?’ Not something less delightful that we feel like we must do for some
‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ reason. We all know the design side really has to balance
equity, economy, and ecology. Because it won’t matter if you have the most
secure, integral and robust ecological product; if it’s unattractive, people
won’t value it. If it’s destroying some cultural situation somewhere else, or
causing people to suffer, people shouldn’t give it the same value as something
benign.
Jaime Lerner,
Governor of Parana State and the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, says, ‘When
you project a tragedy, unless you do something, you have the tragedy’. For
example, if we look at a city which has 600,000 people and will have over one
million in 20 years, we can get very nervous when we consider it in light of
what has happened in Sao Paulo or Rio. The pundits say, ‘Look what’s going to
happen. It’s going to be terrible. We’re going to have crime and destitution,
and we’re going to lose our children.’ Then guess what happens? They get proved
right. Ironically, they have a vested interest in being right about their
projection. So, as Jaime says, the strategy cannot be one of tragedy. It has to
be a ‘strategy of change’, because what’s happening now will not work to avoid
the tragedy. As you adopt a ‘strategy of change’, you then find yourself
operating on a new set of principles, which is why I’ve been trying to
develop-new design principles, leading to prosperous change.
Business
needs to enjoy the sudden bursts of energy that create incredible new
opportunities for products that we didn't even know we could want because they
didn’t exist! We didn’t realize some of these new design concepts themselves
existed, and that’s what’s so exciting. So for business people, this is the
real hot one, this is the entrepreneurial front-line, and it is the place where
the next round of magnificent industrial prosperity will occur. It is
imperative that we re-design everything. So imagine getting it right. How about
that strategy! The only way to pursue the ‘strategy of change’ is to start
changing. You have to begin immediately. Even if it’s just a faltering step,
you have to start moving. You can’t sit back and say, ‘I’ll wait until I see
what else is going on’, because then you’re already in the tragedy, and that is
the tragedy.
There’s an
interesting story about Confucius.
Essentially,
a master of ceremonies comes in and says, ‘Confucius, there’s a problem. You
put this person in charge of the ritual and he’s constantly questioning the
ritual. Why put him in charge of the ritual?’ Confucius answers, ‘That is the
ritual!’
It doesn’t
matter how conservative you are, the most conservative position you can have is
to question the ritual, because that’s what strengthens it. Infusing all of
this is the need for change and the need to stimulate creativity. The fact that
this process is delightful, and that it has to be, is what will make it happen.
It is intensely profitable for those who participate – significantly profitable!
Could you
give a couple of examples from the work you’ve done on textiles and are looking
to do with carpets?
We’re looking
at re-designing whole sectors of the industry, and these principles are being
adopted by large companies in design and industry. The carpet and fabric designs,
which I won’t talk about specifically,
Are in some
cases so much more efficient in terms of their delivery and material flows that
there is no question they will allow the company to out-compete any competitor.
This is simply because of their effectiveness, and all of this grew out of our design
process. Modeling design on nature makes you realize nature is, by its own
nature, inherently efficient and effective. Once you start to adopt these
ideas, your whole company and its products can become more effective. We are
now looking at, from a design perspective, a point where the designers and the
people working on these new products will be getting royalties on billions of
dollars of production. This should catch everyone’s interest.
There are
hundreds and thousands of things ready to be re-designed, but we must be very
careful to avoid what Michael Braungart calls ‘ecologism’. If all we're going
to do is insist on recycling a package that wasn't designed to be recycled in
the first place, we’re going backwards. That’s very bad design. It will create
infrastructures that we don’t want, and we’ll have invested in interests that
are actually counter-productive; instead of recycling, for instance, we will
actually be ‘downcycling’, a term Michael and I use to describe most recycling
today, where products lose quality and are used to make less sophisticated
products on their way to their eventual ‘grave’, a landfill or an incinerator.
This re-design
issue is something very important, and it has to be very attractive. That’s why
designers have to be so involved. Our re-design of textiles did not just create
a safe material (see JSPD, Issue 1, 1997, p.57), it created a more efficient,
safer production system, more profits for all concerned, less regulatory need,
and a factory that might never need to release water again. Because if the
water coming out of your factory is cleaner than the water going in, you’d
rather use your effluent than your influent. You can ‘close the loop’. This is
not eco-efficiency. This is re-designing. It eliminates regulations –
regulations which, in many cases, can be seen as signals of design failure.
I want to
envision the big opportunities. We’re a bit unimpressed by the need to design
something so that everyone understands its ecological or social dimensions. We
think people should actually be able to throw something away and enjoy that act
without feeling like they’re some sort of criminal. Right now, there is guilt
coupled with bad design: ‘Oh yes, we will recycle, but we’ll drive 10 miles to
recycle!’ This doesn’t make sense in the big picture. Our challenge is to
change the design, because people are confused by systems of ‘re-cycling’ that
are not effective in the long run.
There is also
a challenge for these products and services to play a role in educating people
about the positive aspects of sustainable product design. They should be full
of ‘embodied’ information. But in the end these things will happen because they
are simply smarter, and people like to be smart. In a wonderful way this re-design
has what you might call a spiritual dimension, because it leads to the ‘dematerialization’
of design. If you imagine the safely designed ‘product of consumption’ that
grew out of our work, you have something that goes back to the soil safely. Or,
if it is a technical ‘product of service’, it goes back to a high quality
industrial cycle. Neither product needs to end up in a landfill- that would
mean you’ve failed in your design. Once you actualize these concepts, what
happens is truly fascinating: things literally dematerialize.
You have much
less stuff and much higher ‘design intelligence’. As human beings get better
and better at things, instead of using more stuff, they use less stuff, with a
higher ‘embodied intelligence’ to replace it! Buckminster Fuller, the inventor
and creative thinker, said something like, ‘The better technology gets, the
more it disappears’. I think that’s the key to the whole product business,
because it gets everybody going in a creative way, respecting and optimizing
material and human resources.
Some
companies begin to realize new design principles in the process of instituting
eco-efficiency. But when they begin to articulate the desire to be better than
what they have been, we ask them to do more than just try to be more efficient;
that may just prolong their agony.
We say re-design
instead. It’s much more powerful and productive!
What do you
think are the key characteristics of a more sustainable firm?
Adaptability.
I think Darwin had it. The whole idea of ‘survival of the fittest’ has been
misinterpreted, especially in business. It’s really ‘survival of the ‘fitting-est’;
it’s about niches, about understanding a place where you are safe, where you
get nourishment, where you don’t have as much deadly competition.
Looking for
nourishment without competition is a very legitimate attitude, one that is fair
and not abusive. We need to think in terms of areas of potential surplus where
we can find pleasant forms of noncompetitive nutrition. That should and can
apply to working processes as well. We’re actually designing buildings where
the chairman of the board might give up the corner suite to share the joy of
working next to her assistant sitting near a logistics manager, for example.
We know
linear hierarchies don’t matter anymore. Everyone has their role to play, and
everyone should revel in it. It's a much more thrilling prospect, and it’s
creative and fun. As I mentioned earlier, the decision-making frame has always
included the three components of cost, performance, and aesthetics.
• can I
afford it?
• does it
work?
• do I like
it?
That’s been
as much as we've been dealing with. What we're saying now is to add three more:
• is it
ecologically intelligent?
• is it just?
• is it fun?
Because we’re
not having fun anymore! Everybody feels like they are working all the time.
There’s this whole idea of a leisure class, a leisure society, but the reality
is that everyone feels like they are working two jobs. It doesn’t make any
sense. A lot of that has to do with the fact that we’re not enjoying an
effective structure. We’re not designing well. We’ve built a system that makes
us think we have to be active all the time that we have to work for lots of
stuff we don’t really need.
Jefferson had
it right: it’s ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, free from remote
tyranny’. This time, it’s inter-generational remote tyranny we have to free
ourselves and future generations from – the tyranny that is us and our bad design.
This is an
updated and edited version of an interview conducted by Martin Charter,
originally published in ‘The Green Management Letter', Euro management by, The
Netherlands.
Dr Jonathan
Williams is currently Managing Director of Contech Design Ltd, holding company
for the Group for Environmental Manufacturing (
A design tool
for eco-efficient products
Director,
Group for Environmental Manufacturing, UK Project Manager, The Planning
Exchange, Scotland
Producer
responsibility is a growing issue in various markets. Operationalization of
this concept is starting through the application of eco-efficiency. The article
highlights a tool that has been developed to improve the quality of eco-design
decision-making throughout the life-cycle of the product.
Introduction
any sectors of industry are facing up to the
challenge of producer responsibility. This stewardship of products through all
stages of the life cycle is demanding a radical reappraisal of product
distribution, use and ‘end of life’ processing within the context of
conventional design and concurrent engineering.
Some
‘priority waste stream’ sectors face specific, regulatory responsibilities for
their products at ‘end of life’. But in addition all manufacturers have to cope
with increasing costs of waste disposal: direct costs of disposing of
production waste, and a less direct loss of competitiveness arising from significant
‘end of life’ disposal costs. ‘Business as usual’ strategies are rapidly
becoming increasingly untenable.
Product stewardship is also requiring firms to examine the resource efficiency of their products: how to extract the maximum customer value from the minimum resource consumption. Wasteful resource utilization implies unnecessary material expenditure and also liabilities for materials not appearing in the final product. Already there are commercially driven examples of firms adding high-value services alongside their traditional commodity products – more customer value for no extra (and sometimes less) resource consumption. These changes in the business environment are challenging traditional approaches to new product prototyping and production management. Existing design tools, focusing on functionality, production cost and attractiveness at point of sale, are insufficient. What is needed in addition is assistance with management of whole-life value, and its integration within the design process. The Regional Eco-Efficiency Demonstrator Initiative (REDI) project was conceived as a timely response to that need.
The REDI
Project
The Regional
Eco-efficiency Demonstrator Initiative (REDI) was launched in late 1995 to show
how eco-efficiency and commercial viability could be aligned within new product
designs. A wide range of companies has been involved, reflecting the
supply-chain and whole-life orientations of the project. Funding has been
received from the Esme Fairburn Charitable Trust and the European Commission,
as well as from companies and business support organizations.
A major deliverable
from REDI is a software tool which aims to assist the designer to minimize ‘end
of life’ liabilities and maximize whole-life value in a number of ways.
Firstly, by entering the product specifications into the software tool, the designer
is warned of any potentially hazardous materials included, wherever they may be
located within the product. This all flows at the very least, for the designer
to be aware of the liabilities in the product and to quantify them for further
reference. This information can then be used within scenarios, to identify
vulnerability of particular designs to future regulatory developments.
Secondly, by
tracking the value throughout product life, REDI gives the user a snapshot of
the ‘value-adding’ and ‘value-reducing’ processes throughout the product’s
life, tracking material fluxes from raw resources to finished products and
waste streams. A key element of this functionality is the ability to
Representation
of product life cycle within REDI
model the scrap
and waste rates of the various process flows that the product undergoes and
also to estimate overall material recovery percentages.
Each stage of
the life-cycle, from component manufacture to waste processing, is modeled;
each draws on material/energy resources, and each creates waste. These fluxes
of material flows are modeled so that resource and waste burdens can be
calculated for each unit of output from the production process.
The concept
of eco-efficiency is central to the REDI design tool. Eco-efficiency is a
measure of how much customer value is offered by the product compared with the
resources needed to create that value. By modeling value-adding and
value-reducing processes throughout the product’s life, its overall eco-efficiency
can be derived, in the form of an eco-efficiency index. Designers can use this
index to explore the optimization of eco-efficiency at an early stage of
product design. This is a novel aspect of design tools, and an important
function of the REDI project is to appraise how useful this eco-efficiency
approach could be in a commercial design context.
One of the
major uses of the REDI tool will be the management, and ‘designing out’, of
liabilities resulting from the product’s ‘end of life’ and manufacturing
phases. It is recognized that small firms have an important role in achieving a
more eco-efficient industrial base. Yet many recent initiatives (e.g. waste minimization)
have encountered difficulties in attracting small firms. Therefore REDI has
been constructed to allow an easy entry route for small firms.
The design
tool has initially focused on the electronic equipment sector, working closely
with a range of leading companies including Hewlett-Packard, Rank Xerox,
Whole-life
liability management
One of the
major uses of the REDI tool will be the management, and ‘designing out’, of
liabilities resulting from the product’s ‘end of life’ and manufacturing
phases. Many of these liabilities are hidden costs falling outside the
conventional design brief (i.e. the cost of complying with Control of
Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) regulations due to the use of particular
solvents during manufacture).
Of particular
significance is the cost of producing, handling and disposing of packaging used
to ship components and assemblies from supplier to manufacturer. These costs
are rarely considered in product engineering, but they can end up being
substantial. It is only by tracking all such packaging throughout the
life-cycle that it is possible to quantify the cost, and thereby to focus
management attention on reducing cost.
In addition,
it is important to ensure that designers are aware of all hazardous materials
used in the product, particularly if these end up being shipped in the product
where they can contaminate otherwise recoverable resources at ‘end of life’.
This is presently extremely difficult, for two reasons:
• product designers
do not usually possess information on material composition of bought-in
components nor are they usually fully aware of regulatory constraints affecting
the use and disposal of different materials.
The REDI tool
addresses these needs, making information available in a form which is valuable
to small and large firms. It achieves that by incorporating within the tool two
databases. One is a component database which contains information on common
components used in electronic equipment. Initially a demonstration component
database has been created, covering a limited range of components, to allow the
tool to be used and evaluated.
The second
database contains information on materials and regulations pertaining to those
materials. This data resource all flows REDI to flag up potential hazards,
without getting bogged down in details of environmental regulations. However it
will be possible to link REDI to one of a typical product.
The
proprietary environmental databases to access more detailed information.
Whole-life value
management
As already
mentioned, the ability to optimize ‘value-added’ against
resource utilization
is essential to develop eco-efficient products. REDI achieves this by
calculating the embedded value in a product at every stage in its life.
This shows a
modest raw materials value (£B) rising through the manufacturing processes to a
maximum value at the point of sale (£A). As the product is used, it steadily
loses value (ignoring some discontinuities due to maintenance and repair) until
it finishes up in, say, a municipal waste site. Here it has a negative value
since it requires some waste processing and its materials are not yet available
for reuse.
At this
stage, the product can either by treated by a recovery system which releases
its intrinsic value, and brings the net value back up (£C); or it can be
disposed of without recovery of its intrinsic resources, incurring a further
loss of value (£C’).
Based on
information from recycling plants, the designer can input recovery rates and
costs for the product and its constituents. This all flows REDI to create the
value profile, whereupon the designer can explore how design decisions affect
the profile. In the case of a
poorly designed
product, where the ‘end of life’ processing costs are high, it may not be
possible to achieve a positive ‘value added’ by any ‘end of life’ process. In
such a case, the fate of the product will be governed by regulatory constraints
rather than by commercial judgment.
Eco-efficiency
index
The index is
computed as the ratio between maximum product value (in the above case £A) and
the net whole-life material value consumed in achieving that product value (£B
less £C). That is: heco = A/(B–C)
The index is
a convenient way of summarizing the eco-efficiency performance of a design. It
assumes that the value at point of sale (A) can be taken as the price a
consumer is prepared to pay to acquire the product, i.e. its retail price.
Material values B & C can be computed by the REDI model: clearly, designs
which improve the net value of resources extracted from product (C), and/or
which reduce the resources consumed in manufacture (B), will attract an
improved eco-efficiency index.
Maximizing
impact
The next
stage in the project will address the evaluation of the REDI tool.
Participating companies will be given an opportunity to experiment with the
tool, to apply it to product design situations relevant to their own
businesses.
It is
important to get feedback from smaller firms at this stage, so the project is
working with various organizations.
The tool is
structured on economic factors, since these will drive moves towards eco-efficient
products in the commercial world.
interests of
small and medium enterprises.
Using the design
tool
In order to maximize
the value of REDI, considerable effort has gone into the user interface. The
tool is coded in Microsoft Access with Visual Basic controls, offering an efficient
prototyping environment and flexibility to customize the user interface. An
example of a screen, showing product information summary, is illustrated.
Conclusions
The REDI
project has successfully developed a design tool which all flows designers to optimize
the eco-efficiency of products. At
this stage,
it has been focused on electronic equipment, but this applicability can be
expanded once the use of the tool has been validated.
The design
tool is structured around a whole-life representation of material flows
required to manufacture, use and dispose of products. Economic values of
material flows are built into the tool, since ‘end of life’ processing is
dependent upon the intrinsic value of resources embedded within products.
An eco-efficiency
index has been proposed, and is built into the tool. The formulation of this
index needs to be appraised by designers and engineers.
The tool
differs from conventional life cycle analysis models, in that it does not
attempt to quantify every emission and resource utilization. Instead, it quantifies
whole-life material utilization and recovery, and presents this information in
a form directly useful to the design process. The tool is also unashamedly
structured on economic factors, since these will drive moves towards eco-efficient
products in the commercial world.
The next
stage in the work seeks to generate feedback on the tool from designers and
engineers, in the context of both large and small company environments. Moving
companies towards sustainability through eco-design: conditions for success
Senior
Advisor Environmental Engineering, Environmental Competence Centre, Philips
Sound & Vision, the Netherlands
Ab Stevels
studied Chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology and, after being
employed at Philips Electronics Eindhoven in 1966, he received his PhD in
Physics and Chemistry at the Groningen University, the Netherlands.
In 1969 he
joined the Philips Research Laboratories and worked on various subjects in
solid state chemistry and materials science. After changing to the Glass
division in 1981, he worked in various capacities: glass technologist,
laboratory manager, head of prototyping and general manager of the Optics
business. In 1989 he was transferred to the Consumer Electronics division (his
assignments included the management of the laser optics business and projects
in Asia). From January, 1993 he has been senior advisor on environmental
engineering of Philips Consumer Electronics and from December 1995 he was
appointed part-time professor in Environmental Design at the Faculty of
Industrial Design Engineering, the Delft University of Technology, and the
Netherlands.
Experiences
in moving companies towards more sustainability through eco-design are
highlighted in this paper. Incremental improvement of environmental product
attributes is well underway especially in those areas where eco-design can be
linked to cost reductions. More radical re-design of products is currently
still hampered by lack of appropriate validation methods. Finding product
alternatives and introducing them to the market will require intensive
stakeholder dialogue. The formulation of common goals will be crucial to move
society towards sustainability.
Introduction
he need to achieve sustainable development
poses an enormous challenge for society. It is estimated that in order to make
this happen, the burden on the environment in industrialized countries will
have to be reduced by at least a ‘factor 10’ in fifty years time (Weterings
& Opschoor, 1992). Over a shorter time scale Von Weizsacker, Lovins and
Lovins (Weizsacker, Lovins & Lovins, 1995) advocate an increase in the eco-efficiency
of consumption by a ‘factor 4’. In order to realize this a number of
techno-economical, social and ethical issues will have to be tackled. This
paper highlights the role of companies in achieving the societal goal of
sustainability through eco-design. Basically this is a technical issue;
however, this paper will show that mindset and corporate culture are important
conditions for success.
The
Brundtland Commission report (The Brundtland Commission, 1997) brought the
concept of sustainability to the attention of a wide audience. However, in the
subsequent years various actors have became more and more involved in the
debate. In business the increasing eco-efficiency of production processes has
been progressing for several decades; with, the oil price shocks of the early
seventies and eighties greatly accelerating efforts. Nowadays the concept of
eco-efficiency is well accepted in smart industrial practice; but attention to
eco-efficiency of products has evolved only recently.
This flows
that after the initial awareness phase, national governments in various
countries stepped in with (draft) legislation and regulation. Between 1991–1994
the first environmental criteria appeared in consumer product tests and in
eco-labels; shortly after this leading companies started to implement
product-related eco-design and eco-efficiency considerations. More recently it
has been realized that product-based eco-efficiency as such is not good enough
to realize breakthrough gains. The systems/infrastructure in which the product
functions has to be considered as well.
This paper
suggests that eco-design has several levels of sophistication. For each of the first
three levels, i.e.improvement of current design, radical re-design based on
existing product concepts and product alternatives, experience from Philips
Sound & Vision (S&V) is described, both in terms of critical success
factors and support tools used or needed.
Levels in
eco-design
The eco-design
process has been described by Brezet, Cramer and Stevels (Brezet, Cramer &
Stevels, 1995) as a staircase with four steps.
First step:
incremental improvement of products Second step: (complete) re-design of
existing product concepts.
Third step:
alternative fulfilment
of
functionality, new concepts Fourth step: functionality concepts completely fitting
into the sustainable society.
When
developing eco-prototyping projects or implementing eco-design in a wider sense
in organizations, it is important to know exactly what level of eco-design the
company or Business Unit should be aiming for.
The choice of
the level has far-reaching consequences for the type of information required,
type of institution/department involved, the environmental validation (the
‘greeness’ of the result), financial aspects, consumer life style and
infrastructure.
It can also
be concluded from activities on level 1 and level 2 are well within the span of
control of individual companies. For success at level 3 and 4, consumer life
style and infrastructure changes in society play a major role.
Level 1: eco-design
activities, incremental improvement
Level 1 eco-design
actions can be carried out by all companies launching products into the market
and every employee can contribute to it.
Common sense
plays an important part in these type of activities. Essentially it is bringing
together the following type of information:
By counting, i.e.
• how many
parts are in the products?
• how many
types of material have been used?
• how many
screws or other fixtures are in place?
By measuring,
i.e.
• energy
consumption
• weight
• presence of
environmentally relevant substances
• disassembly
time of the main parts?
By
calculating, i.e.
• what is the
cost of environmental improvements?
• what are
the yields of environmental improvements?
Bringing
together information almost automatically leads to the generation of ‘green’
improvements
Philips
Environmental Policy Statement
Environmental
care is an integral part of the industrial and product policy of Philips.
The four
basic principles are: • sustainable development • prevention is better than
cure • the total effect on the environment counts • open contact with the
authorities.
These
principles lead to the following policy statement:
• Philips is
committed to environmental care in all its operations. All parts of the organization
will incorporate this into the management of their activities.
• Philips encourages
the assessment of the total environmental impact when introducing new
processes, products and packaging.
• Philips
recognises the importance of an on-going involvement and commitment of
management and of all employees.
• Philips
will strive to conduct its industrial and commercial activities in such a way
that the quality of the environment now and in the future preserved. Philips
supports the Business Charter for Sustainable Development of the International
Chamber of Commerce (ICC), dated March 1991.
• Philips is
committed to complying with all applicable environmental laws and regulations
and emphasises the necessity of international harmonization of environmental
regulations.
• Philips
will cooperate with governments, regulatory bodies, industries and consumer organizations
and will take the initiative, where necessary, to promote workable and improved
codes of practice and effective laws and regulations.
• Philips encourages the collection and
qualified recycling of products at the end of their useful life by third
parties. In this respect, Philips will provide the necessary information
concerning its products.
• Philips
will strive to inform the customer in such a way that he will be able to take
the respective environmental consequences into account in his decision to buy,
provided an assessment of the total environmental impact of its products has
been made.
Source:
Philips Electronic experience has shown that the process of bringing together
information, as described above, almost automatically leads to the generation
of ‘green’ improvements (and also leads to improvements outside the strict
environmental area). The reason for this is due to the complexity of today’s
products and because most companies are still organized into specialized
departments focusing on particular parts of the total product concept (i.e.mechanical,
electrical, electronic, manufacturing planning, etc). Eco-design is essentially
a cross-functional activity!
In order to
successfully integrate level 1 eco-design activities, basically four types of
action are needed:
• formulation
of the environmental vision, policy and overall targets by management.
• incorporation
of an environmental section into the individual product specification.
• eco-design
training and the publication of an environmental design manual with mandatory design
rules, directives and recom-mendations, background knowledge on how to
successfully execute eco-design
• follow-up
both at management level (‘review’) and in the product creation process
(environmental release).
In order for
an organization to start operating in this way, a business rationale must be
developed, technical matters should be addressed and environmental awareness
should be generated.
Environmental
Design Manual
Philips
Electronics N.V. 1996
Part 1: Sound
& Vision (S&V),
Business
Electronics (BE) and
Communication
Systems (CS)
environmental
requirements
• how to use
the manual
• summary of
mandatory
design rules
• environmental
weight
and
calculation method
• marking and
labelling
of mechanical
parts
• packaging
• customer
information
• purchasing
directives
• banned
Substances
• batteries
• ozone
depleting chemicals
The business
rationale for level 1 eco-design activities is primarily based on compliance
with legislation/regulation and to changes where eco-design and cost reduction
are directly linked, such as product weight and packaging weight reduction,
reduction of (dis)assembly time, reduction of wiring/cabling and the
application of recycled material. Experience indicates that successful eco-design
generates environmental improvements and cost reduction, which contradicts the
well-established prejudice that ‘ the environment’ only costs money. It is more
difficult to derive market advantages from level 1 eco-design activities; as,
both private and original equipment manu-facturers (OEM) customers Part 2:
Business group specific environmental standards.
Part 3:
Environmental policy:
S&V, BE
and CS environmental organization environmental recommendations and information
• chemical
content
• power
consumption
• end-of-life
costs & design
recommendations
• environmental
management
systems
• LCA/Eco-indicator
• eco labels
simply expect
that quality companies continuously introduce environmental improvements in
their new product generations. Moreover, level 1 eco-design improvements are
straightforward and easy for competitors to follow, so commercial advantages
will be short-lived.
Philips Sound
& Vision (S&V) has approached eco-design activities both through a
‘top-down’ and a ‘bottom-up’ approach. The ‘top-down’ approach was launched
through the formulation of a vision/policy statement in 1991. This was followed
by the implementation of an environmental program called ‘The Environmental
Opportunity’. On a company-wide basis the following three goals are set:
• certification
according to ISO
Part 4:
Annexes environmental release status of:
passive components
active components
electromechanical components
key components
laminates (for PWBs)
plastics
metals
chemicals
Philips CE
list of environmentally relevant substances • summary of legislation and
regulations.
• 15%
packaging reduction in all operations by the year 2000.
Each Business
Unit has to establish a program addressing:
• eco-design
energy consumption of products
The need to
drastically improve the eco-efficiency of products and services through level 3
eco-design also calls for an intense stakeholder dialogue.
and training programs.
The Environmental Design Manual gives the mandatory design rules (to be checked
at product release), design directives and design recommendations. The
supporting text and information tables are organized in such a way that they
not only invite the designers/developers to fulfil the requirements, but also
to surpass this minimum as much as possible (see JSPD, Issue 1, p. 7).
Training programs
include the following items:
introduction
What is eco-design
environmental product analysis ?
Environmental
validation
How to
environmentally improve energy consumption materials application
chemical
content packaging ‘end of life’ properties • ISO 14001 • business and
environment eco-design as business issue
environmental
business analysis/roadmaps
green
consumer behavior
environmental
product strategy • legal and political issues
•
implementation of eco-design • ‘end of life’/recycling specials.
Level 2: eco-design
activities, radical re-design based on existing concepts.
In level 2
eco-design activities existing product concepts are environmentally improved up
to the limits which physics, chemistry and electronics will allow. This is difficult
to achieve
through a
‘Plan-Do-Check-Action’ approach. Therefore level 2 eco-design projects are
being organized in pre-prototyping or research laboratories.
Going for the
limits for energy consumption, materials application and ‘end of
life’/durability of a single product always implies compromises and ‘tradeoffs’
as to what is the best or the better environmental option. Drastically
improving one item (i.e. energy consumption) can have negative implications for
other items, such as materials or ‘end of life’. Therefore level 2 activities
require environmental validation; Life Cycle Assessment (eco-indicator
calculations) and Life Cycle Cost calculations are needed to track down the
best options, with commonsense and the checklist-based activities of level 1 –
no longer applicable to a higher level of sophisication.
In order to find
out what the best approach for radical re-design in an industrial setting would
be, the S&V Business Unit has organized a ‘Green TV’ project. In this
project attention has been focussed on both the technical issues, and corporate
culture issues, like how to overcome barriers and prejudice and how to simulate
green creativity. The experience in this project has shown that it is very beneficial
to allow ‘open thinking’ in the first stage of the project. This means that the
normal boundary conditions of an industrial project, quality, cost price and
throughput time, are set aside for a certain period of time. Later on these are
brought in again. Practice with the Philip’s ‘Green TV’ project
STRETCH:
checklist of
environmental
opportunities
Minimisation
of production impact • minimisation of waste,
emissions and
energy use • respect for biodiversity
Minimisation
of product impact • reduction of toxic substances • minimisation of materials
consumption (i.e.
through miniaturisation, weight reduction, systems integration)
• minimisation
of use of non-renewable resources
• minimisation
of fossil energy consumption (i.e. through energy efficiency and durable energy
use)
Efficient
distribution & logistics • produce where you consume • direct distribution
to consumer Intensity of use • lease versus sell • collective use
Durability of
products • reuse • technical upgrading • longer lifetime • repairability •
refurbishing • ageing with quality
Recyclability
of materials
• reduction
of materials
diversity •
materials cascading • design for disassembly • selected, safe disposal
STRETCH
methodology showed that solutions were found in avenues which otherwise would
have been eliminated beforehand.
This has
resulted in a product of where the environmental load is approximately 30%
lower than in the comparable current products. The advantages break down in the
following way:
• reduction
of energy
consumption:
30%
• plastic
weight reduction: 32%
• reduction
of hazardous
substances:
100%
• use of recycled
materials:
69% of total
weight • recycling potential: 93%
The cost
price of this product is approximately the same as current products. The main
roadblock for ‘massive introduction’ (the production of large quantities for
market introduction) is the investment which has to be made to transform the
present production facilities into that suitable for the ‘Green TV’. This
transformation would also have consequences for suppliers, as they would have
to change their parts geometries and moulds and would have to learn to work
with new (mostly recycled) materials.
The above
mentioned reasons suggest that the results of the ‘Green TV’ project can only
be implemented ‘step by step’ over a longer period of time.
Level 3: eco-design
activities, product alternatives
As is shown
in the implications of level 3 eco-design activities go beyond individual
companies.
The risks can
be enormous:
• product
alternatives might require huge investments with unsure returns
• product
alternatives might invalidate current investments and might force a supplier
base to change significantly
• the
customer may not be prepared to buy the new products/service; if ‘environmental
gains’ do not go hand in hand with other customer benefits, many people will
not buy the product (however, ‘environmental gains’ are unlikely to be key
purchasing criterion for the majority of people)
• the
infrastructure to fully exploit the environmental gain is not (yet) available.
Companies
wanting to start level 3 eco-design activities have therefore to approach their
environmental product strategy from a much wider perspective.
The best way
to do this is to link it to existing corporate and business strategy
development. S&V has developed a tool to address ‘level 3’ type issues. The
first two steps of STRETCH (Selection of sTRategic EnvironmenTal Challenges)
therefore consist of:
• identification
of the crucial driving forces in the business over a timescale of 3–10 years.
• making of a
limited number of plausible scenarios leading to a shortlist of potential
product/ market strategies.
This identifies
potential environmental opportunities and threats in relation to the identified
scenarios. These are then applied to individual products and with the help of a
checklist.
Current LCA
methodology will have to develop further to enable consideration of emissions
within well defined systems boundaries, and also to include the depletion of
resources
3) the
opportunities are scored on different scales: • environmental scale
(i.e.
eco-indicator/LCA) • customer benefit(financial,
ease of use,
emotional) • business benefit(cost reduction,
expected
increase in sales) • feasibility.
In order to
be selected for implementation, the option must lead to a substanial decrease
in environmental load. The last step is to communicate the STRETCH results to
the organization and to develop the implementation plan.
At S&V
brainstorm sessions have been held at a Business Unit level following the
STRETCH methodology. The outcome of these sessions has indicated the
substantial business and environmental potential for considerably enhancing the
durability and eco-efficiency of products.
Eco-efficiency
is defined here as:
Utility
(units of service)
Life Cycle
Impact (milliPoints)
As a result
several advanced research and development (R&D) projects have been started.
The need to
drastically improve the eco-efficiency of products and services through ‘level
3’ eco-design also calls for an intense stakeholder dialogue. The purpose of
such a dialogue should be to test the results of the STRETCH brainstorms in a
societal context. The reason for this is that to realize ‘level 3’ improvements
involves big changes in companies, as a result of the risks associated with
consumer acceptance and the uncertain fit into existing
physical and
societal structures. In order to make ‘level 3’ improvements in a market
economy all stakeholders should be prepared to adapt themselves and contribute
accordingly. Prototyping of clearly communicated and agreed societal objectives
and terms of reference is essential.
Rather than
starting from the existing situation it is recommended to use the ‘backcasting’
technique: first define the goals to be realized in i.e. the year 2010 and go
back in time in order to define what needs to be done.
The benefits
of such an approach are: • focus on relevant items • clear roadmaps for the
various
actors
• definition
of conditions for
success both
in material and
immaterial
respect.
This
methodology has been elaborated in a paper by the author (Stevels, 1997). The
‘backcasting’ technique has been applied to ‘take back’ of consumer electronic
products. In this case the environmental validation of issues to be addressed
are simple, i.e.reuse/recycling quotes and cost (Stevels, 1997).
In cases
where several parts of the life cycle have to be addressed detailed
environmental validation of various ‘level 3’ avenues is a major problem.
Current Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology will have to develop further to
enable consideration of emissions within well defined systems boundaries, and
also to include the depletion of resources, embedded toxicity and
reuse/recycling
in (half) open product systems. In addition LCA will need to address the issue
of the industrial and infrastructure transformation leading to better
environmental performance of individual products.
Level 4: eco-design
activities, sustainable product concepts
As yet, there
appears to be no experience at ‘level 4’, with the lessons from ‘level 3’
changes still being learnt by leading companies.
Conclusion
In this paper
the experience of a division of a Philips has been described. It is shown that
eco-design can be successfully integrated into current business operations.
Critical success factors for this process are indicated.
It also
highlights that in order to achieve breakthroughs in reducing the environmental
load of products, stakeholder dialogue must be intensified. Moreover,
environmental validation methodologies such as LCA need to be extended to draw
meaningful conclusions about what avenues are likely to lead to sustainability.
•
References
R.A.P.M.
Weterings and J.B. Opschoor. ‘Environmental space as a challenge for
technological prototyping’. (RMNO publication no. 74, Rijswijk, the Netherlands,
1992)
E.U., van
Weiszecker, A.B., Lovins and L.H. Lovins, ‘Factor four, twice the affluence,
half the use of natural resources’ (Droemer Knaur, Mnnchen, Germany 1995)
The
Brundtland Commission, ‘Our common future. Report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development’, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom
1987)
J.C. Brezet,
J.M. Cramer and A.L.N. Stevels, ‘From Waste management to Environmental
Innovation’, (Rathenau Institute, The Hague, the Netherlands, 1995)
A.L.N.
Stevels, ‘Design for Environment’ (UNEP, Asia Pacific Technical Monitor 1997,
p. 27–33)
J.M. Cramer
and A.L.N. Stevels, ‘Experiences with Strategic Environmental Product Planning
within Philips Sound & Vision’ (Proceedings Of the Greening of Industry
Network conference, Heidelberg, Germany, Nov. 1996)
A.L.N.
Stevels, ‘A Roadmap for eco-efficient take-back of Consumer Electronics
Products’ (Proceedings Globec 1996/Recycle 1996, Davos (Czechoslovakia, March
1996)
The Journal
of Sustainable Product Design has developed a partnership with the O2 Global
Network to further disseminate information and ideas on eco-design and
sustainable product design. O2 Global Network is an international network of
ecological designers. The O2 Global Network is organized into national O2
groups which work together to provide various services such as: O2 Broadcasts,
which report live from O2 events using email and the Worldwide Web (
For further
information on the above activities and the O2 Global Network contact: O2
Global Network Tourslaan 39 5627 KW Eindhoven The Netherlands email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
tel/fax: +31 40 2428 483 internet: http:www.wmin.ac.uk/
media/O2/O2_Home.html
‘O2 News’
will update readers of the Journal on the latest eco-design issues from around
the world and on O2’s national activities. In this issue O2’s activities in the
Netherlands are highlighted.
Special
feature: O2 Japan
Chair of O2
Global Network, Product designer,
Liaison
Officer, O2 Japan, Director of Open House, Japan
Product Planner,
Japan
Eco-design
update: news on eco-design projects worldwide
‘Take back’
at Philips
Philips have
decided to set up a product ‘take back’ system in the Netherlands, thus forcing
the Dutch trade organizations covering consumer electronics manufacturers and
importers to become involved in the system. This means that product ‘take back’
for consumer electronics will be a reality starting January 1999. The companies
will be responsible for those ‘end of life’ products which are not collected by
shops and local communities. Shops will be required to accept ‘end of life’
products when selling a new one.
Mitsibushi
joins the Future 500 round table
Mitsibushi
has become one of the founding members of the Future 500 CEO round table. ‘Future
500’ was set up in contrast to the Fortune 500. The companies in Future 500
will be the leading companies involved in green technologies and products and
will aim to significantly increase resource productivity.
Japanese
Eco-Indicator
In Japan, Pré
Consultancy has started to translate the Eco-Indicator ’95 system from the
Dutch to the Japanese situation. The initial work has recently been completed
and presented to the JLCA (Japanese Life Cycle Analysis) association.
Presently, a heated debate about the type of weighting of environmental effects
is going on in Japan. In contrast to the US, there has been no discussion about
the necessity of such an indicator for designers.
Green
consumer guidelines
SC Johnson
Wax Inc. has developed a set of ‘Environmental Education Materials Guidelines
for Excellence’ to be used in schools. This is based on a Roper Study in 1995,
which found that customers are willing to take environmental issues into
account, but do not have a basic understanding of environmental issues. SC
Johnson Wax concluded that environmental education may help restore customers’
trust in industry. Furthermore, it will enable consumers to make more educated
choices in purchasing
products, so
that they can distinguish an ‘environmentally considered’ product from a
generic product. Up to now a company could produce a green product without the
consumer recognising it – unless it was highlighted. In the long term, SC
Johnson Wax expects that environmental education will help generate new professionals
that can deal with the complexities of combining industrial and environmental
interests.
Green
consumer survey
The
percentage of US customers who do not care about the environment (‘Basic
Browns’) has risen from 28% in 1990 to 37% in 1996, according to the Green
Gauge Report conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide, US. The percentage of
‘Greenback Greens’, who are willing to pay 20% more for environmentally sound
products has declined from 11% to 5%. Environmental factors are not as
important as product issues such as quality, price, brand and convenience of
purchase, etc. However, the US government is increasingly purchasing in an
environmentally sound manner, incorporating ‘green’ criteria in procurement.
Finally, nearly 75% of Americans think that they should take more positive
action towards the environment (the ‘guilt gap’) with recycling the only green
activity that has increased.
Sources: The
Hartman report, the Hartman Group, Bellevue, WA; American Demographics
Buying
recycled
In a new book
by Joel Makower, ‘10 Easy ways to buy recycled’ there are various examples of
products made out of waste or recycled materials. Makower states that ‘If
you’re not buying recycled products, you’re not really recycling’. Examples
include a doll made out of recycled soda bottles and organic cotton; key
chains, clipboards and magnets made out of used computer circuit boards;
wallets, backpacks and book covers out of recycled plastic bottle fibres and
coffee tables from bicycle inner tubes, chains and gears. Joel Makower is the
author of ‘The Green Consumer’ and editor of the ‘Green Business Letter’.
Source: Earth
Action Network, 1997, http://www.emagazine.com:80/0997gl_ consumer.html
Green glass
The German
company Seiler’s patented ‘high temperature vitrification technique’ – a
process which makes ceramic glass products out of steel mill dust, garnet blast
media residue and industrial wastewater treatment sludge was accepted by the
California Environmental Agency as a recycling technique. Since the process is
no longer considered a waste treatment process, Seiler can start marketing the
products for abrasives, roofing tile granules and architectural materials.
Source:
Business Wire news
New O2
contacts
O2 liaison Officers
were appointed recently in the Philippines, Mexico and India and will now
inform designers in their country about O2. Liaison Officers have already been
appointed in Japan, Germany and USA.
The
Netherlands Design Institute to coorperate with O2
The
Netherlands Design Institute (NDI) will cooperate with the O2 Global Network
and other organizations interested in creating the O2 Website. Any suggestions,
comments and contributions are welcome. In 1998, O2 will have its tenth
anniversary and O2 Netherlands its fifth.
O2 Japan was
launched in 1992 with an O2 exhibition in Seibu. This was followed by the
Tennen (‘Nature’) Design conference in 1995.
‘Tennen Design’
ecological design conference
Tennen Design,
the Japanese ecological design conference, highlighted that the Western problem
solving approach was insufficient for developing eco-design solutions if not
balanced with an approach that recognises ‘values’. Eco-designers try to find fixes
for product-related environmental problems, but in most cases this is an
incremental approach allowing for budget,time and constraints. A theme that
arose was ‘are we producing sustainable solutions or are we just going nowhere
fast’: doing good things, but possibly in the wrong direction? A suggestion
from the conference was that it is equally important to consider the ‘values’
that we strive for. It is important to consider the ‘value’ that the product
will attain for the customer in 15 or 30 years time and how this relates to
environment. Then the designer should consider how this should and will
influence his/her design now and in the future.
The Tennen Design
conference was held in the shintoist Honen In temple in Kyoto, the temple city
of Japan. Workshops had themes like ‘Design that will last 100 years’,
‘Ecological machines’ and ‘Information environment and design’.
Monks read
email
A parallel
conference was connected by email to Delft in the Netherlands. The concept was
to provide a comparative Western perspective on the ideas that developed at
Tennen Design. Monks from the Honen In temple and participants translated the
printouts of the East-West conversation for each other.
A green
laptop
Some of the
inevitable misunderstandings from the e-mail workshop actually led to new
ideas. For example, the question of whether a laptop computer could be made
green or more sustainable evolved from the workshop entitled ‘from symbiotic to
assimilated design’. This led to the concept of a vertical bath tub which the
user enters. Gestures in the fluid are transmitted to the other people by
movements in the fluid. The computer as an environment itself, in which you can
swim.
Conclusion
As with any
workshop, the concepts generated needed considerable prototyping. However, the
aim of the conference was to act as a catalyst for new thinking. As Misako
Yomosa, one of the organisers, puts it: ‘I think of the conference as an
initiation of continuing activities toward ecooriented society’.
The Tennen Design
Forum continues its work as a loose network.
More info:
http://www.johokyoto.or.jp/~tennen/
The Japanese designer
– interview with Fumi Masuda
Q: You have
worked with European and US designers. Would you say the situation of the
Japanese designers is similar?
A: Well, no.
The position of industrial designers in Japan is unusual. Over 90% of the whole
population of industrial designers in this country is employed by industry.
Independent industrial designers are minorities. Major manufacturing industries
such as Toyota Motor Co. or Matsushita Electric Co. have huge design centres
and each of them employ 200 to 500 industrial designers in-house. They always
work in collaboration with product planning, marketing and engineering groups
and are usually specialists in particular product areas like computers, Office
furniture and so on.
Q: Are they
technically-oriented or aesthetically-oriented designers?
A: Industrial
designers are generally recognized as having responsibilities in relation to
the forms and images of the products.
Q: What about
influencing product definition?
A: This is
hard to say, as most work for big companies. Some of them are acting as design
managers instead of being product design specialists.
Several designers
work as consultants for comparably small local companies and may have more influence.
Q: Would you
say Tennen Design had an average public?
A: Roughly
speaking, half of the designers at Tennen Design Forum ‘95 were independent designers
from Tokyo and the others were employed designers from the Kansai area (Kyoto
and Osaka).
Q: So what
else can we expect from Tennen Design?
A: Tennen Design
is a temporary group or a non-regular event which has happened twice (the workshop
in ’95 and an exhibition in ’96). The participants shared a very special time
and space before going back to their own life. Someone may organize another
Tennen Design sometime when he or she feels the awareness and attention is
running out. No goal, no strategy.
Q: Is O2 a
factor in Japan? It is European by origin and may still be rather European in
approach.
A: I always
respect the O2 way of thinking, which is very practical and realistic, in other
words, quite Western. I hope we could show our way of thinking from the Eastern
side. This is still difficult to explain to a Westerner. O2 is actually quite
well known among young Japanese industrial designers. Quite a few of them would
be interested in getting involved; the only barrier is the language problem.
Q: ‘What
about the man on the street? Does he or she bother about environmental
problems?’
A: Japanese
people are generally aware of, or at least understand, the importance of the
environmental issues. For many it is a deeply a cultural subject rather than a
technical matter. They have a long history of living symbiotically with nature.
But, I think they need some more time to remember how pleasant it used to be.
Recycling
developments in Japan
If you don’t
know how your products are going to be recycled, how can you ever design for
it?
Background
In Japan, 24
million air conditioners, television sets, refrigerators and washing machines
are bought annually. 14 million are thrown away per annum, which constitutes
620,000 tons of waste (over 1.2 % of household waste). To cope with the volume
of household waste (50 million tons a year, 124 million inhabitants), a legal
framework was set up in 1991. This will evolve into more specific and stricter
laws over the years. Officially called ‘law for the promotion of using recycled
resources’, the law is usually referred to as ‘the recycling law’. Therefore
smart thinking implies that larger consumer products should be designed for
recycling with consideration of ‘take back’ also included.
Pilot plant
Hitachi,
together with two government agencies, set up a home appliance recycling pilot
plant. To allow for effective separation of the materials, the connections,
form enclosures and surface layers need to be released (‘unlocked’). To achieve
this the pilot plant uses cryo
genics. Low
temperatures (-150 degree C for steel) make the materials so brittle that they
can be easily milled into small mono-material pieces. This is especially
relevant for complex components like motors and compressors, where materials
are closely intertwined. Even the paint comes off the steel. After the metals,
the somewhat ‘warmer’ nitrogen can still be used for unlocking plastics.
Plastics
A new
technique for plastics separation uses the temperature at which it becomes
brittle. After cooling and milling, materials with can simply be separated by
sieving. Only polyvinylchloride (PVC) is recycled, polyethylene (PE) is reduced
to oil and polystyrene (PS) is burnt.
Bottom line
At the facility,
recycling of refrigerators costs about ¥3500 (US$28), and recycling of
televisions and washing machines about ¥1100 (US$9). With this capacity (3000
ton/year), Tokyo alone would need 7 plants. Therefore, Hitachi, MITI,
Mitsubishi and Sony aim to build a plant with 4 times this capacity. •
Adapted from
Technieuws, issue 1, 1997, Dutch Department of Economical Affairs.
SimaPro
Details
PRé
Consultants B.V. Plotterweg 12 3821 BB Amersfoort The Netherlands Tel +31 (0)33
4555022 Fax +31 (0)33 4555024 http//www.pre.nl
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Review of
SimaPro 4.0
f you have ever had cause to consider Life
Cycle Assessment (LCA) software, you will almost certainly have come across
SimaPro. Since PRé Consultants released the very earliest version of SimaPro in
1990 it has led the field in terms of licence sales around the world. To date,
the MS-DOS based SimaPro 3.1 (SP3.1) still manages twice the market share of
its nearest rival. Now the next generation, SimaPro 4.0 (SP4.0), is due for
release.
Unlike SP3.1,
SimaPro 4.0 runs in the ubiquitous Windflows environment (Windflows 3.x, 95 and
NT4) and whilst retaining everything which has made the earlier SimaPros
successful, SP4.0 contains several new features, a revised and expanded
database structure and an array of different ways to manipulate data and
results.
Very simply,
SimaPro will analyse the environmental impacts of a product, or compare the
impacts of two or more products. It uses a modular system whereby you can
combine individual processes (i.e.materials, transport, industrial processing
and waste disposal options) from its central process database to make more
complex ones. Processes are then placed in assembly boxes representing complete
products. In this way, infinitely complex flflows of materials and processes
(process trees) can be built up and these are stored in a life-cycle box which
forms the top of the tree. The software can apply various weighting methods to
calculate the resulting environmental impacts for the whole life-cycle arising
from raw materials usage and substance emissions. These impacts are worked out
for any number of criteria such as ozone depletion, greenhouse effect, summer
smog, etc, and the results are presented in a detailed tabular or graphic form.
A typical
life-cycle box can contain several assemblies, details of the product’s use
phase, i.e.its working life, and its final disposal options. Disposal options
include disposal scenarios which allow you to direct waste units to final
disposal, recycling, or re-use; disassembly boxes, which let you describe how a
product might be broken up into its component parts for recycling or waste
disposal; and re-use boxes which describe the processes involved in supplying a
product for re-use.
Using the
program – creating a process tree
As with a
number of LCA programs, SimaPro 4.0 may appear a little overwhelming at first.
However, the guided tour in the accompanying user manual is certainly
comprehensive, and providing you take the time to follow it through from start
to finish, you should become familiar with most of its features fairly quickly.
The program is laid out in a logical manner, with separate tabbed pages for
each of the important components and once you have learned the basics, SimaPro
is remarkably straightforward and consistent, despite its complexity.
At the heart
of the software is the information contained in the process records detailing
materials, transport, industrial processes and waste disposal. Linking these
processes together to form a process tree is done by inserting the name and
amount of a ‘daughter process’ into the appropriate inputs from technosphere
part of a parent process’ record, or into an assembly box. The operation is
made very easy through the use of pop-up dialogue boxes containing processes
for you to select, and at any time you can switch to a tree diagram showing the
component parts of the current process or assembly you are constructing. Raw
materials and emissions for each process record are selected from a separate
substances database.
A very
helpful feature is that the software lets you enter amounts in process records
and assemblies using any scale you choose, as, for example, SimaPro is fully
aware that 0.001 tons is really 1000 grams. This reduces the time taken to add
data and probably increases data accuracy too! You can even define your own
unit conversions in case you want SimaPro to calculate in units it does not
initially recognise.
The structure
of process records has been designed to conform to the relevant sections of the
Society for the Promotion of Lifecycle Design (SPOLD) Common Format for
Lifecycle Inventory (LCI) Data. The SPOLD format is likely to become the
standard for LCA data and it makes good sense to include that standard in LCA
software, making it much easier for organizations to share information.
However, the SPOLD format is also somewhat unwieldy and asks that the user
enters large amounts of text which contributes nothing to actual calculations.
With this in mind, PRé have included the option to use, view, edit and add
records in a much abridged form, using essential data only. Unfortunately,
adopting an external data format has left no obvious place to include transport
processes in the new style records. Transport must now be entered under
energy/heat to conform with SPOLD, though it is categorised elsewhere in the
software as a distinct process type, quite separate from energy.
SimaPro 4.0
is supplied with over 930 process records using data by Delft University of
Technology, the Netherlands; PRé Consultants, and an officially licensed and
peer-reviewed version of the BUWAL 250, 1997 database.
You can add
your own processes to the database, import them from other SimaPro users, and
modify those supplied with the software to suite individual circumstances.
SP3.1 users can convert their databases for use in SP4.0.
Using the program
– calculating the impacts
Calculating
impacts from a ‘process tree’ can be done at almost any time – the model
certainly doesn’t need to be complete, though obviously the more complete your
model, the more complete your results. Clicking the analyse button will set
SimaPro calculating the inventory and the environmental impacts for a selected
process.
Graphic
display for characterisation stage of a product using the Eco-Indicator 95
evaluation method box. If you have more than one data object open, clicking the
compare button will calculate the inventories and impacts for all of these so
that the results can be viewed side by side.
SimaPro uses
various evaluation methods which will classify substances according to their
effects on environmental impacts such as acid rain and ozone depletion. PRé’s
much used Eco-Indicator 95 (included in the software) will:
• Show the
relative contributions of each calculated process to a list of environmental
effects (scaled to 100%); • Normalise these contributions to the effects of an
average European inhabitant over one year;
• Evaluate
the effects by applying a weighting factor to derive the overall seriousness of
the impacts with regard to human health and ecosystems;
• Aggregate
all impacts in the evaluation stage to arrive at a single figure for the
environmental impact of each material and process in the model.
SimaPro also
comes with methods by CML (University of Leiden) and BUWAL’s ecopoint method.
As with processes, you can create your own methods or edit those supplied. In
this way you can include new substances in calculations, alter their overall
effects, and add additional environmental criteria against which to measure the
product’s impacts.
SimaPro will
check to see if any substances in your model are missing from the selected
evaluation method before it does any calculating. After that, the software will
calculate all available data and present the user with some gloriously colorful
graphs.
The graphical
displays are easy to understand, but if you need to be specific, you can click
the table button to view the precise impact results in tabular form. Either
way, tables and graphs can be exported or pasted to other Windflows
applications for further manipulation.
Clicking the
substances page tab will take you to the inventory, or impact table. This lists
the amounts of all substances included in the calculations under their
respective materials or processes. There are separate tables for raw materials,
airborne, waterborne and solid emissions, emissions to soil and non-material
emissions such as heat and land use.
SimaPro can
also display impact data on a process tree diagram. Here, each element details
the name and amount of the process or box it represents and flows its
contribution to environmental impacts by means of a numerical value and a
vertical bar like a thermometer. The thermometers can display cumulative
impacts for the whole tree, or absolute impacts for each element. They can
represent any of the impact criteria available in the evaluation method used.
Conclusion
Whether you
want to carry out a quick analysis or more detailed LCA calculations, SimaPro
4.0 is a useful aid. In the Windflows environment it is straightforward to use
and has a logical and uniform feel about it. Process data now conforms to a
common standard, rather than to the whims of an individual software producer.
Data, results and graphs can be exported or pasted to other Windflows
applications for presentation or further analysis.
The way it
has been designed, SimaPro is perfectly capable of modelling a full range of
products, from packaging to electronics, but the results will obviously depend
upon the quality of data used. PRé are at pains to stress that the whole LCA methodology
is constantly being updated and changed, and that you will not find a definitive
answer with SimaPro. However, with the range and quality of data provided, and
the flexibility to update and add your own, SimaPro offers a comprehensive tool
for use in LCA calculations. •
Paul
Stockdale is a freelance author and has a background in Wastes Management and
Environmental Technology.
References
Siegenthaler,
C.P., Linder, S. and Pagliari, F., ‘LCA Software Guide 1997’
(
Management,
1997).
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