Design for Sustainability

The design for sustainability concept help identifying a systematic way to identify and prioritize solutions to make products more sustainable

Key idea: the entire life cycle and supply chain of the product are considered and environmental and social factors, including the socio-economic context, are incorporated into product development

The concept “Design for Sustainability“ refers to a system of connected services, products, and companies:

• Must consider impact and effect to wider system, not just product

• The objecties of the company, its management processes, its sustainability strategy and the integration and interests of different stakeholders along the value chain have a substantial impact on the implementation of sustainability improvements

Example: Throughout the video, we will apply the concepts to the example of a vacuum cleaner

The five steps are:

• Step 1: Impact assessment

• Step 2: Idea generation and selection

• Step 3: Concept development

• Step 4: Evaluation

• Step 5: Implementation and follow-up

Goal: assess the life cycle of the product

LCA helps idedntifying main impacts and resource consumption of products by investigating various indicators such as global warming potential of products. Social and economic indicator, not only environmental ones, should be included in the analysis.

Example: Below you can see the simplified LCA of a vacuum cleaner. The graph shows 3 indicators (GWP, HTP, ODP)

From the graph we can deduce the following:

• Main impact of the vacuum cleaner on all 3 indicators occurs during its use phase, mainly due to the electricity consumption

• The raw material used to manufacture the vacuum cleaner have the highest impact on HTP

• The manufacturing process mainly contributes to ODP due to the emissions of halogen organic compounds from solvents

• Transportation has no substantial impact on any of those 3 indicactors

• The end-of-life disposal has an overall positive impact due to recycling of materials

this step helps defining improvement options. These options should be targeted to the areas of most impact identified with the LCA

The graph below highlights potential strategies for improving the sustainability footprint of products

Example: We can apply these strategies to the vacuum cleaner example

• First strategy: consider impacte identified in LCA

  • Electricity main impact factor

  • Obvious strategy is to decarbonize electricity -> BUT Outside of company control

  • Hence, companies should improve vacuum cleaner’s efficiency in consumption

  • Raw materials also very impacting

  • Companies can reduce the amount of material required by minimizing waste in manufacturing

• Second strategy: extend lifetime of product

  • Reduces number of required vacuum cleaners

  • Reduces total sustainability footprint

• Third strategy: business model change

  • Allow for sharing of vacuum cleaners

  • Reduces number needed

  • Provides incentive for producer to improve vacuum cleaner and make it ready for recycling

• Fourth strategy: system change

  • Definition: System change refers to reducing the demand for the service behind the product

  • Does not deal with product but with the demand

  • Users do not want a vacuum cleaner, rather a clean living space

  • It is a more radical strategy

  • Companies can deliver same service - a clean house - with a different, more sustainable product (e.g. brooms)

Once various ideas are generated, you need to prioritize them not only concerning their improvemnt potential for the sustainability footprint, but also concerning their feasibility and potential combinations

The remainin three steps are related to the implementation of the ideas generated in phase two

Goal: reflects possible uncertainties about the feasibility of the ideas and demands a holistic approach to be developed:

• Some solutions cannot be developed at same time

• Some solutions might be infeasible for the firm

  • e.g. lack of suppliers for alternative material

Goal: compare the actual improvement that can be achieved by the new product with the costs that are incurred

Goal: integrate the sustainability elements into prototype production, testing, planning of manufacturing, and marketing