Design for Sustainability

von louisa L.

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

Five Steps of Design for Sustainability

Step 1: Impact assessment

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)

Step 2: Idea generation and selection

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

Step 3: Concept development

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

Step 4: Evaluation

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

Step 5: Implementation and follow-up

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

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