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Product designers advise business managers how to best develop new products and services. Our intensive knowledge of the product development process gives us considerable leverage in influencing decisions that can significantly reduce the ecological impacts of our creations.

Achieving significant impact reductions challenges us on several levels. Identifying and prioritizing the diverse ecological impacts of a single product can seem a daunting task. Additionally, finding product managers and clients who welcome integrating ecodesign in their process can push some designers beyond our zones of comfort. Hurdles can be overcome by the promise of improving the competitive advantage of products, a promise realized by reducing environmental impacts and
reducing short and long-term costs. On a deeper level, helping to protect the quality of life on our biosphere is profoundly satisfying.

Design competitions give us additional incentives to improve the environmental design quality. The prestigious IDEA awards, which become more competitive each year, weigh ecological issues on equal footing with other design qualities, while European competitions place yet a higher value on
eco-optimization.

Before discussing ways to assess and reduce the ecological impacts, we briefly review how designers can pave the path towards integrating ecodesign in the product development process, for those of us in corporate settings and those in design consultancies.

ecodesign in a corporation
Inform yourself about environmental policies if you work within a corporation. Larger companies typically employ environmental managers at each factory and often employ public relations specialists to communicate about issues ecological. Ask for the corporate mission statement and environmental policy relating to the design of new products and services.

Don’t lose heart if policies are limited, in practice, to minimal legal requirements.  Unless you have direct and influential contact with the people in the company who define such policies, it is probably
more efficient to work with the positive parts of the policy than to apply pressure to change the policy.

Finding a sympathetic champion in upper management (the higher the better) is a wise approach, analogous to finding a patron to support a superior design concept. Marketing managers are prime candidates for recognizing the market pull that ecologically superior products create. Communicating genuine ecological benefits (as opposed to hype) in packaging and sales media is a key to connecting ecologically superior products with the market.

Marketing research should pose relevant eco-logical impact questions (energy use, battery alternatives, product life, etc.) to identify market opportunities. Positive market feedback is pivotal in motivating management to ask for and accept ecodesign advice.

You can propose the evaluation of a successful standard product to understand its environmental impacts. Eco-evaluations educate all members of the product development process about the impacts and opportunities of their products. Managers are often unaware of what an eco-evaluation is until someone hands one over in full detail.

Larger companies can enable designers to specialize in environmental issues, and participate in eco-design organizations or implement baseline environmental standards such as ISO 14000 norms (see references, backcover). 

Ecodesign within the structure of a corporation can be delicate and frustrating work, but small changes in business practice can yield tremendous reductions in ecological impact. Working within the organization, you can make the best of its tremendous power.

ecodesign in consultancies
Consulting designers serve clients on a more independent basis than designers working within companies. This independence allows us to more freely discuss ecological impacts and market opportunities. Clients come to us for fresh ideas, and their ears are often open for suggestion.

Client relationships are like gardens; they demand time and cultivation. So if the client is initially cool to your proposals for ecologically superior products, discreetly propose a few eco-solutions anyway, and next year he may return asking for more ‘green’ ideas. Consulting eco-designers use our perceived naiveté about company policy to open doors that designers in the corporation often can not. Plant the seed in your clients mind and be patient. If only a few come around, they can still build the momentum for future projects.

Consultancies can propose ecological impact evaluations and reductions in new projects. Clients may shy away from acknowledging that their products have negative environ-mental impacts, and hence shy away from commitments to improve those impacts. It is essential to separate the eco-evaluation and creative solution process from the commitment to implement any given solution. This approach educates the client about their product and clarifies questions relating to usability, manufacturability, cost and market pull. Examples where products have benefited from the eco-evaluation assist immensely in assuaging these anxieties. 

Ecological benefits will be most successful when integrated with excellent usability, visual appeal, reduced production cost and overall product innovation. Let the client make the decisions about which direction to take, and propose additional market research if major questions still loom about market receptivity.

As with designers in corporations, consulting designers should include relevant environmentally related questions in user research. Consultancies who conduct the research themselves can control the questions and search for solutions that fulfill the needs of both user and client. As always, making the connection with marketing about the ecological benefits is essential.

Most product designers are all too familiar with meeting deadlines--time is something that we often wish for more of. Before reviewing ecodesign methods that strive for accuracy, we review approaches for designers who lack the luxury of time.

swift approaches
The following methods make no pretenses about accuracy, although their resulting solutions may, by chance, yield results similar to results of more comprehensive methods.

All ecodesign approaches require a reference product--the closest product to the one which you are designing--be it the major competitor in the market or an existing design that you are giving a face lift. Obtain a sample of the reference product and any available information about it from the manufacturer.

increase energy efficiency
The principal ecological impact of electricity production is global warming caused by CO2 production; energy efficiency is important to any product that plugs into a wall socket, uses batteries, or burns fossil fuel. Determine how many hours per year that the product uses energy in its various modes, and how may watts it uses in those modes. For you non-electrical engineers, Amps x Volts = Watts, and Watts x (hrs/yr) = Watt-hrs/yr. 

Consider ways that the electricity use could be reduced, such as a more efficient motor, insulation, automatic shut-off mode, etc. Ask the assistance of engineers if necessary. Recalculate the energy use with the improvement. A 20% reduction is excellent, and more is better. For contacts about the EPA Energy Star program, see the Energy Star web-site.

used recycled materials + design for recyclability
Recyclability is defined by materials and constructions that are technically possible to recycle, and that have an infra-structure to process and resell the used materials. Consider which materials can be readily recycled in your target markets. Steel, aluminum, glass and paper are often readily recycled, depending on the purity, quantity and ease of separation of these materials from the product. In some areas thermo-plastic housings can be recycled as well. European Union laws are gradually requiring the collection of used electronics for disassembly, recycling and waste management.

Inspect your reference product for large, easily removed components made from recyclable single materials. How much work is it to separate the parts? Are the parts large enough (>2 ounces) to justify the cost of disassembly? Propose designs that make the large recyclable single material segments faster to disassemble. Additionally, specify high-recycled content and label material types in the new product components. 

reduce toxic materials
Toxicology combines knowledge of chemical composition, dosage, background levels, and their multilevel effects on animals (including humans) and other biotic systems. It is beyond the realm of most industrial designers; however, we can follow a few basic guidelines.

Does the reference product create large quantities of chemical waste over its lifetime (disposable batteries, film waste, water emissions from metal plating, exhaust from fuel combustion, ozone layer destroying chemicals, etc.)? How can the same quality of product be delivered, that eliminates or significantly reduces these emissions? What market opportunities does this create?

extend product life
Estimate the period of time that the product is typically used before it is thrown away.

Can the reference product be redesigned to be more durable, upgradable or repairable? Find market feedback indicating whether or not a longer lasting, and possibly more expensive, product is desired. Dedication to quality and service can create a competitive advantage that allows the company to gain market share.

provide the service in an innovative way
Reflect on the primary service that your product delivers, and conceptualize possible ways that this service can be delivered with lower ecological impact. For instance, alternatives to automobiles include public transportation and bicycles. The service of a television with a 30-inch cathode ray tube can also be had with a more energy efficient projection TV or LCD display. An alternative to the wasteful daily half-pound newspaper is accessing your most wanted news via the WWW. 

Open minded product managers listen to fresh ideas, but don’t expect them to transform their expectations, production systems and marketing inertia overnight. This conceptual approach demands solutions that intelligently address the many needs of the market and the product manager/client. 

more accurate approaches
Ask an industrial designer about the ecological impact of that product she just finished contouring, and you may hear about the recyclability of the polymer, but not about the energy consuming electronics within. Ask the average guy in the check out line about the environmental impacts of food shopping, and he may offer the pro’s and con’s of paper verses plastic bags, avoiding mention of the impacts of food production and driving his car to and from the grocer. The examples reveal a core problem: the risks of subjectivity when assessing ecological impact. More accurate eco-analyses require more time than swift approaches but their results are significantly more useful.

The most complete method of quantifying the inputs, outputs and environmental impacts of a product or service is a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). An LCA is a standard process that evaluates material flow, to and from air, soil and water, through-out the product’s life cycle. It includes the following phases: 

extraction of raw materials in the natural world (minerals, petroleum, wood, food, etc) 

processing of raw materials into usable products (metal structures, circuitry, glass, cuisine, assembled products, etc.)

purchase & use of the product including repair (packaging, energy use and needed materials) 

end of life of the product and its by-products (landfill, recycling or incineration)

transportation between and in each of these phases

In a complete LCA, chemical inputs and outputs in each material/process are quantified at each phase. Complete collections of these emissions are referred to as life cycle inventories. Conversion of an inventory into useful design information requires two additional steps: 

NORMALIZATION OF DATA refers to scaling the quantity of the given emission to the estimated emissions from an average individual in a region or continent.

EVALUATION OF DATA scales the figure by weighting factors according to the relative seriousness of different ecological impacts. These impacts include ecosystem impairment (from water pollution, acid rain, global warming, pesticides and habitat loss), and also include mammal health impairment or death (from ozone layer depletion, toxic metals, carcinogens, smog and resource depletion). 

International LCA evaluation standards are urgently needed. Because international standards do not yet exist, a European method, known as the Eco-Indicator, is an alternative. It offers the most usable method of LCA approaches. 

Eco-Indicators provide a simple process for product developers to comprehensively calculate the ecological impacts of products and services. The process requires that the total energy and material use of the product be defined over its lifecycle. The product elements are each quantified in relevant units and multiplied by their respective eco-indicator factors. The resulting numbers are eco-indicators, revealing which elements of the product create the most significant impacts and hold the greatest potential for impact reduction.  The table on page 6 lists publicly available Eco-Indicator 99 factor values.

EXAMPLE
  pencil sharpener
Analyzing an electric pencil sharpener may clarify how the eco-indicator process works. To begin the process, its components are disassembled, weighed and materials identified. Energy use is estimated in Watt-hours/year and its projected life in years is estimated (7 years). The end of life destination in this case will be in a landfill.

Product elements are listed in the first column and their respective eco-indicator factors are listed in the second, and the product of their multiplication is listed in the right eco-indicator column. Keep in mind that the accuracy of the method is limited to two significant digits. By rounding at each calculation step, we maintain a consistent level of accuracy. Numbers with more than two significant digits are rounded to two digits (0.0147 rounds to 0.015 and 2,723 rounds to 2,700).

Eco-indicators (in the right column) indicate which product elements create the greatest environmental impacts. The three most damaging elements are electricity use (0.33 points), polycarbonate production (0.16 points), and steel part production (0.15 points). Now we can begin the creative process of generating new proposals that attempt to reduce ecological impacts...

1   The first proposal is to specify recycled content in the manufacture of the product and to recycle the product at end of life instead of burying it in a landfill. If we can specify 80% recycled content in all production materials, the eco-indicators would be reduced accordingly:

Recycled EPDM is not available on the chart, so an estimated eco-indicator value of one half of the virgin material is used. We see that using recycled materials reduces the material impact from 0.52 to 0.17 (0.14 plus magnetic metals and PC processing), a reduction of 0.35 points! The impact of landfilling the existing design is roughly 0.003 points, and recycling would eliminate those points completely. If we add 80% recycled content in production to recycling at the end of life we achieve a 40% reduction, which is great.

2   Another approach would be a non-electric pencil sharpener, with (for the sake of simplicity) the same quantity of plastic and metals as the original. It reduces the eco-indicator points by 0.33 points to 1.7 points, a 38% reduction. Most products use proportionately more electricity than this example and have greater potential for energy efficiency improvements. The superior environmental performance of such a sharpener can be highlighted in sales and promotional materials. 

3   A more adventurous solution would be to use mechanical pencils that do not require sharpening, which would create a significant reduction in ecological impact. The reduction could be calculated by modeling the mechanical pencils and packaging over the seven year period. The proposal could be a business strategy shifting towards production of mechanical pencils. 

This example shows that the Eco-Indicator provides a way to compare the environmental impacts of various elements in a product. Although eco-indicator factors for many materials and processes need to be added to the list, and the values need to be calibrated to international norms, it is the most usable of available ecodesign methods.

[editor] Philip White, Design Director, Orb Analysis for Design, Portland, OR, IDSA Environmental Responsibility Section Chair, has extensively researched ecodesign methods at Philips Design, NL. Philip@orb-design.com

[contributing editor] Betsy Goodrich, IDSA, chaired IDSA’s Environmental Responsibility Section ’97-’99, and is a partner at Manta Design, Boston, MA . Betsy@MantaInc.com

[contributing editor] JohnPaul Kusz, IDSA, consults on environmental design strategies, and teaches about Industrial Ecology at IIT in Chicago. Jpkusz@aol.com [contributing editor] Wendy Brawer, IDSA, Director of the Green Map System, New York, NY, chaired IDSA’s Environmental Responsibility Section ‘93-’95. web@greenmap.org

[contributing editor] Stephen Geurin, Industrial Technology Advisor, National Research Council of Canada Design for the Environment Steering Committee, Toronto, CA. Steve,Geurin@nrc.ca

[design] Dru Martin, AIGA, Senior Designer, Dru Martin Design, Portland, OR. dru@drumartindesign.com

TOOLS development has been made possible by the generous support of Herman Miller, FIORI Product Development.

If you would like to participate in the Environmental Responsibility Section or if you have questions about the application of Business-Ecodesign Tools, please contact the Section Chair, Philip White.