Re-Design
the product or product system I.e. Re-designing the product to take advantage of greener materials and reduce polluting processes in production.
Re-Define
a product or service into a solution that makes business sense I.e. Taking a hard look at the business model and defining new solutions for satisfying consumer need.
Design for Sustainability, Eco Design, or Green Design, don't have to be buzz words. Contact Us to see how we can help you make the leap.
(Social, Environmental, and Economy or People Planet Profit)
A product or service should contribute equally to all 3 areas to be defined as a success. For example, focusing on Profit at the expense of either Environment or Society does not result in a long-term sustainable model, and likewise neglecting profit also negates ongoing success.
True cost accounting takes into consideration the cost of waste disposal, energy consumption, and pollution over and above the direct costs. All products on the market today are profitable to the business that is making them. But there are many spin-off costs which are carried by the consumer or society which are not factored into the business equation.
An ecological footprint represents the amount of land required to sustain the consumption patterns of a given population. Applied to product design, an ecological footprint (defined by surface area) considers energy and material use, as well as the waste created in the life cycle of a product.
LCA involves looking at the material cycle (either cradle to grave or cradle to cradle) and all processes and assigning them a value based on energy usage in creating, processing, transporting, recycling, and environmental and social costs. Incremental improvements in green design are easy to quantify when using LCA values by selecting materials and process that are more green.
Design for disassembly considers the easy separation of different types of materials from a product once its useful life has come to an end, to allow for effective recycling.
Biomimicry draws on nature to solve problems in practice, most often looking at new ways to improve materials. It iis also applicable on the macro scale of product design when assessing Product Systems.
This is the idea taken from nature that one system's waste is another system's nutrient. The balance in industry is to produce value at all levels of production i.e. Zero Waste.
If you imagine the world's population as a pyramid, almost all companies today compete for the saturated markets of the top 10% while the emerging markets only constitute an additional 20% and the vast majority of potential consumers (70%) are overlooked by business. The new idea that we can use leapfrog technologies to develop that market means helping the world's poorest doesn't have to be charity.