2.6 Eco Design

Conceptual Understanding: Consideration of the environmental impact of any product, service or system during its life cycle should be instigated at the earliest stage of design and continue through to disposal.

Conceptual Understanding: Designers should have a firm understanding of their responsibility to reduce the ecological impact on the planet.

Conceptual Understanding: Eco-design concepts currently have a great influence on many aspects of design.

Eco design’s main aim is to limit the environmental impact of the products at their design stage.

This Eco design strategy focuses on all three broad environmental categories – materials, energy, and pollution/waste.

This makes eco-design more complex, longer time scale and difficult to do as seen here on the right with an example of a systems approach.

The link between eco-design and traditional design is that traditional design methodology and eco-design are similar, however, eco-design explores further elements that consider the impact that products have, or can have on the environment.

What might be the impact of internal and external drivers for eco-design from an economic perspective:

Cradle to grave vs. Cradle to cradle

Key aspect of Cradle to cradle (Closed loop or circular economy):

• Made to be made. The product is designed so that it can be made again using the same / most materials / resources of the original product, once it has been used and collected during disposal.

• According to their website (www.c2ccertified.org): “The target is to develop and design products that are truly suited to a biological or technical metabolism, thereby preventing the recycling of products which were never designed to be recycled in the first place.”

Life cycle analysis (LCA): The assessment of the effect a product has on the environment through five stages of its life: pre-production; production; distribution (including packaging; utilization; and disposal.

The LCA is used by designers to assess and balance environmental impact over a product’s life cycle. The complex nature of LCA means that it is not possible for a lone designer to undertake it and a team with different specialism is required.

LCA is complex, time-consuming and expensive, so the majority of eco-designs are based on less detailed qualitative assessments of likely impacts of a product over its life cycle. The simplest example is the use of a checklist to guide the design team during a product’s design development stages.

Pre-production;

• is the obtaining of natural resources;

• it can be very polluting (strip-mining) or can have a smaller effect on the environment (shaft mining),

• includes transporting the raw material to processing industries

Production

• is the processing of the resources and shaping etc. to make the product.

• Once again it could be damaging to the environment (such as a large factory spewing out smoke) or have a small impact (a carpenter hand crafting children’s toys)

Distribution including packaging;

• includes taking the product from the factory to the warehouse, from the warehouse to the store, and the package.

• It could have a large impact (as is the case with an imported object from around the world in a Styrofoam box) or a very low impact (made and sold in the same place with a biodegradable box or no packaging)

Utilization

• is about the product’s use and the effect that has on the environment.

• A diesel generator for example will pollute air and make noise pollution while a solar panel will make next to none.

Disposal

• depends on both the product and the method of disposal. Recycling one aluminum can will make less environmental problems than throwing one away even if they are identical.

• Biodegradable objects can be reused, recycled, or left to be broken down and add nutrients to the soil, depending on the object one or the other would be preferable. For example, paper is best recycled because of the chemicals used to make it and the logging of forests to obtain the pulp while a banana peel is completely useless for anything but compost.

Environmental impact assessment matrix: A tool designed to identify and predict the impact of a product on the environment.

The roles and responsibilities of the designer, manufacturer and user at each stage of the LCA

Consideration of the environmental impact of any product, service or system during its life cycle should be instigated at the earliest stage of design and continue through to disposal.

It is vital that designers have a firm understanding of their responsibility to reduce the ecological impact on the planet.

The role of the designer is to ensure the products obsolescence and how the object will be used.

It is safe to say on the other hand that the manufacturer has less involvement with the life cycle as the manufacturer is mainly responsible for the production and the distribution and packaging of the product.

The user has no involvement whatsoever regarding the making and selling of the product. The only thing that the user is directly involved in is the utilisation and the disposal of the product .

Here is a summary:

The simplest example is the use of a checklist to guide the design team during a product’s design development stages. For example: minimize the use of packaging, optimize energy efficiency in use, design for disassembly, minimize parts/components and use recyclable materials.

Design for Sustainability (D4S): United Nations Environmental Programme Manual on Eco- design

In 1996 the United nations released an Eco-design manual also known as Design for Sustainability (D4S). The major concerns outlined in the UNEP Ecodesign Manual were to:

• increase recyclability

• reduce energy requirements

• maximise use of renewable resources

• reduce creation and use of toxic materials

• reduce material requirements of goods and services

• increase product durability and reduced planned obsolescence

The emphasis of the guidelines will vary depending on the type of product to be designed and the target market.

Design for the environment software: Software that allows designers to perform Life cycle analysis (LCA) on a product and assess its environmental impact.

Converging technologies: The synergistic merging of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information and communication technologies and cognitive science. Converging technology offers greater convenience, efficiency or entirely new features and functions not currently in existence.

Converging technology is basically the combining of technology. Such as media technology on digital devices which have audio, text, video, data and images all one one device in digital format.

The smart phone is an innovative example of converging technologies that combines multiple technologies into onespace-saving device. The resultant reduction of materials, and energy used in production and distribution has environmental benefits.