Sustainable Design

There is no such thing as ‘away’ when we throw anything away, it must go somewhere,” - Annie Leonard, Proponent of Sustainability

This is what got me thinking a lot more about how we make things. What should we be thinking about when we look to improve the sustainability of any item that is designed, produced, and manufactured for human consumption??

SOS

Back in the day we innovated to ensure our survival against nature, but now we are going beyond that protection using our hunger for consumerism to ensure its destruction (bit heavy, but it is true)

It is a common understanding that we are using up our natural resources at an alarming rate. Think of nature as a bank for which humanity is making withdrawals more often than deposits, eventually we hit the red and then we likely go the way of the Dodo or end up at Elon’s door fighting to get on the next one-way ticket on the Mars express.

Thankfully so many people are recognizing this, building on the good work already implemented by the more sustainably visionary among us. More governments, brands, consultancies, factories are adjusting their approach to consider a more circular solution to world consumerism. Doing their bit to educate the consumer on how they can alter their lifestyle and or buying habits whilst concurrently designing and making products that are inherently more circular by nature.

What goes around, comes around

“A circular economy is a systemic approach to economic development designed to benefit businesses, society, and the environment. In contrast to the 'take-make-waste' linear model, a circular economy is regenerative by design and aims to gradually decouple growth from the consumption of finite resources.” - Ellen Macarthur foundation

The Ellen Macarthur foundation considers these 3 principles:

• Design out waste and pollution.
• Keep products and materials in use.
• Regenerate natural systems.

Identifying 4 key value generators within a circular economy:

1 - Power of pure circles - separating bio and technical materials. - design everything for eventual dis-assembly.

2 - Power of inner circles - reuse refurb and repair to existing products (Patagonia’s worn wear initiative is a great example here)

3 - Power of cascaded use - collaborative efforts between companies to reuse materials even when not used in their original form

4 - Power of circling longer - keep existing products cycling through the stream as long as possible. = closed loop keeping plastic at higher end use for as long as possible.

We are starting to think more about closed loop thinking, cradle to cradle design and acknowledging that a sharing economy, along with a service dominant logic could be a more sustainable way forward in how we design and consume products.

Some fascinating areas to research include, but are not limited to:

Perceptual innovation (natural capital) - This is about thinking more about the wider impact of our actions and where and what is really the best thing to design / build in a certain area. Do we really need a car park vs elimination of a valuable natural resource which would be destroyed to make way for it? A great compromise in this area is within the area of Biophilic architecture. Designing and building structures with incorporated green zones to ensure carbon capture and wildlife habitats, whilst promoting human wellbeing through a much needed connection to nature. Singapore is a great example of a world leader in this area:

Closed Loop Thinking – In essence design for dis-assembly. Can we design and manufacture a product to ensure it can be broken down into each constituent part and re-used for the next iteration or for something completely different. This reduces our need for virgin materials derived from natural resources. CLT incorporates Cradle to Cradle which has been around since the 1970’s, there’s even a C2C institute that awards basic / bronze / silver / gold / platinum accreditation to organizations who are serious about sustainability. The award given is attached to the lowest score amongst all categories, forcing the business to up its game across all categories.

Biomimicry – Using nature as a guide to how we can act more sustainably, mimicking the brilliant innovation that the natural world has curated over millennia to ensure organisms are perfectly succinct with their natural surroundings. What can we learn from this within our own design challenges? – Take a look as www.asknature.com at some of the brilliant innovation’s scientists have uncovered from the natural world.

Service dominant logic – Remember your grandad fixing almost everything in sight? “buy a new one, are you mad boy!” Currently we adopt more of a product dominant logic, however, in many cases its not the product but the service provided for which we rely upon. In some areas we could look at adopting more of a service dominant logic, adopting a sharing economy as well as designing for longevity, dis-assembly and recapturing materials at the end of life. We can look to move past the throwaway culture for which many of us are guilty of adopting.

Focus - Packaging

I live in a nice part of the UK. We have small towns and a lot of countryside. Apparently, we live in an “affluent area” (lucky me) however every time I drive my car down a main road, I see litter scattered at the side of the road, resisting the elements with the tenacity of a gnat in summer heat.

Here there are two major problems; 1 – People think its fine to litter and are obviously uneducated about the harm to the environment (or just do not care)

2: In many cases this litter takes hundreds, thousands of years to degrade. In the case of plastic, we know how dangerous this can be, having now found micro-fragments in the bloodstream of oceanic fish species amongst others.

One remedy for this is obviously education. Sustainability cannot exist without acknowledgement from society and societal buy-in on what a brand or government is trying to achieve. The media and naturalists around the globe are doing a good job of bringing this to the general public’s attention. Worldwide leaders are (mostly) collaborating to try and reverse the damage dealt.

The UK government was the first major economy to setting a Net zero target for 2050. Some brands have taken it a step further leading the way with aggressive NetZero targets; Lush, Allbirds & Brewdog among them, 2020/21 being their targets. Household names such as Patagonia, Diageo, P&G, Bacardi and Nespresso have also accelerated their NetZero targets to be carbon neutral within the next decade.

The other solution is innovation. Innovating through a circular design mindset can help brands make packaging an asset to their company’s voice rather than a drain on resource and enemy to the environment. The common circular strategies for packaging waste consist of:

1. Recycle – converting waste into new packaging
2. Renew – using renewable and biodegradable materials
3. Rethink – reimaging the design or application of either the packaging or the product to minimise environmental impact
4. Reuse – cleaning and reusing the same packaging.

What can that look like in a practical sense?

• Integrate the development of the product and its packaging.

Develop the packaging while you are designing the product. How do they depend on each other? Perhaps the product can be re-imagined?in such a way that its packaging becomes obsolete.

• Consider sustainability aspects at the beginning of a new PPC development process.

Does the packaging increase the product’s lifespan (in order to prevent food waste)? Can the packaging help users use the correct amount of product? What happens at?the PPC’s?end-of-life?

• Involve all stakeholders that are part of the PPC’s value chain.

In addition to engineers and designers, bring in other stakeholders that interact with the PPC during its lifecycle (such as consumers, suppliers, waste collectors or recyclers) to take part in the development process.

Source: Sustainable Packaging in a Circular Economy: TU Delft

One brilliant business within this area is LUSH Cosmetics.

They calculated that about 50% of their cost is within packaging. Not to mention the environmental affects it can have at the end of life. Therefore, if you can save that 50% in some form then surely it allows you to focus more investment making the product the best it can be?

LUSH are pioneers of naked products; in fact, their Co-Founder Mo Constantine invented the shampoo bar in the late 1980’s. LUSH rethink their products to negate the need for packaging. However not every product can be ‘solidified’ in this way.

For the remainder there needs to a strong investment into new machinery & innovative supply chains to ensure recycled materials can be utilized over less favourable virgin material derived from natural resources which, as we know is not a sustainable method.?

lush improved the recyclability of their products by using just one material which is fed back into the system to be reused. However big challenges still lie, mainly with the education of the consumer, gaining their buy-in to contribute back enough material to ensure a closed loop system.

LUSH have employed some ingenious methods to aide their circular roadmap; they use rainwater collected from the roof in the Poole factory (it rains a lot in England) as well as solar energy collected through roof panels (its not so sunny though) They also collect used coffee cups from high street chains and turn those into packaging, it’s called Colourform?

Since researching Lush I’ve become a convert to their products. The more ‘convert Kevin’s’ out there looking to do their bit for a more sustainable world means the easier it will become for brands to adapt. Winning that social innovation part of a circular model is what Lush does really well. However at first I did think the products were edible, I strongly advise not to eat LUSH products.

Its not just the design & manufacture process that needs innovation, it is the materials science as well.

Rethinking the material used in packaging is something companies like Notpla have taken on with great success. The co-founder Pierre Paslier spent a lot of time at L’Oréal where he realized that plastic containers were not the way forward. As we know plastic is indestructible from nature and utilizes chemical additives that are still leaking out into the environment to this day.?

He, and many others can identify society as inherently lazy, think about when you go to the supermarket, do you analyse every product and its packaging? Or do you throw in everything and anything because you want to get home in time to watch the next episode of Line of Duty. Because we are lazy in both manufacture and consumer sides, we tend to wrap everything in plastic!

Notpla realized you don’t have to.

Seaweed is an incredible natural material, some if it can grow up to 1 meter per day! Its renewable, it can be farmed economically and can be consumed.

Notpla uses this material for many applications; coatings, films, and most famously liquid ‘bubbles’ to serve drinks in. You may have experienced their product if you ran in the 2019 London marathon where they were handed out as refreshments shots containing Lucozade who sponsored the 30,000 strong trial. This eliminated the bottle-fest we see at the side of the roads following each race.

Seaweed has a more economical cost of lifecycle and could be a brilliant circular alternative to plastic following more development. Notpla go a step further in their circular thinking by looking at the supply chain as well as the lifecycle of the material itself. Exploring a production hub model, by location to limit carbon emitted by transportation, in fact even the seaweed itself could be locally sourced by country.

Notpla is amongst an exciting group of material innovators going as fast as they can to make up the 80-year head start for which plastic currently has. But with more collaborations and partnerships with likeminded brands, consultancies, manufacturers, and governments the future looks bright for a more sustainable future.

Fin

There you go, my initial learnings on how to become more sustainable and what is out there to help aid that process.

Working at a tech-enabled research agency means we are in a privileged position to be able to help brands understand more about their consumer's attitudes and behaviours towards sustainability.

Through genuine customer collaboration, we can help build a sustainable future.

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