10 Guidelines
for Ecodesign
 If you are involved in product design, you need to understand how
a product impacts on the environment. To develop truly sustainable products,
you must be able to assess which design solution is environmentally preferable.
PRé Consultants has the tools to help you in this difficult area:
- For in depth quantitative analysis, use
Life Cycle Assessment: a systematic approach for integrated environmental
analysis. To see LCA in practice, try our
SimaPro software.
- Designers need simplified tools in their daily work. For
this purpose we developed the
Eco-indicator
method and the ECO-it screening
tool.
- Start by using our 10 Guidelines
for Ecodesign. These practical rules can be characterized as
the result of life cycle thinking.
10 Guidelines for Ecodesign
- Do not design products, but life cycles
- Natural materials are not always better
- Energy consumption: often underestimated
- Increase product life time
- Do not design products, but services
- Use a minimum of material
- Use recycled materials
- Make your product recyclable
- Ask stupid questions
- Become an O2 member!
1. Do not design products, but life cycles
Do not design "green" products. Instead, you should design environmentally
sound product life cycles. Think about all material inputs and energy
use of a product during its whole life cycle. From cradle to grave, or even
better from cradle to cradle!
A simple way to document your findings is the MET matrix (Materials,
Energy, Toxicity). Just write down some of the most important facts in a
matrix.
| |
Materials |
Energy |
Toxicity |
| Production |
... |
... |
... |
| Use |
... |
... |
... |
| Disposal |
... |
... |
... |
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2. Natural materials are not always better
It is common believe that "natural" materials are more environmentally friendly
than "artificial" or man made materials. Is this always true?Of course,
the production of 1 kg of wood causes less emissions than the production
of 1 kg of plastic. But have you thought about the paint to preserve the
wood, the energy needed to dry, the sawing losses?
In some products, you would need about ten times as much wood than plastic.
Plastics can often be recycled, wood cannot. Can you really compare on
a kilogram basis?
Environmentally sound materials do not exist, but environmentally friendly
products and services do. Life cycle thinking helps a designer to develop
these.
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3. Energy consumption: often underestimated
Many designers focus their attention on material selection. This is not
always justified.
If a product consumes energy in the use phase, there is a ten to one
chance that energy consumption is dominant. People normally underestimate
the environmental impacts of energy as you cannot hold electricity or gas
in your hands.
Perhaps this simple example helps you understand:
- 10 kWh electricity needs 2 kg of oil.
- Making 1 kg of plastic needs 1.5 to 2.5 kg of oil.
- A coffee machine uses 300 kWh electricity during its lifetime, equal
to 60 kg of oil. For the production of the machine less than 1 kg of
plastic is used....
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4. Increase product life time
You can influence the product life time in several ways. Make it more
durable from a technical point of view, or by making it upgradeable
(allowing to place the latest chip in a computer or washing machine).
More importantly, try to design the product in such a way people will
feel attached to it. Many products are not thrown away because they
are broken, but because owners got bored with them.
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5. Do not design products, but services
People do not always want a product. They want a solution for a certain
problem. A service rather than a product can be the right solution.
For example, a car sharing system is a solution for people that need
a car occasionally.
Greenwheels is getting very popular
in the crowded inner cites of the Netherlands, where parking space is at
a premium. You can use one of the cars in your neighborhood when you need
it. Reservations are made with a phone call or online.
You don't need to care about maintenance, insurance, parking licenses or
road taxes. Payment is done on a monthly basis according to your use.
Read more on this subject in our
downloadable product-service system reports.
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6. Use a minimum of material
Using less materials may seem obvious, but it is more complex than you think.
Often you can reduce the amount of material by critically looking at dimensions,
required strength and production techniques.
It can even be beneficial to use materials that have a high environmental
load per kilogram, if you can save weight. This is particularly true in
transport, where less weight means less fuel consumption.
The Eco-indicator method
is well suited to make such assessments.
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7. Use recycled materials
Do not only make your product recyclable, but use recycled materials
as much as possible.If you and other designers only make a product recyclable,
there will never be a demand for recycled materials in the future. If
there is a demand for recycled materials the supply will follow certainly.
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8. Make your product recyclable
Most products can be recycled, but only few are. Only products that are
disassembled easily and have a high enough yield will be chosen for recycling.
You can increase the chance that the product is recycled,
by optimizing its design.
There are a few simple rules to keep in mind:
- If you want to recycle thermoplastics:
-Do not use a lacquer.
-Do not use paper stickers on plastic.
-Do not combine different plastics.
- To get steel parts recycled, be careful not to get to much copper
in the melt.
- If you want to recycle thermo-sets or textiles, think twice. It
has no use. It is better to burn them and reclaim the energy.
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9. Ask stupid questions!
Very often decisions are based on common practice: "We have always done
it this way and it has always worked well".You can make huge improvements
in the environmental performance of products, with consequential cost savings,
by simply asking the very obvious "Why?".
Use the stupid question as a tool:
- A company used 3 kg of raw material to make 1 kg polyester. After
asking the same stupid question ("why") again and again, it was discovered
it could be done with just 1.5 kg of material input.
- A company produced a packaging designed to keep a foodstuff fresh
for 18 months. After critical questions, we discovered that their products
were consumed within 3 months. This gave way for completely different
packaging solutions.
- Rainwater piping
in the Netherlands traditionally had a diameter of 80 mm. After studying
building regulations and a simple optimization of the water inlet, we
found 30 mm was sufficient.
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10. Become an O2 member!
The guidelines above can easily help you to reduce the environmental
burdens of a product by 30 to 50%. Real progress however can only
be made if you are truly imaginative and think the unthinkable.
A group of designers planning to do just that, have gathered in O2:
an international network for sustainable design. They share ideas, discover
tools and have fun together. Visit the
O2 web site with interesting
information and an active
e-mail discussion
list.
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