Green issues

This section examines the issue of “green” or “sustainable” design and discusses the impact of the emergence of environmentalism on product design and manufacture, from pioneers such as Vance Packard and Victor Papanek to the sustainable designs of today. It outlines the product design life cycle, examining products through their design, assembly, and manufacture through to their disassembly, disposal, and recycling. Issues such as material selection, component recovery, product longevity, energy consumption, and the efficiency of recycling are illustrated through contemporary examples.

Green design

The manufacture and use of the vast array of consumer products on the market today produce much of the pollution, deforestation, and global warming that impact on our environment. Designers often focus exclusively on the form and function of their creations, and take insufficient interest in the fabrication and manufacture of their designs.

The desire to produce ever more complex products has resulted in a trend toward energy-intensive manufacturing processes. A prime example of this can be seen in the evolution in sheet-metal cutting from energy-efficient guillotine cutting, through plasma cutting, to today’s widespread use of energy-intensive laser cutting. With the energy consumption of the manufacturing sector growing steadily and the need to lower carbon dioxide emissions to reduce global warming, it is essential that product designers try to address this issue, and carefully consider the environmental impact of their design.

Designers need to realize that their responsibilities don’t end with the design of a product. They need to consider a product’s use, from its birth to its death, and what happens once it has come to the end of its useful life. Environmental issues are complex and designers can feel overwhelmed by what they need to consider while designing new products. The methods and case studies outlined in this section aim to help you create sustainable products that are environmentally sound, good for people, profits, and the planet.

Terra!, by Nucleo, 2004, uses a recycled cardboard frame, which is filled with earth and turfed over to create a living seat in the landscape. The armchair as a frame (left) and in situ (right).

Green pioneers

In 1960, cultural critic Vance Packard published The Waste Makers, promoted as an exposé of “the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals.” Packard identified a phenomenon known as planned obsolescence. He revealed that designers and manufacturers had developed a technique to encourage the consumption of new products by introducing new styles and functions that made consumers’ existing products feel less desirable and ready for replacement despite the fact that they still functioned adequately. Packard quoted leading American industrial designer George Nelson, who wrote: “Design...is an attempt to make a contribution through change. When no contribution is made or can be made, the only process available for giving the illusion of change is ‘styling.’”

With consumers increasingly aware of these techniques, designer and critic Victor Papanek confronted the design profession head-on with his classic book, Design for the Real World, published in 1971. He demanded that designers face their global, social, and environmental responsibilities and wrote that “design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments and, by extension, society and himself.” His message continues to have resonance with today’s “green” movement, and is the foundation for many sustainable design methods.

Sustainable design

“Green design” has recently been replaced as a term with “sustainable design,” which reflects the need for a more systematic approach to the environmental problems facing us today. Sustainable design is the design of systems that can be sustained indefinitely, and sustainable product design can be defined as the design of objects that aid the sustainability of the systems in which they operate.

These definitions highlight the fact that sustainable design needs to be considered in a holistic, systematic manner. Design does not exist in isolation, and as a result, when creating sustainable products you will often have to look beyond merely the design of physical objects and consider looking at other aspects of the system in which the objects operate.

The success of a business is normally measured on what is commonly referred to as the “bottom line,” or financial profit or loss. When measuring the sustainability of a product, service, or business you should consider not just the financial factors but also the environmental and social ones. The success of sustainable design is therefore measured on what is known as the triple bottom line. Sustainability requires that you should consider your products systematically, and avoid making a loss in any of the three identified areas: environmental, financial and social sustainability.

TransNeomatic, designed by Fernando and Humberto Campana for Artecnica, 2007. Made from recycled tyres and woven wicker fibre by Vietnamese artisans, keeping alive traditional techniques.

Environmental sustainability

Issues such as global warming, resource depletion and waste disposal are strongly affected by product design, and urgently need addressing. The following guidelines will help ensure environmental sustainability:

• Materials should exist in a “closed loop system,” where all materials inputted are recycled without the need for additional material, ensuring complete recyclability.
• All energy should ideally come from renewable sources.
• No harmful substances should be emitted to the environmentat any stage in the product’s life.
• Products should be as efficient as possible and use fewer resources and energy than the product they replace.

Financial sustainability

A financially sustainable product, and the system it operates within, should have the following characteristics:

• Generates long-term revenue by constantly meeting customer needs.
• Does not rely on finite resources.
• Maximizes profitability by minimizing consumption of resources.
• Does not threaten the financial well-being of its customers.
• Does not have any significant liabilities.

Sustainable product design can result in solutions that have long-term financial viability and consistently generate financial profit and wealth. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to avoid social or environmental damage while generating holistic profit.

Social sustainability

Social sustainability is about maintaining and enhancing the quality of life of all stakeholders of a product. Designers need to ensure their products:

• Protect the mental well-being of all stakeholders.
• Protect the physical health of all stakeholders.
• Encourage community.
• Treat all stakeholders fairly.
• Provide all stakeholders with products that deliver essential services.

Kyoto Box, designed by Jon Bohmer, 2009. Capturing solar energy to heat up the air in the box, it boils and bakes food and water to provide an eco-friendly solution to cooking.

Sustainable design models

The following design models can be used to create more sustainable products, and can be considered as a checklist throughout the design process:

Biodegradable materials

Recycling is not always the most effective method of disposing of materials, and it is possible for many renewable materials to be composted. The benefits of composting biodegradable materials are dependent on effective systems being in place to ensure that the materials are treated correctly. If these systems are not in place then biodegradable materials can contaminate plastics recycling, and adversely impact on a product’s sustainability.

Designers have taken advantage of biodegradable materials in a variety of products. The Rothko Chair designed by Alberto Lievore, for example, is made from Maderon (a moulded biomaterial made from pulverized almond shell mixed with natural and synthetic resins), while Tom Dixon has produced a wholly organic range of biodegradable tableware, where the fibres and resin are produced from natural sources and not petrochemicals. Perhaps the most striking recent example of promoting the use of these materials is Jurgen Bey’s Gardening bench for Droog Design, which proposes using garden leaves to create seating that lasts a season and then turns to compost within the garden.

Clarify core functions

When designing a product it is essential to remember what the true purpose of the product is. Consumers may accept losing some secondary functionality in order to achieve other benefits, but will not tolerate a product that does not meet its core functions. Products must deliver what they promise and additional features are bonuses that must not impact on the core functions.

Rothko Chair, designed by Alberto Lievore for Indartu, 1996. It is manufactured from discarded ground nut shells and resin.

All Occasion Veneerware^®, by bambu LLC, 2004. This range of products is made from certified organic bamboo.

Gardening bench, designed by Jurgen Bey for Droog Design, 1999. The container extrudes a garden bench from park waste, such as hay, leaves, and tree bark. Any length of bench is possible, and after a season or two of use, it returns to nature in the form of compost.

Tripp Trapp, by Stokke, 1972. The chair grows with the child, creating an eternal product that can be handed down from one generation to the next.

Design for disassembly

What happens to a product at the end of its life is a designer’s responsibility. Products should be designed so that they can be easily disassembled into their constituent parts for appropriate treatment at a product’s end of life. Such an approach will also ensure that a product is easier to assemble during its manufacture, which saves cost and improves efficiency.

Durability

Designers should reject the conventional approach of planned obsolescence and instead increase the durability of their products. Stokke designed their classic Tripp Trapp chair to grow with the child. This means that the same chair can be used for children from 0 to 15 years, greatly increasing the effective use or utility of the chair.

Efficiency

The Aeron Chair by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf for Herman Miller is a highly successful case study of an efficient piece of product design. The iconic chair is easily assembled and disassembled, allowing for maintenance in situ and for recycling at the end of its life. Designed to be more durable than most office chairs, it also eliminates traditional foam-and-textile upholstery with a breathable membrane. Not only does this keep the sitter’s body at ambient temperature, but it can also reduce air-conditioning costs within an office environment.

Energy

Products use large amounts of energy in their production, and electrical products use frighteningly large amounts of energy during their operation. As such, designers should attempt to ensure their products use considerably less energy and materials during their design, manufacture, and use than equivalent products did previously. Innovative thinking in this field has resulted in products such as the wind-up radio designed for the third world, and imaginative designs such as Martí Guixé’s Flamp light (1998), which creates a nightlight that uses no electricity at all (see below).

Aeron Chair, from Herman Miller, 1994. This iconic office chair has been designed to be easily disassembled at the end of its life for recycling.

Flamp, designed by Martí Guixé for Galeria H20, Barcelona, 1997. Resembling a traditional electrical light, it is in fact a ceramic form painted in a fluorescent colour to absorb light, and when placed in a dark room emits light for up to 20 minutes.

Eternal

Creating objects that last a lifetime, and get better with age, challenges the planned obsolescence model of much design and manufacture. Traditionally this approach has been employed in high-end luxury products such as Savile Row suits, but increasingly designers and engineers are looking to create more durable products. For example, low-energy bulbs don’t just consume less energy but also last dramatically longer than traditional bulbs. Designers should attempt to create future classics that are eternally desirable, such as the iconic Ferrari 250 GTO, which is as much rolling sculpture as classic racing car.

Identify materials

Efficient end-of-life treatment of materials relies on users and waste-disposal services knowing the type of material and preferred method of treatment. Many materials are difficult or impossible to distinguish from others without clear identification. Products should be designed to be disassembled easily, ensuring that surface finishes such as paint and graphical decoration do not irreversibly contaminate materials.

Components should be clearly labeled with recycling data to help consumers and recyclers to identify the type of materials and enable segregation, which is especially important for plastic recycling. Recyclers need to ensure that materials are not contaminated with lower-grade materials; when plastics are mixed together they turn into a brown sludge, which is why most recycled plastics are turned into black garbage bags.

Bin Bag Bear, by Yael Mer & Shay Alkalay of Raw-Edges Design Studio, 2006. This fun product encourages recycling and responsible waste disposal through its childlike design.

Life cycle assessment

If the products you design aim to minimize or avoid altogether any environmental impact, then you need to consider the impact of the product throughout its entire life cycle. This means that you need to consider how every product you create is produced, manufactured, transported, packaged, used, and disposed of. When designing new products it is useful to storyboard the life story of the product to help identify the possible impacts and events that may occur. This can be useful because the reality of many products’ lives does not follow the exact route planned during the design phase, and so alternative eventualities should be considered.

The next step is to establish exactly what the environmental impacts of the product are or will be, and what they are caused by. By doing this you can identify where the greatest need for improvement lies and so focus your design efforts effectively. Full life-cycle analysis can be extremely time-consuming and complicated, and is consequently often not viable in the high-speed commercial product design and development process. However, a number of simplified software systems exist that allow products and designs to be assessed and compared quickly and easily.

Cradle to cradle design models the production of products on nature’s processes, with materials viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms. It suggests that the design industry must protect and enrich ecosystems and nature’s biological metabolism. Such a holistic economic, industrial, and social framework helps enable designers to create products that are not just efficient but essentially waste-free.

Local resources

Acting local to think global, Trannon make all their furniture from British hardwood grown less than 50 miles (80.5km) from their factory. By using only the thinnings (narrow wood that is cleared to make way for bigger trees and that is usually wasted), they demonstrate their stewardship sourcing of materials.

Multifunctional

Creating products that can do more than one thing avoids the environmental impact of having to produce two products. It is often possible for a designer to combine several products into one unit. For example, a cell phone is not merely a communication device, but incorporates the functionality of an alarm clock, personal organizer, camera, hand-held gaming machine, and more.

Modular

Designers can create products as a set of modules that can be fitted together to provide a combination of functions. Such an approach enables customized products to be created from a set of standard modules, and for products to be easily repaired or upgraded.

Organic

By using organic and renewable materials, designers can challenge the primacy of man-made materials. Julia Lohmann’s Ruminant Bloom lights, made from preserved sheep stomachs, creates an utterly new aesthetic, while Tom Dixon’s bamboo chair for Finnish manufacturer Artek demonstrates how grown materials can have as high a performance as metals or synthetics, as bamboo has a slightly higher tensile strength than steel.

Bamboo bike, designed by Ross Lovegrove in 2000 for Biomega, 2009. Bicycling is a very energy efficient form of transportation and this handmade bamboo-framed bicycle combines sustainable materials with mobility.

Recyclable materials

If a product is to be recycled once it reaches the end of its life then it must be fabricated and manufactured from materials that can be recycled. You must consider current technologies and infrastructures when deciding which materials to use. Many materials claim to be recyclable, but are not unless the systems exist to ensure that the materials will be. If the proper infrastructures are not in place, the process can be energy-intensive and less effective than incinerating the materials to produce electricity. The Louis 20 chair by Philippe Starck, for example, is made from only aluminium and polypropylene, both over 99% pure, and is held together with only five screws, making it very recyclable.

Recycled materials

Unfortunately, although a large proportion of designs are manufactured from materials that are theoretically recyclable, very few actually are. This is partly due to a lack of an adequate infrastructure, but also to the lack of demand for such materials. Designers should always try to specify recyclable materials where possible, but also aim to create products that can be systematically recycled by the manufacturer. A number of products promote these materials; the RCP2 Chair by Jane Atfield readily employs the aesthetic of its constituent recycled material—in this case, HDPE sheet, while Piet Hein Eek’s ScrapwoodCupboard is manufactured from beautifully crafted scraps of recycled wood.

Louis 20, designed by Philippe Starck for Vitra, 1992. Recycled plastic was used to form the chair’s main body.

Scrapwood Cupboard Classic, designed by Piet Hein Eek, 1990. This poetic recycling of old wood shows how designers can question conventional notions of beauty and what constitutes waste.

Tide, designed by Stuart Haygarth, 2005. This chandelier is assembled from washed ashore beachcombed everyday objects.

Reduce material variety

When designing products you should attempt to standardize the materials used to simplify and assist in the recycling process.

Renewable materials

It is possible to produce materials from renewable sources such as wood, starch, and sugar cane as a substitute for plastics.

Reuse

Sadly, many products are irresponsibly designed to be viewed as disposable or have artificially limited life cycles of use. Frequently, these rejected products are actually in excellent condition when consumers discard them. You should consider ways of reusing these products, salvaging components and products, and reimagining them to create new products.

Simplification

Many products are extremely and unnecessarily complex. Designers should seek to simplify the product from the outset of the design process. A good example of such an approach is Industrial Facility’s 2nd Phone for Muji, which has the sole function of enabling a user to answer the phone and talk, with every other function deemed unnecessary.

2nd Phone, designed by Industrial Facility for Muji, 2003. Here the design simplifies the phone to an unadorned bricklike form devoid of screens and extraneous function buttons. All you can do is make a call, no more and no less.

Upgrade and repair

The notion that a product can evolve and adapt to the changing needs of consumers can be seen to work efficiently in the design of cell phones; their casings can be removed and changed, enabling people to stay in fashion and style while retaining the internal components. Personal computers have been designed to enable the easy upgrading of RAM, hard disks, and graphics cards, through easily accessed ports and slots, and allow users to perform DIY upgrades.

Weight reduction

Designers should attempt to reduce the weight of products by using less quantity of material and lighter-weight materials, which helps lower transportation costs and environmental impact. Avoiding excess material, Jasper Morrison’s Ply Chair is an example of minimalism and the elegant paring back of material usage.

Ply Chair, designed by Jasper Morrison for Vitra, 1988. This is a great example of how one can pare back excess, simplify forms, and reduce waste to create a minimal design.