Design for Sustainability

A Practical Approach

Tracy Bhamra, Vicky Lofthouse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780566087042
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317152347
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Design for Sustainability is a practical approach to design which focuses on the challenges and issues faced by those designing consumer products in the 21st Century. It is written from a design perspective and aimed at both professional and student industrial and product designers, and those involved in managing design. The book begins by summarising the historical and current issues of the environmental debate in the context of sustainable product development, highlighting the benefits gained from considering the impact on the environment and issues of sustainability when designing. The authors answer the questions: What is sustainable product development and why is it important? What are the main drivers of sustainable product development? They explain how design can help to control human impact on the environment by not only minimising pollution, waste, energy use and use of scarce resources, but also by thinking outside the box to create systems and services that can reduce the number of products manufactured. The aim is to put sustainable development within a commercial context and introduce a new focus for design. Design for Sustainability outlines and assesses the methods, tools and techniques available to designers, both for design innovation and design improvement. A wide range of case studies are presented across a number of product sectors including electrical goods, IT and furniture. Initially they demonstrate product improvement and redesign, examples include those that reduce waste, pollution and energy consumption, designing for recycling and reuse of parts. Further examples are then provided exemplifying the more radical approach of system and service design. The final section takes the reader through a whole sustainable design project from start to finish, from brief to manufacture. References and sources of information are also included.

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

‘There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few... by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that pollute the air we breath, designers have become a dangerous breed... In this age of mass production when everything must be planned and designed, design has become the most powerful tool with which man shapes his tools and environments (and, by extension, society and himself). This demands high social and moral responsibility from the designer.’

Victor Papanek (p. ix, Papanek, 1985)

Design for sustainability is part of the bigger picture of sustainable development, a subject which has received considerable media attention in recent years due to a range of world wide crises which have manifested themselves as political problems: climate change, famine, disease and poverty.

The evolution of sustainability has been described as a series of three waves, with peaks and troughs of activity, that contribute to the momentum we see today (SustainAbility, 2006). The first wave occurred in the 1960s and 1970s with the birth of the Green Movement and the rise of Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs), such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, which focused on driving change via government policy and regulation.

The second wave occurred in the 1980s, set off by a range of economic crises (brought on by the collapse of the Berlin Wall) and environmental catastrophes (from Bhopal to Chernobyl) which prompted a range of legislation and environmental, healthy and safety standards. At this time NGOs used a number of high profile business transgressions to catalyse public debate and drive regulatory and market responses. The concepts of auditing, reporting and engagement within business entered the mainstream (SustainAbility, 2006).

The new millennium saw the start of the third wave of sustainability. Unrest in the Middle East and elsewhere had led to a growth in anti-globalisation, often in the guise of anti-Americanism. The first World Social Forum, organised in opposition to the World Economic Forum brought together activists and NGOs from around the world, campaigning on issues such as trade justice and debt, and increasingly united on issues of water scarcity and exploitation. In the wake of another set of high profile business fiascos such as the Enron debacle, corporate governance and liability became a hot issue for top management and for financial markets. Meanwhile, businesses started to explore new partnerships with NGOs, for example Greenpeace and Shell shared a platform at the Johannesburg Summit, also Greenpeace formed a joint venture with Innogy to create the Juice wind power brand, which recently began to feed power generated by a huge offshore wind farm into the national grid (SustainAbility, 2006).

Since the late 1960s when Victor Papanek (1971) first blamed the design profession for creating wasteful products and customer dissatisfaction, there has been a growing feeling in many environmental circles that design and manufacture is responsible for many of the man-made stresses imposed on the planet. A fact that is well illustrated by the fact 80 per cent of products are discarded after a single use and 99 per cent of materials used are discarded in the first six weeks (Shot in the Dark, 2000). Though this trend is expected to start to change with the introduction of new product focused environmental legislation, the fact still remains that mainstream product design draws on scarce resources to create and power products which often have little or no consideration for impact on society and the environment.

Defining Industrial Design

Throughout the nineteenth century, the term ‘designer’ was vague and ambiguous, referring to a wide range of occupations: fine artists, architects, craftsmen, engineers and inventors (Sparke, 1983). By the twentieth century the profession of design had developed into Industrial Design as we know it today, existing in design teams and governed by management structure (Sparke, 1983).

Industrial Design is a broad and complex profession (Heskett, 1991; Tovey, 1997; Industrial Design Society of America, 1999) whose evolution has been influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement, developments in the US and the influences of the Bauhaus school of design in Germany (Heskett, 1991; Tovey, 1997). It is because of these complex roots that Industrial Design has been described as a pendulum which swings between art and engineering (Ozcan, 1999). This is a rich metaphor that creates a valuable picture of how different fields influence the subject. It can be made even more powerful, if one imagines Industrial Design to be represented by a steel plumb which is hung as a pendulum, surrounded by a series of magnetic discs, which represent the other forces which act upon it, such as the business, marketing and the consumer, as illustrated in Figure 1.1 (Lofthouse, 2001).

Figure 1.1 The forces influencing Industrial Design

Within industry, industrial designers tend to either work ‘in-house’, as a function of a larger organisation or as independent design consultants within a design consultancy that services a variety of different clients (Lofthouse, 2001). Within both of these capacities industrial designers can be involved in the design and development of both consumer and industrial goods (Lofthouse, 2001). This book focuses on consumer products. Within this sector, industrial designers can serve a wide range of industries such as pharmaceuticals, packaging, and electrical and electronic domestic products, as such their outputs can vary enormously in terms of their nature and complexity.

Design for Sustainability Emerges

The concept of design for sustainability first emerged in the 1960s when Packard (1963); Papanek (1971); Bonsiepe (1973) and Schumacher (1973) began to criticise modern and unsustainable development and suggest alternatives. The second wave emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s and coincided with the green consumer revolution. Writers such as Manzini (1990); Burall (1991), Mackenzie (1991) and Ryan (1993) began to call for design to make radical changes. This wave continued to gain momentum towards the end of the 1990s and early 2000s as design for sustainability became more widespread. Though there has been a long history of designers being motivated and interested in improving the environmental and social impact of the products they produce, there has been a lack of opportunity within the industrial context with case studies only starting to emerge from electronic and electrical companies in the early 1990s when companies such as Philips, Electrolux, IBM and Xerox began to promote the work they had done in this area. Although large industry commitment to integrating environmental and social issues into product development has continued to be on the rise there has been little evidence of widespread opportunity for this type of holistic thinking, in the commercial design industry.

Design for sustainability issues are currently rarely addressed in the design brief (Dewberry, 1996; Lofthouse, 2001) and as such it is often difficult for designers to have the opportunity to engage with environmentally and socially responsible design in a professional capacity. This book aims to change this situation and encourage a more widespread approach to design for sustainability.

In the past environmental and socially responsible design has not been specifically encouraged through design education and training. This is now changing – for example in the UK programmes such as STEP and Sustainable Design Awards developed and run by the charity Practical Action are set up to encourage sustainability awareness in young designers working at National Curriculum key stage 3 and 4 (ages 11-16) and A-levels respectively. Similarly projects such as DEMI, and the pioneering work of the Centre for Sustainable Design, Goldsmiths College, Loughborough University and the setting up of a Toolbox for Sustainable Design (Bhamra and Lofthouse, 2004) – which aims to help other lecturers develop sustainable design courses – have helped to change this situation.

Research in the field of design for sustainability is now well established, though it can still be considered a new area. Most of the developed nations now have some form of active research into design for sustainability, covering issues such as: implementation of legislation, eco-innovation, corporate social responsibility, product service systems, eco-redesign, impacts of user behaviour, design for disassembly and reverse manufacturing.

Challenge for Design

Part of the challenge for designers is for them to fully understand the breadth of the agenda and appreciate what can be tackled under the umbrella of design for sustainability. Within the design community there is a general lack of awareness of many issues relating to sustainable development. Designers need to understand and even communicate to their colleagues that design for sustainability is about more than recycling or using recycled materials.

Design for sustainability offers a new and broader context for designing. Birkeland (2002) encapsulates this by presenting a new vision for design which is:

• Responsible – redefining goals around needs, social/eco equity and justice.

• Synergistic – creating positive synergies; involving different elements to create systems change.

• Contextual – re-evaluating design conventions and concepts towards social transformation.

• Holistic – taking a life cycle view to ensure low impact, low cost, multi-functional outcomes.

• Empowering – fosters human potential, self-reliance and ecological understanding in appropriate ways.

• Restorative – integrates the social and natural world; recultivates a sense of wonder.

• Eco-efficient – proactively aims to increase the economy of energy, materials and costs.

• Creative – represents a new paradigm that transcends traditional boundaries of discipline thinking; to ‘leapfrog’.

• Visionary – focuses on visions and outcomes and conceives of appropriate methods, tools, processes to deliver them.

Architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart (2001) suggested that with hindsight the design brief for the Industrial Revolution could be rewritten. Design a system of production that:

• puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water and soil;

• measures prosperity by activity, not legacy;

• requires thousands of complex regulations to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly;

• produces materials so dangerous that they will require constant vigilance from future generations;

• results in gigantic amounts of waste;

• puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved;

• erodes the diversity of biological species and cultural practices;

Not exactly a very positive legacy for the twentieth century!

This book aims to reverse the trend of design contributing to global environmental and social problems by inspiring and empowering you to make a difference. It hopes to enlighten you about the sustainability generally and show you how better design can improve things. By considering the environment and society when you are designing you are able to offer your clients truly good design that meets their requirements and those of an increasingly fragile planet. We will help you as a designer to engage with sustainability and start to make changes.

References

Bhamra, T. A. and Lofthouse, V. A. (2004), ‘Toolbox for Sustainable Design Education’. Available at: www.lboro.ac.uk/research/susdesign/LTSN/Index.htm (Loughborough: Loughborough University).

Birkeland, J. (2002), Design for Sustainability: A Sourcebook of Integrated, Eco-Logical Solutions (Sheffield: Earthscan Publications).

Bonsiepe, G. (1973) ‘Precariousness and Ambiguity: Industrial Design in Dependent Countries’ in Design for Need Bicknell, J. and McQiston, L. (eds.) pp. 13-19 (London: Pergamon Press, The RCA).

Burall, P. (1991), Green Design (London: Design Council).

Dewberry, E. L. (1996), EcoDesign – Present Attitudes and Future Directions, Doctoral Thesis (Milton Keynes: The Design Discipline Technology Faculty Open University).

Heskett, J. (1991), Industrial Design (London: Thames & Hudson).

Industrial Design Society of America (1999), IDSA web site. Available at: www.idsa.org

Lofthouse, V. A. (2001), Facilitating Ecodesign in an Industrial Design Context: An Exploratory Study, Doctoral Thesis (Cranfield: In Enterprise Integration Cranfield University).

Mackenzie, D. (1991), Green Design: Design for the Environment (London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.).

Manzini, E. (1990), ‘The New Frontiers: Design Must Change and Mature’, Design, 501, p. 9.

McDonough, W. and Braungart, M. (2001), ‘The Next Industrial Revolution’ in Sustainable Solutions: Developing Products and Services for the Future Charter, M. and Tischner, U. (eds,) pp. 139-50 (Sheffield: Greenleaf Publishing Ltd.).

Ozcan, A. C. (1999), Communication on the IDFORUM Mailbase. Accessed 8th June 1999, IDFORUM.

Packard, V. (1963), The Waste Makers (Middlesex: Penguin).

Papanek, V. (1971), Design for the Real World (New York: Pantheon Books).

Papanek, V. (1985), Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change (London: Thames & Hudson).

Ryan, C. (1993) ‘Design and the Ends of Progress’ in O2 Event: Striking Visions, Groen, M., Musch, P. and Zijlstra, S. (eds) (The Netherlands: O2).

Schumacher, E. F. (1973), Small is Beautiful: a Study of Economics as if People Mattered (London: Sphere Books, Ltd.).

Shot in the Dark (2000), Design on the Environment: Ecodesign for Business (Sheffield: Shot in the Dark)

Sparke, P. (1983), Consultant Design: The History and Practice of the Designer in Industry (London: Pe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Introduction to Sustainable Development
• Chapter 3 Business and Sustainable Development
• Chapter 4 A New Design Focus
• Chapter 5 Methods and Tools for Design for Sustainability
• Chapter 6 Case Studies of Product Improvement and Redesign
• Chapter 7 Systems and Services – Looking to the Future
• Chapter 8 Case Studies of Systems and Services
• Chapter 9 Doing a Sustainable Industrial Design Project
• Appendix
• Index