Product Design and Sustainability

Strategies, Tools and Practice

Jane Penty

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351400848
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Architettura
• Categoría: Architettura generale

Whether it is the effects of climate change, the avalanche of electronic and plastic waste or the substandard living and working conditions of billions of our fellow global citizens, our ability to deal with unsustainability will define the twenty-first century. Given that most consumption is mediated through products and services, the critical question for designers is: How can we radically reshape these into tools for sustainable living?

As a guide and reference text, Product Design and Sustainability provides design students, practitioners and educators with the breadth and depth needed to integrate the most appropriate sustainable strategies into their practice. It establishes the principles that underpin sustainability and introduces a diverse range of social, economic and environmental design responses and tools available to designers. The numerous real-world examples illustrate how these strategies play out in different product sectors and reinforce the view that sustainability is the most positive opportunity and creative challenge facing designers today.

This book:

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• delivers a comprehensive guide to the principles of sustainability and how they apply to product design that can readily be integrated into curricula and design practice

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• reveals many of the issues specific product sectors are facing, and provides the depth and breadth needed for formulating and developing sustainable design strategies to address these issues

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• empowers and inspires designers to engage with sustainability through its many examples and insightful interviews with practitioners

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• is fully illustrated with over 300 photographs, graphs and diagrams and supported by chapter summaries, annotated further reading suggestions, and a glossary.

PART 1

Concepts and context

CHAPTER 1

Sustainability and design in context

Chapter 1 sets out to contextualise and build an agreed understanding and vision of what a sustainable planet might look and feel like. Because sustainability is more of a goal than a tangible reality, it is easier to grasp by what it is not – the unsustainable. Thus we begin by focusing on some hard facts about the state of the planet, its biggest threats and their causes. From this perspective, we can construct a working definition of sustainable product design. We also look back at the inspiring actions of a few of the remarkable individuals and movements connected to design that have given physical form and voice to more equitable and sustainable ways of living. Finally, we identify the role of different actors in driving the necessary change forward and consider the particular contribution product designers can make in transforming our way of consuming, producing and doing business if we are to co-exist sustainably on the planet.

1.1 our unsustainability and major threats

Before we embark on designing more sustainably we need to grasp the nature and severity of the current threats that mankind and all life on the planet are facing in order to set clear priorities. We should also try to understand the underlying behaviours that cause them and be persuaded that changing these behaviours can and will make enough of a difference to reduce or even eliminate the dangers. Boxes 1.1 to 1.5 present the statistics behind the biggest man-made threats to life on the planet along with their causes and consequences. Although the threats are placed under environmental, social and economic headings, it quickly becomes apparent that their causes and effects are closely interconnected. These widely accepted headings, which we use throughout the text, are merely convenient constructs that allow us to break down the complexity of sustainability into manageable elements. They should not however be allowed to get in the way of considering the issues holistically.

Summarising the findings in Boxes 1.1 to 1.5, life on Earth is progressively being put under greater and greater stress. In the past 40 years population and CO₂ emissions have more than doubled, and in the mid-1970s human consumption of resources overtook the Earth’s bio-capacity to replenish itself. The picture we have is of a planet struggling to cope. Over 7.7 billion very unequal human beings are consuming over 1.75 planets of resources annually. This rising level of overconsumption is destroying habitats and wildlife, and driving up the Earth’s average temperatures. This in turn is creating disruptive and increasingly catastrophic weather events, causing ever-more deaths, displacement and economic losses.

By these accounts, climate change, also referred to as climate emergency, is considered the most critical threat. At its worst it is an existential threat to all life, and at its mildest it will continue to have increasingly significant socio-economic impacts across the globe. The message from the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C (2018) is clear. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 50% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050 to have a reasonable chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C.¹

The next 10 years will be absolutely crucial in determining what kind of world will exist in the decades beyond. If we act decisively, and innovate and invest wisely, we could both avoid the worst impacts of climate change and successfully achieve the sustainable development goals. If we do not, we face a world in which it will become increasingly difficult for us and future generations to thrive.²

One of the keys to resolving these big issues is the realisation that the world’s environmental, social and economic problems do not recognise national boundaries. Floods in Thailand cause production problems for Japanese companies and customers globally. A banking crisis in America and Europe creates a slowdown across all economies. And rising commodity and food prices from droughts, floods, resource depletion, rising population demand and futures speculation cause economic and climate migration, political instability and conflict.³ The world is so interconnected that global collective consciousness and local action are the first prerequisites for change. As we will see, denial is finally giving way to greater cooperation and action.

1.2 the concept of sustainability: definitions and models

Earth can provide enough for man’s needs but not for every man’s greed.⁴

Sustainability is both simple and complex – simple in its intentions but complex in its workings. While no concept can ever be fully defined by words, it helps to look at it from a range of perspectives to arrive at an understanding that resonates with us personally to inspire our work and act as a yardstick by which to measure our actions.

The most generic definition of sustainability is the ability to self-maintain over a period of time. Based on this definition, it seems self-evident that an ecosystem that is consuming over 75% more than it is able to replenish, and rising; that is, destabilising and destroying its own natural cycles and habitats through overproduction; and, where over half the population struggle to get by, let alone fulfil their potential because of deprivation or social injustice, is not self-maintaining over time and is therefore highly unsustainable.

Perhaps the most quoted definition for sustainable development and one that intuitively resonates with many people comes from Our Common Future, a UN report by the Commission on the Environment and Development (WCED) published in 1987, commonly known as The Bruntland Report:

[Sustainable development is development that] […] meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.⁵

Although this definition serves as a good starting point and is easy to relate to on a personal level, it does not give us any tangible leads as to what sustainability might look like or how we might begin to get there.

A useful way to understand sustainability is not as a static state, but rather as a system in dynamic equilibrium. For dynamic equilibrium to exist, the constituent parts compete and support each other, while allowing the whole system to change and evolve. This is known as a win-win strategy commonly used in decision-making, negotiations and conflict resolution. In a win-win scenario, each part seeks the best for itself but not at the expense of each other, since they recognise that they are all interdependent within the same system. In the same way, sustainability is about constantly seeking win-win-win outcomes between environment, society and economy through collaborative and creative thinking.

sustainable product design

How then does this translate into sustainable product design and what part might product designers play in creating this dynamic equilibrium? A superficial look at product design as an activity that just produces and encourages the consumption of more ‘stuff’ that we don’t really need might lead to the conclusion that product design and sustainability are simply incompatible. But product design can and should offer much more. Without a doubt the rising billions of people living on the planet will need to eat, drink, dress, be sheltered, feel secure, communicate, travel, work and play. All these activities happen in some way in real time and space, and this is where product designers play an important role. If those ‘needs’ can be met more intelligently by creatively balancing the planet’s health while enhancing the human experience within a viable economic framework, then we will be approaching the idea of sustainable design.

To achieve this, product designers need to shift their emphasis from creating objects to meeting real needs. The change of focus from the physical object to satisfying physical and emotional needs through the experiences, narrative and meaning that products can create is liberating for designers. This allows more holistic and therefore sustainable thinking that takes into account the wider context and interrogates the need. It does not assume that a product is the answer bu...