Sustainability and New Technologies

The product is only half the story

Sustainability questions are easy to answer badly, because the obvious answer is one word: recycling. Recycling is one small part of it, and treating it as the whole thing throws away most of the marks. The real idea is that every design decision has consequences far beyond the product itself, spread across its whole LIFE CYCLE. A product is not just the thing on the shelf. It began as raw materials taken from the earth, it took energy to make and to transport, it has an impact while it is used, and it becomes something when it is thrown away. A responsible designer follows the product through all of that. The impacts fall in four areas, not just the environment. ENVIRONMENTAL: resources used, energy, pollution and waste. SOCIAL: the working conditions and communities behind the product. CULTURAL: the values and ways of living it fits or changes. ECONOMIC: what it costs and the jobs it supports or removes. The 6 Rs are the toolkit for reducing those consequences at each stage. Reduce, use less material or energy in the first place. Reuse, use a product again rather than discard it. Recycle, process a material to make something new. Repair, fix a product so it lasts longer. Refuse, do not make or buy what is not needed. Rethink, design differently so the problem does not arise. New and emerging technologies change the picture both ways. They can cut waste and energy, and they can also create new impacts on jobs and resources, so they are weighed like anything else. Carry one question through everything that follows: across the whole life cycle, what does this design cost the planet and society, and which of the 6 Rs reduces it?

Words for sustainable design

Five terms, each defined by what it is. They frame every wider-issues question.

Tap the two that reduce impact

Tap the TWO choices that reduce the impact of a product across its life cycle, rather than just describing it.

• The designer uses less material in the frame so fewer resources are taken and less is wasted
• The parts are made replaceable so a broken product can be repaired instead of thrown away
• The product is offered in several fashionable colours
• The packaging is made larger so it stands out on the shelf

Which R fits this

A product is thrown away as soon as one small part wears out, even though the rest still works. Which of the 6 Rs most directly addresses this, and how?

• Repair, by designing the product so the worn part can be replaced and the product kept in use
• Refuse, by refusing to make the product at all
• Recycle, because recycling is always the answer
• None, because products are meant to be thrown away

Two products, whole life cycle

The same kind of product, designed two ways. The difference shows only when you follow the whole life cycle.

Match each R to what it means

Two that follow from life-cycle thinking

Select the TWO statements that follow from judging a product across its whole life cycle.

• A product can look green in the shop yet have a large impact in how it is made or disposed of
• Sustainability weighs social and economic impacts too, not only the environmental one
• As long as a product can be recycled, its other impacts do not matter
• You can judge how sustainable a product is just by looking at it in the shop

Answering a sustainability question

A method for any wider-issues question. Follow the whole life cycle. Walk the product from raw material, through making and transport, to use, and to disposal, and ask what the impact is at each stage. Most marks are lost by stopping at the shop. Weigh all four kinds of impact. Environmental, social, cultural and economic. Naming more than the environmental one lifts an answer. Name the R that helps, and say how. Do not just say be more sustainable. Say which of the 6 Rs applies to the stage you have found, and how it reduces the impact there. Judge new technologies both ways. A new material or process can cut waste and can also cost jobs or use scarce resources, so weigh the gain against the cost. Come to a supported view. Responsible design is a balance, so reach a judgement rather than listing options. Two habits cost marks. The first is answering sustainability with the single word recycling. The second is judging a product only by how it looks on the shelf, ignoring the stages you cannot see.

Order the life cycle

Put the stages of a product life cycle into the order they happen.

• Raw materials are taken from the earth
• The product is manufactured
• It is transported and distributed to be sold
• It is used, perhaps for years
• It reaches the end of its life and is disposed of

Build the sustainability rule

This is the idea the whole topic rests on. Assemble it.

The sustainability quick-fire

Five questions on sustainable design. Three lives.

One product, followed through

Here is the method on one product, described in general terms with no invented figures. Take a simple plastic drinks bottle. Follow its life cycle. Its raw material, plastic, is made from oil taken from the earth, which is an environmental cost before anything is shaped. Manufacturing and then transporting the bottles to shops uses more energy. In use it does its job briefly. At disposal, if it is dropped in general waste it may last a very long time in the ground, and even if it is recycled that takes energy too. Now weigh the impacts in more than one area. Environmentally, the oil, the energy and the waste. Economically, the bottle is cheap, which is why it is used once and discarded. Socially, litter affects communities and clean-up falls on someone. Now reach for the 6 Rs at the stages you found. Reduce: use less plastic per bottle, or a thinner design. Reuse: design a bottle meant to be refilled many times. Rethink: change the whole approach, for example a refill scheme so far fewer bottles are made at all. Recycle: design the bottle from a single, easily separated material so recycling actually works. Notice what the answer did. It did not stop at recycle. It followed the product through its whole life cycle, weighed more than one kind of impact, and named a specific R for each problem it found. That is a top-band answer, and the same walk works on any product the exam sets.

Complete the sustainability facts

The stages a product passes through from raw material to disposal are its _____. The set of actions for reducing impact, reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, refuse and rethink, are the _____. The total demand a product places on the planet or on people is its _____. Judging a product means following it through every stage, not stopping at the shop.

Three designs to improve

Three design decisions. In each case pick the change that makes the product more sustainable.

• A gadget is sealed so that when its battery dies the whole product must be thrown away. What is the most sustainable fix?
• A product is made from several materials glued together so they cannot be separated at the end of its life. What would help most?
• A company judges a new manufacturing technology only by how much money it saves. What is it missing?

Explain how to design sustainably

A student in the year below thinks sustainability just means recycling and loses marks for it. Explain how to judge and improve the sustainability of a product properly.

• Explain why sustainability is about the whole life cycle, not just recycling
• Name the stages of a product life cycle
• Explain the four kinds of impact a product can have
• Explain what the 6 Rs are and give an example of using one
• Explain why a new technology is weighed for its costs as well as its benefits
• Finish with the one question to ask of any product