I recently attended a small but enthusiastic gathering of
sustainable design practitioners at the
Designer’s Accord town hall
meeting held in Boston. There was no shortage of passion in the room
and there were plenty of good ideas to share, but the consensus amongst
all was clear: if sustainable design was challenging to practice in a
good economy, it’s even more difficult in a bad one.
Whether a consultant outsider or a corporate insider, everyone I
spoke to seemed to feel an increased sense of powerlessness to affect
the kinds of changes that need to be made. Faced with much tighter
project budgets, most find that emphasis on project cost reduction is
quickly eclipsing emphasis on sustainability.
Securing strong commitment from the top, getting buy-in from "gate
keepers" like a client’s engineers, and even waiting until the economy
improves to resume the effort were brought up as solutions to this
dilemma. Not enough, in my opinion.
Having split my career between both corporate and consulting
environments, I could empathize with the group. As a design consultant
in a competitive market with an urgent charge like sustainable design,
I know that it would be tempting to call the activity out in a
capabilities presentation or proposal or even frame it as a separate
phase with its own methodology.
The irony is that the more it’s separated from the standard design
process, the easier it is to eliminate sustainable design when budgets
are tight. Like the finished products themselves, though, sustainable
design really shouldn’t add cost to the product, cost more to execute
as a project or require its own phase. It should be baked in.
There are plenty of unconventional, out-of-the-box ways to build
momentum in sustainable design, even when you haven’t been asked
specifically to do so. Try to think of it as just another design
challenge.
• Cover the basics – It goes without
saying -- make sure you fully exhaust the options that are completely
within your control first. Everything you do should follow sound
material choice and design for disassembly practice: Specify screws vs.
adhesives or snaps where possible, mechanically separate dissimilar
materials, choose materials with the most robust recycling
infrastructure, mark all your parts, etc. This is well-understood
territory and a fundamental part of any good sustainable design
methodology. The more that sustainable thinking is designed in, the
greater the likelihood that it will actually be implemented.
• Regulations are your friend – EU
standards are often higher the US standards (ie: RoHS, WEEE) and even
some California standards are set higher than the rest of the country
(ie: energy consumption requirements and air quality requirements).
Regardless of where the product is ultimately sold, specify adherence
to the strictest standard or regulation in any category. They are
powerful, clearly defined and easy to test for compliance. Not adhering
to the highest standard now, it could be argued, could mean increased
cost and loss of access to some markets down the road. When you adhere
to the highest standards, everybody wins.
• Offer a field trip – We’re big
advocates of spending time upstream; hundreds of small but meaningful
decisions can only be made on the factory floor. It’s surprising
sometimes how quickly decisions can be made there and how the impact
reduction can add up. Offer to pick up the cost of a trip and/or offer
to absorb all or part of your time to visit the manufacturer, even if
they are halfway around the world. In the end, it’s a small investment
to assure that the sustainable design effort is actually implemented in
full. Some would say "our client usually handles that part" or "they
don’t usually invite us to come along." Be proactive, get your foot in
the door, insist on coming along for the ride. If you’re not fully
committed to the lower impact solution, why should they be?
• Change the metrics – In a past life,
I was able to calculate the difference between using EPS foam packaging
(petroleum-based, unrecyclable) and paper pulp trays (100 percent post
consumer, 100 percent recyclable) over a range of projects to demonstrate that
the average 12 percent difference in package volume could save the company 5
full shipping containers worth of space per year. "$20K worth of free
shipping" was far more influential with senior management than "100 percent recycled & 100 percent recyclable" Can it save time? Can it reduce
returns? Is it less expensive to transport? Can more be fit on a truck?
If the direct approach isn’t working, you need to find a more creative,
often financially based argument to convince your audience to do the
right thing.
• Keep the change – On our first
product, we did the quick LCA impact comparison between painting small
parts with 20 percent re-grind ABS and using 100 percent virgin ABS with molded-in
color. Since the factory didn’t have to waste material up front in
matching a color standard and could use scrap from other molding
projects, the regrind solution came out ahead. However, we still
allowed them to charge us the premium for virgin ABS. They saw a chance
to make a little extra money on the material and it assured that the
lower impact solution would be implemented. A very small victory, but
it worked.
• Give away credit – Designers and
design firms are usually good self-promoters, but all too often they
tend to dominate the spotlight when it comes their way. Try turning
some of that self-promotional energy towards highlighting your client’s
or your senior management’s sustainability efforts and give them the
credit for the results -- ALL the credit. Helping to position your
client or your senior management as emerging "green champions" can go a
long way towards assuring that sustainable design becomes a higher
priority the next time around.
If it seems a bit like gaming the system, you’re right -- but there’s
nothing wrong with that. It takes more than a bit of persistence,
tenacity and big-picture creativity to overcome the roadblocks
designers often face.
Resistance to new thinking should be expected, even anticipated --
and sustainable design practitioners need to become experts at working
around this resistance. So much progress has been made over the last
few years in bringing the need for sustainable design to the forefront,
now is not the time to lose momentum.
David Laituri is a co-founder and the creative director of Sprout Creation, a unique product creation company located in New England. David has held progressive leadership positions in both corporate and consulting organizations, and he counts startups and Fortune 500 firms among his past clients, including Apple, Nike, General Motors, IBM, Steelcase, Oxo, Proctor & Gamble and Hewlett-Packard.
This blog post originally appeared on SustainableMinds.com. Sustainable Minds is a greener product design software and information services company that brings environmental sustainability to mainstream product design.
Images CC licensed by Flickr users Jule_Berlin and lrargerich.
