Melodies in Marketing

While LCAs (Life Cycle Assessments) are the means to determine the environmental impact of a product, they can be quite complex. Thus at the beginning of any product design project (renovative, adaptive, evolutionary, discontinuous), a brand manager or designer has to have a set of guidelines to which they can refer to for concept development. These may coincide with any existing company (or client) policies on materials and labor.

The folks at Lunar Design have put together a document called “The Designer’s Field Guide to Sustainability”, which asks four practical questions with guidelines for each:

What is it Trying to Accomplish?
- Question the premise of the design by considering alternative approaches
- Make it less complex because simple and elegant designs are often the least impactful
- Make it more useful; multifunctional products can reduce consumption and increase convenience

How is it Brought to Life?
- Reduce material variety, thereby increasing recyclability and decreasing manufacturing energy
- Avoid toxic/harmful materials and chemicals like PVC, polystyrene, chlorine, lead, and VOCs
- Reduce size and weight, thus possibly reducing emissions from transport
- Optimize manufacturing processes by talking to partners on low energy/waste options
- Design packaging in parallel with products; a must for aligning the brand with total environmental impact

How is it Used?
- Design for upgradeability by allowing owners to replace components
- Create durable and high quality designs that provide long term value; no cheap chic
- Design for life after death; consider adaptive reuse, offer manufacturer/channel partner return programs

Where Does it End Up?
- Make it modular by allowing for easy disassembly, repair, and recycling
- Maximize recycled, recyclable, renewable, and biodegradable materials
- Minimize fasteners; they add weight, material variety, and assembly/disassembly complexity
- Don’t use paint, especially on plastics because they’re less likely to be recycled

The Field Guide offers more details including examples for each of these fifteen points. Go check it out!

Share with: