Product Design, Lifecycle, Waste, & The Environment

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Global Consumer Culture
Product Design, Lifecycle, Waste, The
Environment
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Announcements

• Attendance
• Cradle to Cradle Geez Magazine
• LOT EC must be completed by Monday, March 30,
  2009

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Product Design
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Product Development Models LaBat Sokolowski
(1999)
Define the Problem Research
Creative Exploration inspired guesswork

• Implementation
• Changes that can be made in a current system
• More drastic changes

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Product Development Models Industrial Design
Archer (1985)
Executive Phase
Analytical Phase
Creative Phase
Target Consumer (profile, needs,
desires) Cultural Context (mediator) Design
Criteria (Functional, Expressive, Aesthetic)
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Product Development Models Apparel Design Lamb
Kallal (1992)

• Problem Recognition (generator of process)
• Preliminary Ideas (brainstorming)
• Design Refinement (choose the good ideas)
• Prototype Development
• Evaluate (Function, Expression, Aesthetic)
• Implement Design

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Product Lifecycle
Natural Resources Technical Nutrients
Manufacturing
Retail
Use
Trash
The succession of stages a product goes through
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Product Lifecycle
Natural Resources Technical Nutrients
Manufacturing
Retail
Use
Trash
The succession of stages a product goes through
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Product Lifecycle
Natural Resources Technical Nutrients
Manufacturing
Retail
Use
Trash
The succession of stages a product goes through
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Creative Destruction
. . .the perpetual cycle of destroying the old
and less efficient product or service and
replacing it with the new, more efficient
ones -Thomas Friedman
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Cradle to Cradle
General Timeline
Industrial Revolution
World Wars
Cold War
Globalization
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Motto of Industrial Revolution
If brute force doesnt work, youre not using
enough of it.
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Cradle to Grave?
Model for Product Development
Natural Resources
Manufacturing
Retail
Use
Trash
Built-in Obsolescence Away doesnt exist
Does it ever go away?
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Design Paradigm
General Timeline
Industrial Revolution
World Wars
Cold War
Globalization
Universal Design Solutions worst-case-scenario
designing a product for the worst possible
circumstance, so that it will always operate with
the same efficacy
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Cradle to Grave?
Model for Product Development
Natural Resources
Manufacturing
Retail
Use
Trash
Built-in Obsolescence DOWNCYCLING Design
without further use in mind and thus only
postponing journey to the landfill
Does it ever go away?
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What happens after the decline?
Waste Landfill Recycling Down-cycling?
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Cradle to Grave?
Away doesnt exist
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Cradle to Cradle
Model for Product Development
Natural Resources Technical Nutrients
Manufacturing
Retail
Use
Trash
Away doesnt exist
TRUE RECYCLING a product that can be broken down
and circulated infinitely in industrial cycles
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Rethinking Product Design
Products Plus as a buyer you got the item or
service you wanted, plus additives that you
didnt ask for and didnt know were included and
that may be harmful to you and your loved ones.
Intergenerational remote tyranny Our tyranny over
future generations through the effects of our
actions today License to harm A permit issued by
a government to an industry so that it may
dispense sickness, destruction, and death at an
acceptable rate
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Rethinking Product Design
products plus as a buyer you got the item or
service you wanted, plus additives that you
didnt ask for and didnt know were included and
that may be harmful to you and your loved ones.
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Rethinking Product Design
Intergenerational remote tyranny Our tyranny over
future generations through the effects of our
actions today
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Is being less bad enough?
Reduce Avoid Minimize Sustain Limit Halt
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Is being less bad enough?
The best way to reduce any environmental impact
is not to recycle more, but to produce and
dispose of less. -Lilienfeld Rathje
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Eco-efficiency

• Doing more with less
• Adding more value to a good or service while
  using fewer resources and releasing less pollution

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Is Eco-Efficiency Ideal?

• Release fewer pounds of toxic wastes into the
  air, soil, and water every year
• Measure prosperity by less activity
• Meet the stipulations of thousands of complex
  regulations to keep people and natural systems
  from being poisoned too quickly
• Produce fewer materials that are so dangerous
  that they will require future generations to
  maintain constant vigilance while living in
  terror
• Result in smaller amounts of useless waste
• Put smaller amounts of valuable materials in
  holes all over the planet where they can never be
  retrieved
• -McDonough Braungart

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Is Eco-Efficiency Ideal?
As long as human beings are regarded as bad,
zero is a good goal. But to be less bad is to
accept things as they are, to believe that poorly
designed, dishonorable, destructive systems are
the best humans can do. This is the ultimate
failure of the be less bad approach a failure
of the IMAGINATION. -McDonough Braungart
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4 Rs
Reduce Reuse Recycle REGULATE

• Dematerialization
• Cutting/decreasing a products size

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Recycling vs. Downcycling

• Just because a material is recycled does not
  automatically make it ecologically benign,
  especially
• if it was not designed
• specifically for recycling.
• -McDonough Braungart
• Lost value and lost materials
• Increase contamination of the biosphere
• Cost

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How Green is that Chainsaw?
Most of what you see in the green movement is
voodoo marketing . . . If they say their product
makes the sky bluer and the grass greener, thats
just not good enough. -Ron Jarvis Green new
and improved??? Greenwash
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Ecological Footprint
Measures human demand on nature. It compares
human consumption of natural resources with
Earths ecological capacity to regenerate them.
Just because a material is recycled does not
automatically make it ecologically benign,
especially if it was not designed specifically
for recycling. Blindly adopting superficial
environmental approaches without fully
understanding their effects can be no better-and
perhaps even worse-than doing nothing. -McDonoug
h Braungart
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Humans vs. Ants

• Safely effectively handle waste
• Grow harvest their own food while nurturing the
  ecosystem
• Construct houses, farms, dumps, cemeteries,
  living quarters, food-storage facilities that
  can be truly recycled
• Create disinfectants medicines that are
  healthy, safe, biodegradable
• Maintain soil health for the entire planet

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What about Eco-Effectiveness?

• Thousands of blossoms
• Fruit for birds, humans, other animals
• Enriched soil with blossoms and fruit
• Goal is for one pit to grow another tree
• -McDonough Braungart

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What about Eco-Effectiveness?
Building buildings that celebrate natural
pleasures sun, light, air, nature, even food, in
order to enhance the lives of the people who work
there. -McDonough Braungart
Biophilia Peoples love of the outdoors
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Eco-Efficiency vs. Eco-Effectiveness
But you might start to envision the difference
between eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness as
the difference between an airless,
fluorescent-lit gray cubicle and a sunlit area
full of fresh air, natural views, and pleasant
places to work, eat, and converse. -McDonough
Braungart
Biophilia Peoples love of the outdoors
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Just Imagine

• Buildings that, like trees, produce more energy
  than they consume and purify their own waste
  water
• Factories that produce effluents that are
  drinking water
• Products that, when their useful life is over,
  can decompose and become food for plants and
  animals as well as nutrients for the soil.
• Products that can return to industrial cycles to
  supply high-quality raw materials for new
  products
• Transportation that improves the quality of life
  while delivering goods and services
• A world of abundance, not one of limits,
  pollution, and waste

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Sustainable Living

• Meeting the needs of the present generation
  without compromising the ability of future
  generations to meet their own needs
• WORK/LIFE balance

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Sustainable Living (Foods)
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Sustainable Living (Foods)
Local Foods Farmers Market (near Walmart on
Opelika Rd.) Weekly Market (every Thursday from
April-August on campus) Brunos (local produce)
Organic Foods USDA Organic Label CSA (Community
Supported Agriculture) Fair Trade Fair Trade
Certified Label
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CSAs in Alabama
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Freegans
Someone who is trying to escape the economic
system and trying to cancel out the exchange of
money for something they can get for free.
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Freegans
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Freegans
www.freecycle.org www.craigslist.com
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Sustainable Living (Products)
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Sustainable Living (Products)
Local Products Artisan market Local vs. Chain
Stores Build local economies Energy Efficient
Products Energy Star Label Compact Fluorescent
Light Bulbs Fair Trade Fair Trade Certified
Label Products with stories
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Micro Loans