Sustainable Design and Food

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Sustainable Design and Food

• Mark Shayler
• eco3

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eco-design - what is it?

• Nothing more than intelligent design
• It assesses the whole life-cycle of the product
• Identifies areas of financial and environmental
  opportunity
• Develops new products which are better
• Use less materials
• Use less energy
• Easier to disassemble recycle
• Legislative compliance

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Why?
?

• Legislation
• Waste disposal and clean-up costs
• Resource efficiency
• Corporate social responsibility
• Chemical safety

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Chemical Safety

• Concern over chemical safety
• Focus on flame retardants
• Found in high levels in breast milk in US women
• Phthalates, endocrine disruptors, parabens,
  aluminium compounds, triclosan, etc etc

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Chemical safety

• Greenpeace are
• even asking.
• Electronics industry is increasingly in the
  firing line but all industry will be looked at

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Design for what?

• Design for disassembly WEEE
• Design for energy efficiency energy rating,
  climate change
• Design for dematerialisation reduced weight,
  reduced costs - packaging
• Design for longevity buy right-buy once, higher
  retail prices, lower impact?
• Design for modularity future proofing, easy
  repair
• Design for chemical safety - REACH
• Design for recycling extracting end value, WEEE
• Design for maintenance and repair extending
  product life
• Design for short-life avoids redundancy due to
  technological advancement

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The role of design why is it important?

• we dont design things we just make stuff
• 80 of the cost of a product is set at the design
  stage
• 93 of production materials are never used in the
  final product
• 80 of products are discarded after a single use
• Design decisions will affect the manufacture, use
  and disposal phases of a product
• Design says a lot about your product/company, and
  increasingly is a short-hand way of saying a lot
  about the buyer!

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A product is a symbol of a companys
capabilities. It is a result of all the decisions
made before, during and after the design phase
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Increasingly the environmental performance of
products will also say something about the
companies that make them
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Packaging

• Started off as a way to just get things home.
• Now does many things - protects the product,
  advertising, information provision, shelf
  display, transit packaging, storage.
• We have been very tolerant of over-packaging.
• No longer. Now a massive issue

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• Packaging is a huge issue for retailers both
  sides of the Atlantic

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Walmart Scorecard

• How will the scorecard be weighted?
• 15 will be based on GHG / CO2 per ton of
  Production
• 15 will be based on Material Value
• 15 will be based on Product / Package Ratio
• 15 will be based on Cube Utilization
• 10 will be based on Transportation
• 10 will be based on Recycled Content
• 10 will be based on Recovery Value
• 5 will be based on Renewable Energy
• 5 will be based on Innovation

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Shelf ready packaging

• Reduces stacking time
• Ensures better presentation
• Costs not born by the retailer
• Design
• Process
• Material
• Compliance
• Like it or not - its the future.

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Packaging (Essential Requirements)

• Came into force 31 May 1998 (updated 2003, 2004
  and 2006)
• Packaging volume and weight to maintain necessary
  levels of safety, hygiene and acceptance for the
  packed product and the consumer.
• Packaging must be recoverable
• Limits on heavy metal content (hex chrome,
  cadmium, mercury, lead)
• 600ppm on or after 30th June 1998
• 250ppm on or after 30th June 1999
• 100ppm on or after 30th June 2001
• Applies to packaging components - can not be
  separated by hand or simple mechanical means.
• Applies to ALL companies regardless of size and
  turnover

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Product Design

• Developing better products
• Avoiding planned obsolescence
• Identifying largest environmental impact
• Raw materials
• Manufacture
• Distribution
• Use
• Disposal/end of life
• Designing waste out

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Planned obsolescence product lifespans
instil in the buyer the desire to own something a
little newer, a little better, a little sooner
than is necessary
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• Smaller

Does more
Does everything
Absolute obsolescence
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Development of the unnecessary?
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Dont ask..
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Communication

• Point-of-sale and communication with the customer
  is essential to explain the environmental
  benefits of products.
• Not always clear-cut.
• Bog off BOGOF
• Communication works two ways - what do your
  customers want and think?

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Customer perceptions of environment

• Have the public changed their behaviour?
• Reality or rhetoric?

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The public

• Spending on green and ethical products grew by
  18.1 in 2000/2001
• Ethical food up 24
• Organic food up 33
• Green energy market up 74

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Household sizes

• Smaller households
• In 2001 6.5 million single person households
• 30 of all households

Germany
UK
Italy
Spain
France
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Larger families

• At the same time three is the new two and four
  is the new three.

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Changes in Brand ValueWho leads? Who follows?
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What are you going to do?
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Thank you

• mark_at_eco3.co.uk