On August 28th, we held the third in a series of webcasts that feature educators from leading colleges and universities demonstrating how Sustainable Minds is being used in education. Sustainable Minds merges practice and science, ecodesign and LCA. This webcast showcases three educators and practitioners – teaching materials, industrial design and geography – demonstrating their success stories. Educators with different expertise can use Sustainable Minds to teach lifecycle thinking through hands-on experience.

The connection between greener product development education and industry demand for graduates possessing this type of preparation is strong and growing. Integrating sustainability and sustainable decision-making and assessment into curriculum is becoming a more important part of the product development education system. Sustainable Minds helps educators integrate environmental considerations, providing the opportunity for different disciplines and perspectives to come together and reach common agreement and for students to understand how their decisions make a difference.

People responsible for sustainability training in industry are also using Sustainable Minds to get everyone in the mindset of systems thinking and whole product lifecycle. There is the potential to create a powerful connection between academic and commercial partnerships when people from industry work with colleges and universities.

This webcast spotlights educators from a range of disciplines, with both professional and academic careers, are using Sustainable Minds to not only improve students’ understanding and practice of ecodesign and LCA but also to establish its significance for the greater community.

Following is a summary of the presentations.

3 Schools / 3 Disciplines / 3 Educators
On April 24, we held the first in a series of webcasts on how Sustainable Minds is being used in education. Featuring three educators from three different disciplines at three leading institutions, each demonstrated and discussed the use of Sustainable Minds in their curriculum, expansion in their programs and the implications for the future. The range of disciplines represented by the presenters illustrates the interest and need for teaching life cycle thinking and action to all types of students – business, design and engineering – to prepare them for taking on the challenges and opportunities in the greener product economy.

These educators’ stories illustrate that schools will increasingly attract students in response to industry demand, and manufacturers creating greener competitive advantage will recruit students who can execute on that strategy. Each presenter took a unique approach to help students integrate environmental sustainability into a product development education.

Add the life cycle data you need to model the environmental performance of your products.

Sustainable Minds enables product development teams to rapidly model the environmental performance of products in the earliest stages of R&D. Today, as environmental performance increasingly drives product innovation and differentiation, using industry average data is often not good enough. Manufacturers want data specific to their business processes and supply chain. SM’s unique cloud & service delivery means data can continually be updated and new data added so product teams have what they need, when they need it.

“Maybe the perfect cloud solution?” Al Dean, Executive Editor, DEVELOP3D

Our dataset grows as our customers grow. Now it's easy to request and add impact factors for the life cycle data you need to model your products. Use the Data Browser to view the current dataset and the SM Data Request Form to submit your requests. We help you describe and source, then verify and add the data you need for:

On August 17, 2011, Spartech launched its new R&D facility. Sustainable Minds CEO had the pleasure of attending the event. This facility was designed expressly for Spartech to collaborate with partners and customers in early stage product development to create more sustainable products. Additional information can be found at http://www.spartech.com/08-17-11-tech-center.html