Perspectives on greener product development and manufacturing from Sustainable Minds, our partners, customers and contributors.

Product service systems

Webcast: Overcoming ‘Environmental Performance’ Anxiety

By Sustainable Minds on October 9, 2010

Sustainable Minds’ Affiliate, Cadalyst, is launching a new webcast series with an edge, called “On the Edge with Cadalyst.” The premiere presentation, Overcoming Environmental Performance Anxiety, will discuss how going green can fuel product innovation and increase revenue. It airs live on October 14 at 12pm ET, 9am PT.
Register Now >

Typical webcasts today might include a PowerPoint presentation or software demonstration and often conclude with a sales pitch. A new webcast series from Cadalyst, called On the Edge, will be nothing like that.

On the Edge with Cadalyst will bring together designers, engineers, managers, executives, industry analysts, and hardware and software developers alike to exchange information, ask tough questions, and tackle issues that stand in the way of progress in the fields of manufacturing, AEC, and civil engineering. They’ll always come back to technology because that’s what Cadalyst is all about. But above and beyond that, this series will aim to be an innovative, open forum where people can gather to ask questions, answer questions, and even debate as they work toward the mutual goals of improving design and growing business.

Greener Decisions

By Sustainable Minds on August 23, 2010

Originally posted on Modern Edge.

Environmentally sustainable design is at a crossroads. The insight and emotion that drove the passionate early adopters is giving way to data-driven decision making. New software tools and design methodologies are gaining traction and the result is a new level of innovation. But there’s still work to do for greener design methodologies to go mainstream. This is the take away from the dialogue on Thursday August 5th, at the Sustainable Minds and Modern Edge design reception at the Modern Edge Studio in PDX. Three main areas of discussion arose:

Credible Greener Decisions:
The question has changed from “How will we save the world?” to “How can we make credible decisions and substantiate progress?” It’s about putting credibility into the process of creating greener design. “Data is the common language; with good data multi-disciplinary teams can quickly come to consensus on the right steps to greener design.” It’s about changing emotion into rational action.

Designers Sailing to Sustainability

By Sustainable Minds on August 16, 2010

Originally posted on Modern Edge. This reception was held by Modern Edge and Sustainable Minds, Aug. 5, 2010, in Portland, OR.

50-60 Designers, Technologists and Educators from companies and organizations such as Nike, Motorola, Eastman, Yakima, Art Center, Children’s Hospital, University of Notre Dame, Ziba, Teams Design, and others, enjoy the patio at the Modern Edge Studio during a dialogue on improving sustainable design – hosted by Sustainable Minds and Modern Edge Inc. 25 of the first attendees to register arrived by sailboat from downtown Portland. We’ll be sharing the outcome from the dialogue in future blog posts.

See more pictures from event >

Sustainable Minds release 1.3 – Unit conversions

By Sustainable Minds on May 19, 2010

Release 1.3 of Sustainable Minds allows you to enter data in the units your BOM or project uses and includes a broad range of both metric and imperial units. For example, 0.25 kg of aluminum can now be entered as 0.25 kg, 250 g, or 0.00027558 short tons. Sustainable Minds then converts the measurements to a common unit to deliver the impact assessment results.

Unit conversion is available for the manufacturing, use, and transportation stages of the product’s lifecycle, for both manual part and sub-assembly entry and BOM import.

New in Sustainable Minds Release 1.2

By Sustainable Minds on March 19, 2010

This release makes it easier to purchase for use on a short-term project, purchase for your school, and distribute and include assessment results in all your presentations.

Printable and exportable assessment results
Now just click a button to print results views to a file (such as PDF), or saved as HTML files for inclusion in presentations, web sites, workshops or simply to print to share with the team. Additionally, results from each concept can be downloaded as a file. SBOM items are displayed by life cycle, and include the scores for all items, including impact category results. When you’re designing a greener product, Sustainable Minds LCA results in your presentation means you’ll have quantified information to support your design and manufacturing recommendations.

Sustainable Minds: Candidate for WEF Technology Pioneers 2011

By Sustainable Minds on March 9, 2010

2010 is turning out to be an incredible year for Sustainable Minds. We recently found out that Sustainable Minds has been nominated as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer Candidate for 2011.

The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world. It’s motto is 'entrepreneurship in the global public interest.’ The WEF engages world leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas and is well known by its annual meeting in Davos in January every year.

Part III: What intrinsic qualities enable sustainable built environments?

By Ken Hall on February 15, 2010

This is the third of a three-part posting on the concept of intrinsic sustainability. In this post, Ken Hall describes the intrinsic qualities of sustainable built environments.
Read Part I: What intrinsic qualities enable sustainable societies?
Read Part II: What intrinsic qualities enable sustainable design teams?

In the last two blogs I discussed what it took to create sustainable societies and sustainable design teams. I’ll close this series on the idea of intrinsic sustainability by discussing the most obvious and ubiquitous public expression of a society and its culture: the built environment.

The history of architecture reveals indigenous design solutions that are intrinsically sustainable- they operated on solar income, the materials were local and non-toxic, and comfort was maintained with mass, ventilation, solar energy or seasonal migration.

Part II: What intrinsic qualities enable sustainable design teams?

By Ken Hall on February 8, 2010

This is the second of a three-part posting on the concept of intrinsic sustainability. In this post, Ken Hall describes the intrinsic qualities of sustainable design teams. Read Part I: What intrinsic qualities enable sustainable societies?

My last post ended with the thought that the degree to which a society is able to shift its worldviews to become intrinsically sustainable is the degree to which we can achieve sustainability. David Korten calls this The Great Turning.

As the website devoted to Korten’s ideas explains, “…we humans are a choice making species that at this defining moment faces both the opportunity and the imperative to choose our future as a conscious collective act. We can no longer deny the need nor delay our response.”

Sustainable Minds and MAGNET Partner to Advance Sustainability in Manufacturing

By Sustainable Minds on February 3, 2010

We are happy to announce a new partnership with MAGNET, The Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network, a professional organization that is focused on helping manufacturing and technology-based companies in Ohio adopt innovative methods and technologies.

Manufacturers are struggling to learn how to adopt sustainable practices in their current processes, and this partnership will help advance the adoption of greener product design practices for manufacturers. This partnership will also serve to assist Magnet’s eco-SMART Manufacturing Program to deliver education to Ohio manufacturers about sustainable manufacturing and ecoInnovation strategies.

Greenpeace releases its guide to greener electronics

By Sustainable Minds on January 25, 2010

Technology companies are starting to understand that sustainability is increasingly important to their customers. But as a consumer, how do you measure ‘green-ness’ across products that are sourced all over the world, and are combinations of processes that include hundreds of vendors? Recently, Greenpeace announced its ranking of 18 electronics companies at the Consumer Electronics Show (what better place?), along with a point-by-point breakdown of how they arrived at their scores. Categories include chemicals management , PVC-free and/or BFR-free models, voluntary take-back, use of recycled plastic content, and eleven more. This year, the leaders are Apple, Sony Ericsson and Nokia. Trailing the pack are Nintendo, Microsoft and Lenovo.
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