Challenge

Environmental pressures and sustainable business challenges are changing the way companies make products.

Climate change, ecological and human health damage, resource depletion and social equity – plus the 6 R's driving sustainable business: resource costs, regulatory, reputation, risk, reduction and revenue – are creating increasing change.

  • Companies are setting operational sustainability goals, but don't know how to apply them to the design and manufacture of their products.
  • Marketers are struggling with how to meaningfully promote the 'green' attributes of products.
  • Product design teams are now being asked to assess the impacts of the products they develop and understand how design changes affect the products' life cycle performance, while uncovering opportunities for innovation.

Currently, there is no standardized way to address these requirements. There is no such thing as a 'green' or 'sustainable' product. Most product design organizations simply don't yet know how to approach sustainable design.

OkalaTM is the science behind SustainableMinds.com.

Okala is the first life cycle assessment methodology for evaluating potential ecological and human health impacts from products used in North America.

Continuously updated Okala Impact Factors allow design teams to perform what-if comparisons based on 10 impact categories, or compare just global warming impacts, measured in CO2 equivalents. Okala uses TRACI1 impact categories developed by the U.S. EPA, North American normalization and weighting values developed by the EPA2 and NIST3 respectively, and process inventory data from the most credible sources worldwide.

  1. Tool for Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts, 2005
  2. United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2006
  3. National Institute for Standards and Technology, 2006

Opportunity

Operationalize sustainable product design.

Because 75% of manufacturing costs are committed by the end of the concept stage, a product's environmental life cycle performance is also locked in. Decisions about materials, energy, recycleability and longevity have determined the life cycle performance. It's simply too expensive to change the design later.

Product concepts are numerous and loosely defined, and time, available data and budgets limit the ability to create detailed models to conduct 'what-if' analysis at early design stages. Now environmental impacts also need to be considered in evaluating concepts.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be used to assess the 'green-ness' of products and identify opportunities for improvement and innovation throughout their life cycle. However, the cost, time and expertise required for full-scale LCAs are beyond the reach of most product teams – and cannot be used for loosely defined or rapidly evolving product concepts.

Operationalizing sustainable product design starts with bringing life cycle thinking and a whole product systems approach to the front of the design process.

The result is more sustainable, innovative products, lower costs by eliminating re-engineering, and greater competitive advantage!

Who is it for?

Product designers and design engineers, sustainability managers, product managers, marketers and executives in product design consultancies and manufacturing companies who are championing sustainable products or responsible for complying with sustainability requirements or directives.