In most cases, the ultimate sustainability of a brand, and therefore its flexibility to adopt a chosen market positioning and support communicated claims, is baked in during the design process. The reality is, doing so effectively requires a raft of new expertise that often is housed in various places external to the design team. This session reviews tried and tested methods for building sustainable design thinking into your organization.

1. Best Practices in Integrating Sustainability
into the Product Design Process
¡ Chris Sherwin, Head of Sustainability,
Seymourpowell
Sustainable Brands
London Conference

2. INTEGRATING SUSTAINABILITY INTO PRODUCT
DESIGN PROCESSES
Panel discussion: Interface, DSM, WRAP
Chaired by Chris Sherwin, Head of Sustainability, Seymourpowell

3. WHY PRODUCTS AND DESIGN MATTER!
75% UK consumer’s carbon
80%
Environmental impact of
emissions are from products products and services are
and services they consume determined at the early, design
stages
Confidential. © Seymour Powell Limited, 2010. All rights reserved.!
!

4. SUSTAINABILITY IN PRODUCT DESIGN PROCESSES: WHERE & HOW !
PROCESS
How are you systematically
integrating sustainability into
design and innovation
processes?
PRODUCT
How are you successfully
integrating sustainability into
design projects and
innovations?
Confidential. © Seymour Powell Limited, 2010. All rights reserved.!
!

5. Designing with Purpose
Design as a driver for sustainable innovation
Majken Bülow, Product Sustainability Manager EMEAI
Sustainable Brands, London, 27th November 2012

6. Who we are 5
The inventors of
carpet tiles
Turnover $ 1 billion USD
3,500 employees globally

7. The importance of
a visionary leader 6
It started with a
question in 1994.
“One day people like
me will go to jail.”
Ray Anderson
Founder, Interface

8. The power of
a challenging mission 7

9. A paradigm shift 8
OLD NEW RADICAL
• Corporate sustainability • Product sustainability • Systems sustainability
• The Beauty contest • Embedded • Services redesign
• Awards, labels, csr • LCA performance • Close loop systems,
reports,
• kg CO2 / m2 radical materials
certifications
• Zero product life cycle • Zeroing others by
• Zero company impacts impacts cannibalising

10. Life Cycle Assessment 9
Sustainable innovation starts with the data

11. What can we do
to zero out the impact of yarn? 10
1. Reduce the
amount of yarn
used
2. Use more
recycled yarn in
the composition
3. Invent a new yarn

12. Less is more
Redesign with 50% less yarn 11
Microtuft
11 million square metres sold
since launch
12% of EMEAI sales in 2012

13. Increasing recycled yarn 12
Challenging suppliers
Long term partnerships

14. Pioneering bio-based yarn
made from castor bean oil 13
Fotosfera Micro & Structured

15. Biomimicry
Inspired by nature 14
How would nature design a
floor?
Random design minimises
installation waste to 1-2%
How does nature keep
things in place?
Glue-free installation
substituting adhesives

16. Creating closed loops
ReEntry 2.0 recycling process 15
Separates yarn and
backing for use as
raw materials in new
products

17. Open loops
Re-designing the supply chain 16
Net-Works project with
NGOs
Establishing community
based supply chain for
discarded fishing nets
Partnership with Zoological
Society London and Project
Seahorse Foundation,
Philippines

18. But still a long way to go..
Thank you 17

19. Sustainability fuels Innovation
Jacobine Das Gupta
Corporate Sustainability Manager
London, November 27th 2012

20. DSM: a Global Life Science and Material Science company
Health
Advanced, cost-effective health and medical
innovations, and healthier food and beverages, to meet the
needs of a growing and ageing global population
Nutrition
World’s leading producer of vitamins and nutritional
ingredients meeting the growing need for more
nutritious and more sustainable food and animal feed
Materials
Enabling lighter, stronger, more advanced and more
sustainable performance materials
Page

21. DSM Mission
Our purpose is to create brighter lives for people today and
generations to come.
We connect our unique competences in
Life Sciences and Materials Sciences to create
solutions that nourish, protect and improve
performance.
We drive economic prosperity, environmental
progress and social advances to create
sustainable value for all stakeholders
Page 20

22. Metrics and aspirations
‘If you can’t measure it, ‘If you don’t imagine it,
you can’t manage it’ it won’t get done’
P. Drucker S. Lydenberg
Page 21

23. Life Cycle Assessments as part of
Innovation process
Development Scale up
Ideation Feasibility Implementation
& Launch
‘The ecological benefit can be
created at any stage of the
lifecycle’
from the raw material,
manufacturing, use, to potential
re-use and end-of-life disposal
Page 22

24. Brewers Clarex ™
Natural beer stabilization system for extended shelf life
‘With DSMs Brewers Clarex™ CO2
emissions from brewing
1 hectoliter of beer are reduced
between 5 and 8%’
‘Every December, in the UK
a billion pints of beer
are being sold’
Page 23

25. Arnitel ® Eco
Biobased plastic based on rapeseed
‘Arnitel Eco® up to 40% lower
carbon footprint than
classic co-polyester’
‘If Arnitel Eco® would replace
the global co-polyester market,
avoided GHG emissions
would be the equivalent of the
average annual carbon footprint
of 18,000 people in Western
Europe’
Page 24

26. Innovative Micronutrient Products
fighting hidden hunger in cooperation with WFP
‘Since the start of the cooperation
over 12 million beneficiaries
have been reached with foods
reformulated by WFP-DSM
partnership..’
‘..9 products innovated or improved,
36 scientific research papers
published and
52 DSM volunteers on assignment’
Page

27. Sustainable Innovation is about:
Aspirations
Metrics
Collaboration

29. The Product Sustainability
Forum: providing the
evidence to support
sustainable design
Mark Barthel
Special Adviser and Head of Design
WRAP

30. What is the forum and
what is it doing?
• Multi-stakeholder, collaborative, pre-competitive
approach
• Pragmatic (80:20 rule) “hotspots” approach
• Covers the whole product lifecycle
• Focusing on reducing waste, GHG emissions and
energy and optimising material and water use
• Current scope of work is grocery and home
improvement. May add other products later.

31. International collaboration activity

32. Focusing in on practical actions
Web resource of
Understanding hotspots category level Environmental
across 5 metrics evidence and likely improvement
hotspots
Sharing
product-level
insight &
Category-
opportunities
level
summaries
(Bread) Understanding
product-level actions
(Bakery)
Sector level
priorities
(Grocery)
Today
Year 1 Year 2, 3 …

33. Environmental impacts hotspots analysis
Identifying the product groups that really matter
1. GHG as the initial organising
metric
260 2. Adding material, water, product
waste and energy data as it
becomes available
3. Next steps: fill data gaps;
40 improve quality of insight
4. Considerations: making large
data sets accessible:
visualisation and product
Hotspots
category summaries
Focus

34. EUPs & food are major hotspots
Percentages of total household consumption. i.e. this diagram does not show other areas e.g. personal transport
Washing machines, dishwashers
Fridges, freezers, cooking appliances
Showers, boilers
Adapted from Tukker, A. et al (2006) Environmental
Impact of Products (EIPRO) European Commission

35. Product innovation is not
enough
Behaviour change Engaging
Low-flow showers consumers
Source: Henry King, Unilever – PSF Plenary, May 2012

36. Deliverables - Hotspots findings
• Grocery: 30 product categories contribute
approximately:
• 60% of food & drink product tonnage
• 70% of food & drink GHG emissions
• 50% of consumer food waste
• 50% of water footprint
• Home improvement:
• Electrical products c. 80-90% of GHG emissions
• …of which, 5 EPs contribute 50%

37. Electrical products
n Selected products are important for material
consumption and greenhouse gas emissions
n Approx half of material use and GHG emissions

38. “Personal” category example:
Product diversity to Eureka!
Hairspray Shower gel
• Metal packaging • Plastic packaging
• No energy in use • Energy in use
100%
90%
% of life cycle GHG
80%
emissions
70%
60%
50%
40%
30% Hairspray
20% Shower gel
10%
0%
Ingredients & Packaging Distribution Use EOL
manufacturing

39. Comparative studies are the most useful
Most useful studies where answering a specific question
E.g. comparison of competing technologies
Can be adopted by many businesses
PSF developing a ‘library’ of these
Source: Migros (2010) Hairspray product http://www.climatop.ch

40. Thank You
e: mark.barthel@wrap.org.uk
w: www.wrap.org.uk/psf

41. THANK YOU!
Q&A session
Integrating sustainability into product design processes
Confidential. © Seymour Powell Limited, 2010. All rights reserved.!
!