Further Introduction

Making products that demand different kinds of industrial, social and cultural relations can be as powerful an instigator of change as lobbying industries and governments to adopt more stringent environmental policies. There is, however, a strong resistance to thinking about product design in this way, in particular the idea that products themselves have design agency—not as projections of the designer's intent (though this is part of the process), but in themselves, in direct response to the environments they are taken up in. Products are generally understood as the end point of the design process rather than its beginning. But products change culture (just think of the mobile phone) and we think this cultural aspect of design is the most creative and important part of the design process.

This guide seeks to elaborate on this aspect of designing by extending your sense of what design is both responsible for and what it can make possible. It goes further 'upstream' than most 'how-to's'—in fact right back before the 'drawing board', so to speak, to consider the pre-design stage of the design process. At this stage, cultural knowledge, habits and sensibilities play a key design role, yet we don't really take note of these aspects in a methodical way

This guide also goes further 'downstream', which might at first seem unpragmatic. Instead of the design process ending when you deliver your design to the client, this guide assumes that your responsibility for your product will extend right through the product's life cycle. In line with this, you will notice that this guide asks you to assume you won't encounter obstructions such as stubborn clients or resistant manufacturers. You will be making 'as if' decisions that are usually 'outsourced' regarding materials, manufacture, marketing and end-of-life. You might be thinking that 'in the real world' this doesn't happen. But this too is strategically important.

Unless you give yourself the possibility of exploring the best-case scenario, make leaps of faith and imagine different, more environmentally responsible industrial worlds, you will be less likely to come up with ideas innovative, viable and exciting enough to sell to those stubborn, resistant clients. The point is that it is extremely important for you, as a designer, to map the territory of your design before the details get filled in by others, to understand the problems and claim your responsibility in line with your recognition of the generative agency of design.

Extended Designer Responsibility?
This idea of extended responsibility is drawn from an industrial environmental management strategy called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). EPR attributes the burden of responsibility for the environmental consequences of products to their producers. Rather than just managing the 'downstream' effects of products when they become 'waste', the idea is to encourage more sustainable 'upstream' design decisions in relation to appropriate design, material choices, product life-span, energy efficiency, improved reuse potential, labelling of components to aid reclaiming materials for remanufacture or reuse, and establishing appropriate infrastructure to support both distribution and take-back programs.

In most high polluting countries such as the US and Australia, EPR is a voluntary arrangement because mandated EPR schemes have been deemed 'too costly'. But in northern Europe and some parts of Asia, EPR and product 'take back' are becoming common, particularly in the packaging and electrical and electronic sectors. There is, however, an increasing urgency to the issue of compulsory producer responsibility. This is in part due to the relation between the increasing cost and frustrating ineffectuality of 'end of pipe' municipal strategies such as curbside recycling and drop-off programs, and the accelerating flood of materially complex but short-life products (particularly packaging and electronic gadgets).

For further reading on EPR see:
The EPR section of UNEP's site.
Centre for Design at RMIT's Return to Sender Program (Go to Sustainable Products, then to Product Stewardship).
Environment Science and Technology Feature article.
SEEBA's EPR resource - this is particularly good on the electronics sector.

UNEP's Ecodesign: A Promising Approach elaborates eight ecodesign strategies that have been very significant in our thinking through the cultural context of how to design for sustainability. These strategies extend from the 'pre-design' phase right through the life-cycle of the product. We recommend that you read this publication. In terms of this particular guide, it is worth detailing their pre-design phase called New Concept Development. These strategies provide food for thought in exploring design ideas, but should not be blindly adhered to—such ideas depend for their success on appropriate application and how users will respond to them. UNEP's New concept strategies are:

a) Dematerialisation. This is the replacement of a material product with an 'immaterial' substitute which fulfils the same need (email replaces paper-based communications). The EcoDesign Foundation has been doing some research into Dematerialisation strategies;

b)Shared use of the product. Such as when several people make joint use of a product without actually owning it (such as with car pooling);

c) Integration of functions. The idea here is that materials and space are saved if several functions or products can be integrated into a single product;

d) Functional optimization of product (components). 'Auxiliary' functions, such as the quality or status that the product expresses, may be realisable in an improved and less polluting way. For example the over-elaborate packaging of luxury goods.

We would add here the need to make products appropriately adaptable to changing circumstances in terms of their purpose, meanings, material composition, functionality and structure. Clues as to how to do this are provided throughout the design stages of the Guide.