Design: Green checklist points in action...

• Design for Renewables
• Design for Disassembly
• Design for Recycling
• Design for Diversion
• Design for Positive

Consumer Perception and Added Value (more info under support label).

The Yeo Valley Organic Yogurt package: 1. has a ultra-thin polypropylene inner cup (#5); 2. has a post-consumer recycled card label (helps reinforce PP); and 3. is perforated for easy disassembly and recycling.

Design: Green—
Green Means GO!

By Wendy Jedlicka and Jacquelyn Ottman

One of the most common objections to moving in a more sustainable direction is the daunting task of knowing where to start. Sustainability involves understanding not only material choices, but energy use, afterlife issues, social impact issues, and of course consumer perception issues and marketing goals.

People want the easy button—to be told—"the" material that is "good" and say they did their part. But as the realities of sustainability don't offer an easy button, people often elect to do nothing at all—or wait to be legislated into action.

Tyler Elm noted in his talk at the 2006 Sustainable Packaging Forum, that the move towards a more sustainable business model for Wal-Mart was originally initiated as a defensive strategy—to reduce operations costs, liabilities, and exposure. Wal-Mart is after all, a very large target. But as they dug deeper into what sustainable business practice really meant, they discovered instead of a defensive tool, it was a powerful offensive strategy. Risk and exposure were reduced or eliminated as they got in front of issues before they become problems or additional costs. And systems or operations that were costs under the old way of doing things, are now generating income.

So where DOES one begin?

The task of making a product or service sustainable involves looking at all aspects of the thing at the same time—not just as a collection of materials, but at the thing's very existence. Are you buying a cell phone or the service of portable communication? Are you making a box or the service of the box (protect, inform, and sell)? Life Cycle Assessment programs are a critical tool to help firms really understand individual or groups of substrates from a variety of angles (energy use, material impacts). But they are about the "stuff" of manufacture, requiring very specific data to get meaningful results, and cannot account for key intangibles that must be weighed as well. And of course, the most cost effective thing to do is to look hard at designs before they are far enough along in the process to be weighable by an LCA system. Enter Design:Green.

Originally created as a set of tools for Product Designers. Design:Green has expanded and evolved into an initiative of J. Ottman Consulting focused on sustainable design education serving a wide variety of industries. Their mission is to transform business by creating educational experiences that inspire the development of goods that are at once sustainable, innovative, profitable, and able to compete in the global marketplace.

Initially created under an EPA Grant, and endorsed by the Industrial Designers Society of America, Design:Green today delivers curriculum and opportunities for multi-disciplinary interaction to designers, strategic planners, marketers, R+D, Engineers and others involved in creating the objects in our world.

Using the Design: Green Swift Approach, concepts still in the brainstorming phase can be quickly assessed for further development by simply using basic knowledge (and common sense) to assess viability. Can the item be made from renewables? Is the item likely to be recyclable in all target markets? Will it be easy to disassemble, and will it use few substrates? Can it help redirect waste from landfill/incinerator into a more durable good, or add to the useful material stream? What will the energy demands be—manufacture, transport, warehousing? How will it impact consumer perception?

Suddenly what seems like an insurmountable task, becomes a fluid flow of ideas—opening new channels for further investigation. And moreover, levels the playing field—allowing all disciplines involved in the creation and selling of a good to participate in the process, resulting in better considered, more effective solutions, with lower environmental impacts—moving the whole of the creative process in a positive, and more sustainable direction.

Jacquelyn Ottman is principle at J. Ottman Consulting Inc., a firm specializing in marketing consulting and new product strategies with the mission of helping businesses, government agencies, and not-for-profit groups meet consumer needs for more sustainability.

Wendy Jedlicka, CPP, is president of Jedlicka Design Ltd. (www.jedlicka.com), is chapter chair for o2-USA/Upper Midwest and liaison for the o2 Global Green Design Network (www.o2.org), and is on the packaging and economics faculty for Minneapolis College of Art and Design's groundbreaking Sustainable Design Certificate Program (www.online.mcad.edu).