Rachel Thomas Thomas 1

RC 2001

Professor Lowe

27 March 2023

Taking a More Sustainable Approach to Product Design

In our consumerist society, products are often bought and quickly thrown away when

they aren’t deemed useful anymore. This practice wastes material and discarded products take up

space in landfills. Consumers are often too busy to consider the waste they produce and how

discarding certain products can harm the environment. But, the responsibility of sustainability

and eco-friendliness lies with the product designer, not the consumer. When products are being

designed, their life cycles aren’t often considered. The profit made off of designs tends to be

more important to companies and manufacturers. This leads to more waste being produced,

oftentimes plastic, which takes a long time to break down and harms the environment. In order to

be more sustainable and cut down on environmental harm, the Circular Product Design and

Cradle to Cradle techniques should be implemented by designers.

Often, when products are designed, designers and manufacturers opt for cheap, abundant

materials. Plastic is very common in everyday products that consumers use, such as packaging

for soft goods (food, beauty products, etc.), children’s toys, etc. Foam is also a popular material

for product designers to use when prototyping these products. It is easy to cut and carve into

models of products in order to test their size, proportions, and how they interact with users.

Foam and plastic are both cheap and easily sourced, making them popular in

manufacturing and production. The downside of these materials, though, is that they take a long

time to break down, and even when they are recycled, they lose some of their quality. Every time

plastic is melted and recycled, it becomes less durable than it was previously. This is known as

“downcycling”, and it can potentially produce “toxic side effects in the meltdown process”
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(Bontrager). Plastic will break down over time into microscopic pieces. These pieces pollute our

waterways and soil, ending up in our food and water. When humans or wildlife consume these

resources, microscopic pieces of plastic can end up in their bodies and cause harm to their health.

It would be safer to produce goods with less plastic or none at all, or with more sustainable

material options. To do this, designers and manufacturers would have to consider what happens

to a product when it is no longer useful so that they can plan for it to be safely and sustainably

discarded or reused.

The circular product design technique allows designers to consider a product’s end of life

at the beginning of the design process. This allows for “new opportunities, not wasteful

outcomes”, and products can be made to be reused or repurposed (Acaroglu). This approach

contrasts the linear process of product design, where products are made to be used and then

discarded without consideration for their reusability. The circular approach also helps to cut

down on “planned obsolescence”, where consumer goods are intentionally designed to be useless

in a short period of time. This allows for more products to be put on the market later, increasing

the profit a company gains. While the company may benefit, the waste produced from these

goods can harm the environment through pollution and overfilling of landfills. According to data

collected by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, in 2018, about 69% of

plastic packaging in the United States went to landfills, while only about 14% of it was recycled

(Containers and Packaging). This leaves a large majority of plastic waste from product

packaging to sit and break down into microscopic pieces that will pollute the Earth.

The circular approach to product design certainly doesn’t solve the problem of

unnecessary waste. There will still be some material wasted during the product’s production, and

eventually, the product will become obsolete and no longer be useful. But, this approach can
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have “short and medium-term improvements” if designers are willing to make a systematic

change in their processes (Mestre and Cooper). For example, using only sustainable materials

and refusing to design and produce goods with plastic.

In order for a product to last longer, the quality of its materials and production will need

to improve. This would force companies to produce higher-quality goods and potentially use

materials that are safer for consumers. The downfall of this is the increased price of the product.

Higher quality materials are more expensive to source, therefore the end product will cost more

than a product made with a cheap material, like plastic. This means that a product will likely

only be accessible to a smaller group of consumers who can afford said product. This brings up

the ethics of design, as there is a question of whether designers should produce cheap products

that aren’t sustainable, or expensive products that are sustainable. There isn’t necessarily a

“right” answer or a perfect solution, but there should be a balance between affordability and

sustainability. For example, a cheap product could be packaged in a sustainable material, or the

amount of packaging could be decreased.

An example of a higher-quality, sustainable material is mycelium. It is a natural material

made from threads of fungi. It can be used in packaging, building materials, and even clothing

and shoes. When it isn’t useful to users anymore, it can be broken down in soil to provide

nutrients to the earth. On the other hand, plastic- which is an extremely common material in

consumer goods- can break down into microscopic pieces that pollute the Earth and its water.

Similar to the Circular Product Design approach, the Cradle to Cradle method considers a

product’s end of life at the beginning stages of development. Many products we use daily can

only be used once or only in one person’s lifetime. For example, when a child grows out of their

shoes, they buy new ones and throw the old one’s away. The Cradle to Cradle approach makes it
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so that products can be completely reclaimed or transformed so that no material is wasted and it

can be used to make a new product. The method gets its name from the idea that one person can

use a product until they no longer need it, and then the product can be completely reclaimed for

use by another person. Essentially, the product never “dies”, but imitates nature’s way of

recycling materials and giving them new life.

The natural world sustains itself through processes of recycling and reusing. Birds use

trees as homes and places to build nests, and when they don’t need that shelter anymore, they

leave and another bird takes that spot. This brings up the idea of biomimicry, where designs are

made to imitate nature. Biomimicry can be both innovative and beautiful. For example, the

Japanese Bullet train was designed by “mimicking the form of a kingfisher’s beak” (Critical

Perspectives). This creates an interesting design to look at, but also creates a very efficient

product, as the trains move incredibly fast but also consume less energy.

When thinking about the cradle-to-cradle approach, it is also important to consider the

packaging that a product will come in. “Green-Washing” is a term used by environmentalists to

describe when companies spend more marketing their products as environmentally friendly than

actually making them so. For example, companies will package their products in green plastic,

touting statistics about how sustainable they are. This is counterintuitive since the product is still

made with plastic. Another example is soaps or detergents that are packed in cardboard. This

makes it seem as though the products are being packaged with more sustainable materials, but in

reality, there is a plastic bag inside of the cardboard to keep the liquid from seeping out.

“Green-Washing” is harmful because it deceives the customer, making them buy a product that

isn’t necessarily sustainable, and giving more profit to the company.

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A lot of the responsibility for making product design more sustainable lies with the

designers themselves and the companies they work for. They have the power and authority to

make sustainable choices on a big scale, like producing goods with certain materials over others.

Often times they will prioritize profit over sustainability, which is why goods are mass-produced

with unsustainable methods and materials.

On the other hand, it could also be argued that the consumer has some responsibility in

making product design more sustainable. For example, they can choose to purchase more

sustainable goods and boycott those that aren’t environmentally friendly. There are also lifestyle

changes that can be made. Instead of relying on designers to make long-lasting products,

consumers can treat the products they already have with more care so that they last longer.

Consumers can also be more conscious about the waste they produce, by composting their waste

or getting crafty with it and giving it a new life themselves. For example, some people will stuff

empty plastic jugs with plastic waste and make “bricks”. This takes the idea of cradle-to-cradle

and circular product design and puts it on a smaller scale, where the consumer is able to consider

a product’s end of life, and give it new purpose.

Plastic is regularly used to package goods, but as mentioned before, it takes a long time

to break down and can pollute the environment. Options like paper or mycelium are more

sustainable and environmentally friendly. Paper can be recycled or easily repurposed by the

consumer, giving it another life. Mycelium isn’t necessarily useful to be repurposed by the

consumer, but it is natural and could be put in plants or gardens to break down and provide

nutrients to the soil.

The Cradle to Cradle design process is more sustainable than recycling is, because it cuts

out “downcycling”. When plastic and metal are recycled, the quality goes down from what it
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originally was. These materials can only be recycled a few times “until they are no longer

durable or safe enough to process” (Bontrager). The industrial process of melting down these

materials can also produce toxic side effects that harm the environment. Cradle to Cradle ensures

that products are made with sustainable materials that are either entirely biodegradable or can be

entirely recycled and reused without producing any waste.

With the Cradle-to-Cradle approach, product designers rely on materials that can easily

be reclaimed. It is also important that they use fewer materials because if certain materials are

mixed together, they can’t be separated or recycled and have to be discarded. If a product is

made with only one material, it can easily be reused. For example, bamboo is a durable, safe, and

sustainable material that you can commonly find in everyday products, such as kitchen tools and

flooring. Since it lasts so long, it can be used for many years and even span generations. This fits

the Cradle-to-Cradle model since the material has multiple uses and lifetimes.

While traditional recycling methods can be sustainable and environmentally friendly,

they are not the best option. Industrial recycling still produces waste and often degrades

materials so that they can only be reused a few times. The Circular Product Design and

Cradle-to-Cradle approach to product development proves to be more sustainable and cuts down

on material consumption and waste. Both of these methods examine how a product can be reused

or reclaimed at the end of its life cycle. When using these approaches, a product is designed with

its whole life cycle- including its end in mind. This allows designers to choose materials and

manufacturing methods that are more environmentally friendly and allow a product to have

another life. If designers implement these sustainable practices into their design processes, we

will see less waste and pollution coming from product design and manufacturing, as well as

increased lifetimes of consumer products.

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Works Cited

Acaroglu, Leyla. “Quick Guide to Sustainable Design Strategies.” Medium, Disruptive Design,

27 May 2020,

https://medium.com/disruptive-design/quick-guide-to-sustainable-design-strategies-6417

65a86fb8#:~:text=Sustainable%20design%20is%20the%20approach,that%20enables%20

the%20Circular%20Economy.

Bontrager, Jon. Holistic Design. 2003,

https://www.goshen.edu/bio/Biol410/bsspapers03/jonbontrager.html#princcradle.

“Containers and Packaging: Product-Specific Data.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency,

https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/containers-an

d-packaging-product-specific.

Cooper, Tim and Ana Mestre (2017) Circular Product Design. A Multiple Loops Life Cycle

Design Approach for the Circular Economy, The Design Journal, 20:sup1, S1620-S1635,

DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2017.1352686

“Critical Perspectives on Sustainable Product Design.” Delve, 13 Jan. 2023,

https://www.delve.com/insights/critical-perspectives-on-design-for-sustainability.

Lundin, Katie. “Product Design Strategies for a Sustainable Future.” Crowdspring Blog, 17 Nov.

2022, https://www.crowdspring.com/blog/sustainable-product-design/.