Product designers, renowned for their ingenuity and ambition to craft original pieces, face a new challenge: integrating sustainability seamlessly into their creative processes. Designers are pushing the bounds of creativity to integrate sustainable materials into product design to produce items that are aesthetic, functional and live in harmony with the planet. Making sustainability a core tenet of design may serve as a catalyst for new creative ideas, where product designers can explore and experiment with new materials and rethink how almost everything is made.
However, sustainability as a design approach is not just a fun thought experiment. That’s because plastic waste poses a daunting environmental dilemma, urging us to reevaluate how we approach product design and material selection.
As our planet grapples with mounting ecological challenges, we have a unique opportunity to reimagine how materials impact a product's environmental footprint. Transitioning toward circular, closed-loop material solutions offers a compelling model, aligning our physical creations with the natural world. Recognising that approximately 80% of a product's climate impact is etched during its design phase, makes design the epicentre for sustainable transformation, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Empowering Sustainable Design Practices
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data highlights the need to overhaul product design and material selection to minimise waste, especially plastic, since only 9% of plastics are recycled. Product designers are positioned to drive this paradigm shift, with the ability to increase demand for sustainable plastic alternatives. These materials should emphasise recyclability, durability, and sustainable manufacturing processes, all while ensuring uncompromised quality.
Designing products for longevity and recyclability enables a move toward more sustainable design practices, reducing the constant product replacement cycle and curbing excessive consumption, significant challenges in today's consumer-driven society.
For mixed material products, it is important designers choose materials that are both recyclable and easily separatable. This proactive approach can be integrated by designers from the initial design stages, as the main barrier for recycling is the use of mixed materials, items that contain more than one material. Designers can also consciously select materials like biobased materials, cardboard, and paper, which are easily recycled or composted. This minimizes waste generation and enables designers to envision the complete lifecycle of their creations, fostering innovation and sustainability that align with circular economy principles.
Reshaping Industries with Sustainable Materials
Sustainable materials play a pivotal role in mitigating waste. One promising alternative to conventional petroleum-based plastics are bioplastics and bio-based materials, which are derived from renewable sources such as plant starches, agricultural waste or unsorted household waste. Bioplastics and biobased materials offer critical advantages, including biodegradability or high recyclability. Integrating bioplastics and other sustainable materials into product design contributes to a more sustainable approach, while simultaneously reducing reliance on finite resources.
Real-world examples demonstrate the potential and success of sustainable plastic design, showcasing how innovative approaches are reshaping industries. A notable trend gaining popularity in the packaging industry is flexible bottle packaging, crafted from bioplastics, rendering them recyclable. When correctly recycled or reused, these bottles seamlessly integrate into the circular economy, reducing waste and promoting resource efficiency.
Other examples include outdoor patio furniture made from recycled plastic in milk bottles or planters made with unsorted household waste. Some designers are also making shoes with recycled plastic, an important step as the footwear industry is responsible for overproduction and material waste. One company has even designed sustainable roofing made from dirty diapers. These practical applications exemplify how strategic design choices can elevate product sustainability, offering a glimpse into a future where responsible practices lead the way.
Some manufacturers have also embraced the concept of designing for disassembly, enabling easy separation of different materials during the recycling process while others have adopted closed-loop systems in which municipal waste is collected, processed and transformed into new sustainable raw materials that can be implemented across product design from automotive to packaging, construction to home goods and more.
Towards a Sustainable Future
Product designers are the torch bearers of creativity, constantly pushing boundaries and taking societies forward with new ideas for our world and how we live in it. By creating products with sustainability as a principle from the earliest stages, designers can help ensure that production and consumption of goods is part of a circular economy that lives in harmony with environmental needs and aligns with business objectives.
While product designers are the imagination engines behind what’s possible, it will take collaboration with material scientists, recycling experts and manufacturers to bring the imagined into reality. This is an interdisciplinary effort that involves developing novel materials while not disrupting manufacturing practices too much to prevent implementation. Conscientious assessment at the materials design stage thereby leads the entire value chain towards manufacturing genuinely sustainable products.