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Design for the Value of Sustainability

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Handbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design

Abstract

It is the main task of a professional designer to create value for the users of the products, services, and systems they design. In Design for Sustainability, however, designers have a higher level of ambition: additional to a high consumer value, they make sure that designs result in less degradation of our environment, less depletion of materials, and more social equity in our world. The need for a higher level of prosperity for people in developing countries, in combination with the growing population in our world, emphasizes the need for sustainable products and services. Design for Sustainability combines a high customer value with a low level of eco-burden over the life cycle. This chapter summarizes the main current approaches to Design for Sustainability (cradle-to-cradle, Circular Economy, and Biomimicry) and some practical tools and checklists (EcoDesign, the LiDS Wheel, Design for Recycling, and Design for Disassembly) and describes the latest developments in quantitative assessment methods (“Fast Track” Life Cycle Assessment, Eco-efficient Value Creation, and design of Sustainable Product Service Systems). For the quantitative methods, real-life examples are given for design of luxurious products based on cork, packaging design of food products, and Sustainable Product Service System design of sustainable water tourism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Parts of this section, including figures, have been copied from Chaps. 2.1, 2.6, and 3.1 of the LCA guide for students, designers, and business managers (Vogtländer 2012).

  2. 2.

    Also called the “Philips method,” since Philips Electronics was the first company which did LCAs in this way in 1998–1999 and developed the EcoScan software.

  3. 3.

    Parts of this section have been copied from Chap. 2 of the book on Eco-efficient Value Creation (Vogtländer et al. 2013).

  4. 4.

    Parts of this section have been copied from Chap. 6.2 of the book on Eco-efficient Value Creation (Vogtländer et al. 2013).

  5. 5.

    Note that the situation for carpooling is completely different from car sharing: carpooling is always good for the environment, since it results in more passenger kilometer per car kilometer. Carpooling is an example of behavior in the use phase, rather than a PSS, since it is normally done between colleagues and friends (it is not a business as such).

  6. 6.

    Parts of this section have been copied from Mestre and Vogtländer (2013). Details, figures, and tables can be found in this chapter.

  7. 7.

    Parts of this section have been copied from (Wever and Vogtländer 2012). Details, figures, and tables can be found in this chapter.

  8. 8.

    Parts of this section have been copied from Scheepens et al. (2014). Details, figures, and tables can be found in this chapter.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands

    Renee Wever & Joost Vogtländer

  2. University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Renee Wever

Authors
  1. Renee Wever
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  2. Joost Vogtländer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Renee Wever .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ethics and Philosophy of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Jeroen van den Hoven

  2. Department of Ethics and Philosophy of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Pieter E. Vermaas

  3. Department of Ethics and Philosophy of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Ibo van de Poel

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Wever, R., Vogtländer, J. (2015). Design for the Value of Sustainability . In: van den Hoven, J., Vermaas, P., van de Poel, I. (eds) Handbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6970-0_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6970-0_20

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