Product design can help avoid contributing to plastic pollution. Photo / Getty Images
Product design can help avoid contributing to plastic pollution. Photo / Getty Images
Here's part four of a ten-step guide to starting a social enterprise or a conscious business, or turning your company into one. Tips or experiences to share? Let us know in the comments.
It's a statistic that profoundly shocks: every square kilometre of the world's oceans has an estimated 13,000 pieces of plastic floating in it. There's no other way to frame it - there's something inherently wrong with our design process.
Built for purpose for mostly single-use applications, plastic should have no place in the designer's suite of options for single use or convenience items.
Let's take the humble drinking straw, for example. Made from petrochemicals, and not biodegradable, New Zealand charity Sustainable Coastlines will tell you that they pick up thousands of them on our beaches, from Rangitoto to Great Barrier Island. This is a product that should be made from either cardboard, or a more permanent version from stainless steel.
Here's where an industrial designer comes in. There's many ways to skin a cat, goes the old saying, and the same goes for products.
Tim Allan, from Locus Research, Bay of Plenty. Photo / Supplied
Timothy Allan, founder of the product development and innovation consulting company Locus Research, helps to develop new products and services which have sustainability and life cycle thinking integrated into their development.
"In the research and development stages of creating a new product there are always opportunities to re-imagine how a product may work. Selecting appropriate technology and materials is a critical part of changing the impact of a product," Allan says.
"We can also substitute materials for more environmentally benign alternatives - which doesn't have to mean performance is sacrificed.
"Considering the performance of a product over its life (consumables and energy) is also important, and at the end of life making sure that there is a viable route for recycling and reuse is increasingly becoming a vital way of better using our resources," Allan says.
"As resources are becoming more scarce, and the true costs of making products which harm the environment are being factored into the equation - not least through conscious consumer purchasing behaviour - it makes sense to design the whole life cycle of a product."
Kokako Organics, a coffee roastery and café in Auckland, is a good example of embedding social and environmental responsibility into a supply chain.
Its raw products are all organic and Fairtrade certified, and its takeaway containers are all sourced from Auckland company Friendlypak, which makes cups and containers from potato starch and timber and are compostable.
They can go into the 16 Hungry Bin worm farms (Auckland-based) which deal with food and coffee waste each day, and produce high quality organic compost and fertiliser. Anything that cannot go into the worm farms is collected by Auckland company We Compost.
• Obtaining a certification can be a robust way to ensure your product is meeting environmental and social criteria.
• Organic and biodynamic produced foods are growing rapidly. Look out for the Demeter (biodynamic), or BioGro or Asure Quality (organic) certifications.
• Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions and fair terms of trade for producers in the developing world.
• CarbonZero certified organisations have measured their greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions, and any remaining emissions are then offset by purchasing carbon credits. CEMARS is the first two steps of carbonZero certification, but with the omission of the offset stage.
• The Heart Foundation Tick is to help people make healthier food choices when they are shopping.
• The Royal New Zealand SPCA Blue Tick accreditation ensures that welfare standards for animals have been met.
• The Environmental Choice certification is an eco-label for independently proven eco-friendly products. It also has a 'green office' certification.
• The Enviromark certification is a government-owned mark, with a five-step programme to follow.
• The B Corporation certification is the newest kid on the block. A B Corporation is one that has social and environmental goals enshrined in its structure and reporting. There are over 1000 companies worldwide certified as B Corps but, as yet, just two in new Zealand - Eagle Consumables and Snakk Media.
Sectors to watch
• Clean tech - low carbon technologies • Solar • Recycling • Energy efficient products • Wood products • Waste-to-energy • Energy efficiencies - for home and business • Sustainable building materials • Combating obesity • Education • Packaging - moving away from plastic • Agriculture and aquaculture (cleaning up the industries) • Drought resistant crops • Fresh water conservation • Food production - organics (25% growth in the past three years), Fairtrade (12% increase YOY) and vegetarian • Preparing for climate change/climate change mitigation • Consulting/SROI • Sustainability software
