Design for the Value of Sustainability

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.