Research Log: IT’S OUR F***ING BACKYARD

A Step-by-Step Guide to Applied Environmental Design

by Ab Stevels

Editorial Note

On the occasion of the exhibition It’s our F***ing Backyard. Designing Material Futures the Stedelijk commissioned emeritus professor Ab Stevels of TU Delft to write a set of Research Logs about the use of sustainable materials and the history of its design and application. Drawing from decades of experience in both design, industry, and academic fields, in this set of logs he addresses what designers and companies can do to become more sustainable. but also how as consumers, we can all become more vigilant of companies that might be greenwashing their activities.

‘Start from the bottom’

As Mario, chef from the Iglo Pizza Crossa TV ad, once told the nation, the bottom comes first. For your purposes as a company, it means start by taking a look at your products, product management, and business approach in their current form with the aim of improving your practices and performance regarding sustainability. It also means take subsequent actions with the help of employees and consumers who are already receptive to the idea of improving environmental performance. And finally, it means start with easily achievable goals. Success in achieving these goals will help build credibility for environmental actions in the internal and external value chain and pave the way for increasingly radical measures.

This has proven to be the most sensible approach for companies which are not yet set up to practice EcoDesign.

A next step might be to appoint an environmental manager, who may not as yet be familiar with all the ins and outs of EcoDesign, but has a deep understanding of the organization and therefore the knowledge required to introduce new practices successfully. Appointing someone from within the organization is crucial, as the key to success is for this individual to be seen as ‘one of us’. External experts will be more technically knowledgeable, but may face a major barrier if appointed, namely that your employees—especially those lukewarm, or opposed, to the idea of environmental action—might refuse to take instruction from the appointee on the grounds the individual doesn’t really understand how things work at the organization, even if they acknowledge his environmental credential.

So, start with the basics rather than attempt to incorporate every aspect of EcoDesign in one go. The basics are not only easier, but they’re also guaranteed to get results in environmental as well as financial terms (with the latter including cost savings). And these results will be both manifold and evident, which will help in overcoming reservations and prejudices.

Break EcoDesign down into manageable tasks that can be performed by an existing department; this is much easier than trying to get various department heads to work as one. This was key to the adoption of Applied EcoDesign at Philips (where I used to work) and a handful of other companies. Many of the activities aimed at realizing the ideal of the circular economy can be pursued with the same approach.

The most effective breakdown of the concept divides the tasks into five areas:

Energy (electronic department), E.
Materials (department of mechanical design), M.
Chemical content (procurement), CC.
Packaging (packaging department) and transport, P&T.
End of life, EoL. This area is rarely given any thought before the introduction of Applied EcoDesign, so the environmental managers will have to address it themselves.

Next step: examine your operation, i.e., start quantifying your usage of energy and materials. Record your data, expressing your findings in concrete terms that everyone understands. So, kWh for E, type of material for M (expressed in kg), type and concentration for CC, per-carton weight and volume for P&T (expressed in kg and mᶾ), and number and types of compounds in a product for EoL considerations.

When presented with the resulting figures, people are usually amazed at the amount of material and energy used to realize a functionality. The same holds for the amount of waste generated in the production process. The typical reaction is: ‘We had no idea it was this much!’ Amazement often arouses curiosity, so the next question must obviously be: ‘Why are things the way they are?’ Is it because it makes sense, because it’s the way we’ve always done things, or merely because of sloppiness? In other words, answering this question will force you to critically assess every operation within your organization. And analysis of this nature stimulates creativity. In fact, it’s often astonishing to see just how many environmental ideas are generated purely as a result of such analysis. Most will initially be about halting bad practices, but smart management of the idea-generation process will eventually yield more proactive ideas.

It’s also worth taking the time to study the competition. Case in point, when Philips did this, they were forced to admit that Sony and Panasonic were better at certain things, which made them much more receptive to learning from others.

The approach as sketched above has been practiced as of 1994. At the ‘Applied EcoDesign’ group of the Design for Sustainability Lab of Delft University it has been developed further into a comprehensive ‘Environmental Benchmarking’ method in which some 50 attributes in the categories as mentioned above were measured. For this purpose products have to be disassembled, so in addition to specific environmental attributes also product architecture can be analyzed. Such an analysis is essential for Design for the Circular Economy (see research log 7). Disassembly sessions were part of the course ‘Applied EcoDesign’ at TU Delft; it was a perfect form of ‘teaching by illustration’, whereby the students disassembled themselves. This practical approach has also been used for teaching in the industry; here the practicality of Environmental Benchmarking brought EcoDesign much closer to the hearts and minds of the participants.

Disassembly session by students during ‘Applied EcoDesign’ classes by Ab Stevels at TU Delft from 1997 to 2008.

Make it the responsibility of all of your business units

Once the initial surprise wears off, product designers from every one of your various business units will need to roll up their sleeves, because sustainability is not a niche hobby for the amusement of a select few, but rather an all-embracing practice that demands integration into every aspect of your operation.

And once you embark on more elaborate exercises in integration, you’ll start to notice the conflicting demands of sustainability. You will therefore need to quantify the relative importance of environmental targets to enable you make informed decisions about the compromises you will have to make between conflicting demands, such as between energy conservation and material-related concerns, or between reducing the use of carbon intensive materials in design and increasing recyclability. This used to be done on the basis of weighting factors, but these were later replaced by factors such as indicators determined on the basis of simplified Life Cycle Analysis. The advantage of the latter, and similar, is that the environmental dimension is better highlighted. It’s worth noting here that what’s considered ‘green’ from a scientific perspective does not necessarily correspond with what governments consider ‘green’, nor with the general public’s (and consumers’) opinions of what is ‘green’, which are often influenced more by emotion than reason.

These factors and variables provided the basis for the development of a sophisticated measurement and calculation system for determining a product’s environmental properties, named ‘Environmental Benchmarking’. Over 100 such comparative measurements were taken by Philips between 1998 and 2005, and these became a numerical basis for brainstorming, product improvement efforts, task prioritization exercises and the development of long-term roadmaps for individual products as well as entire product portfolios. And they provided the data for sustainability-related promotional messages crafted for external audiences.

This comparative approach allowed us to place environmental concerns in a much broader social context. The main question remained: What’s the environmental benefit of this idea? But there were also deliberations about what the idea meant for the company, consumers and society as a whole. And we thought about how hard it would be to turn this idea into tangible action. The responses and deliberations were qualitative in nature, but the exercise allowed us to create action plans with clear lists of priorities, which is crucial because you eventually have to act.

The bottom-up approach works across the value chain

The same approach works in factories: start quantifying usage and recording the data with respect to energy consumption, use of materials/auxiliary materials and waste generation. Begin working towards obtaining certificates of environmental performance, such as ISO 14001 (issued by the International Organization for Standardization), concerning factory operations (as well as a range of other things including EcoDesign). ISOs are general frameworks that companies can apply to a whole range of operations or products. External environmental auditors were initially surprised that this practical approach (data + action first, ‘structure’ later; instead of the reverse as promoted by the ISO 14000 series) worked, but soon got used to it. More importantly, they issued the certificates! Such external recognition is also relevant for the next step: dealing with suppliers.

A similar approach works for suppliers. Rather than just demand that they become more environmentally conscious, introduce them to the bottom-up approach. This worked really well for Philips because suppliers think in similarly practical, rather than conceptual, terms. So, rather than demand suppliers achieve our desired environmental goals, Philips assisted them in reaching those goals. In return we were rewarded with better terms than they had with our competitors, many of whom talked a lot about environmental requirements—some even threatening dire consequences for failure to fulfill them—but rarely did anything to help smaller suppliers improve their environmental performance.

What ‘Eco’ means from a managerial perspective

The aforementioned approach adopted at Philips also had its fair share of setbacks and disappointments. But thanks to the practical nature of the approach and the ensuing results, most of the initial apprehension and opposition eventually faded away, leaving only a handful of individuals still bent on slowing things down. Furthermore, eco-minded designers began to be seen as regular professionals, rather than as oddballs. The shift in thinking also provided an injection of creative energy, which prompted people to begin asking how things could be improved rather than who to blame for shortfalls in the company’s environmental performance.

The action plans were largely well-received, which is to be attributed to the fact that the concept of EcoDesign was presented in a business context.

However, the true meaning of ‘Eco’ from a managerial perspective is somewhat different from its operational meaning as described above. Managerially speaking, it is about the promotion of lateral thinking. In other words, a means to engender flexibility in largely rigid organizational structures.

The ‘eco’ approach promotes collaboration between departments, because it is by definition multidisciplinary. It also improves supplier relationships, because the ‘new’ relationships consist of much more than financial quid pro quo.

Last but not least, the approach as sketched above strengthens the relationship with consumers, because you are providing more than product functionality.

All of this demonstrates the much wider significance of the term ‘Eco’ beyond its conceptual and holistic meaning, and this without even considering its usefulness in breaking the deadlock in all manner of seemingly stalled negotiations.

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About the Author

Albert (“Ab”) Stevels studied Chemical Engineering at the Technical University of Eindhoven and took a PhD degree in Physics and Chemistry at Groningen University. He has worked for Royal Philips Electronics in manifold capacities in materials research, glass production technology, as a business manager in electro-optics, and as a project manager for joint ventures and licensing in Asia. These experiences helped him develop the concept of Applied EcoDesign and integrate it into day-to-day business operations. He has also conducted a great deal of in-depth research on the treatment of discarded electronics, the findings of which helped lay the groundwork for setting up take-back and recycling systems at Philips NL. In 1995 Ab was appointed professor in Environmental Design at Delft University of Technology. He has had visiting professorships at several universities including Stanford University, TU Berlin, Georgia Institute of Technology, NTN University in Trondheim, and Tsinghua University in Beijing. He also worked with the University of Sao Paulo to develop an MBA program and Sustainability course.

Stevels is the author of some 200 journal articles and conference contributions. For more on his experiences with green design and in-house management of ‘eco’ and e-waste, see his book Adventures in EcoDesign of Electronic Products.

IT’S OUR F***ING BACKYARD

August 24, 2022/by Nikolai