Defining Ecodesign Through Awards

By Jonathan Bardelline, GreenerDesign
Published August 7, 2008

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Two years ago the International Design Excellence Awards added an ecodesign category, giving special recognition to designs with a greener approach to materials and energy.

Jane Savage, one of the award judges, spoke with GreenBiz Radio about the most important aspects of greening product designs, highlights from the awards and the challenges of determining just what an ecodesign is.

Savage works for Nike with the company's Considered team, integrating the concepts of environmentally preferred materials and waste reduction into products like the Air Jordan XX3.

Jonathan Bardelline: What makes a design an ecodesign winner? What are the qualities that really make something earn this award?

Jane Savage: There are a lot of components to our judging criteria over all the products, but in particular with ecodesign, and at least from my perspective, it definitely has a lot to do with understanding your material science and also taking a systems-thinking approach to design in terms of thinking about the entire lifecycle and even supply chain involved with the design and - you know, and how the problem is approached and solved.

I would say materials and kind of systems-thinking lifecycle approach is definitely two important pieces to ecodesign in terms of the criteria.

JB: And are those aspects weighed evenly or are some aspects sometimes weighed more heavily if certain materials are used or does purpose of the product come into play?

JS: Well, let me back up a second here 'cause I'm thinking about all the designs that I had the opportunity to judge and I have to say that overall in the category, I was disappointed with most of the entries that were in there.

And mainly I think it's because there just isn't a good framework or a good criteria out there, maybe a common platform that people are using by which to create ecodesign.

So in some cases when I say that it's important to really understand your materials science, there's some misperceptions around, for example, PVC, you know, one entry had what they called biodegradable PVC, and from my understanding there's no such thing.

And there is still the notion of, you know, at the end of life of a product, you can throw it away because it can biodegrade in a landfill, when that's not necessarily the case in a lot of what was come up with. Or in some cases just because something had a rechargeable battery in it or it was a hand-cranked kind of notion. That was an entry that somebody served up as ecodesign, so I think the biggest opportunity for me that I saw was just creating a common platform or a set of criteria by which you can judge ecodesigns and I felt that it was pretty open-ended.

JB: And do you think awards like this are helping to narrow that down to give some sort of definition of what is a true ecodesign by awarding ones that really stand out to help create this definition?

Because we've run into that in a lot of areas where there's no certain definition, that there's a lot of ways to interpret things like ecodesign, sustainability. Do awards like this help to say these are the kind of things we should be making?

JS: I think if anything an award like this helps to get the conversation started around it and to begin a discussion and build consensus because for now it's still a new category within IDEA, and it just tells me that there's a lot of opportunity to take a leadership position, you know, whether it's the IDEA awards itself creating that criteria or the IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America).

I think it's mainly around right now a conversation that probably hasn't been started yet or in a more robust manner. I mean there are groups out there who are getting after and are more focused upon it, but my sense coming from the IDEA awards and, especially with the ecodesign category, that it's still in its nascent stages.

JB: What are some areas where there's a lot being done in terms of good ecodesign and are there areas you're seeing where there's just a lack of anything happening, where the actual real opportunity is?

JS: At least looking at all the entries, the majority of what I thought was really strong was more in the zone of alternative lighting sources.

So instead of using even an incandescent bulb or even instead of the alternative, the kind of popular alternative now is around compact fluorescents, but starting with the use of LEDs, LEDs having a longer lifespan, of course, as well as, in terms of end of life, having to deal with the mercury issues of disposing of the compact fluorescent bulb.

So there were a lot of good, strong entries in that area and then there was a lot of good concept work around the use of solar panels, capitalizing on solar energy for solar panels and how to - there's some really strong concepts in there around solar paneled roof tiles. So that's not just a kind of ad hoc attachment to your roof, but it's integrated with the design of your roof, so those are some really strong concepts. They're from more of a consumer product perspective. I felt that, you know, there's still a huge opportunity to think through what that space would look like in the future.

JB: Where are most of these ecodesigns coming from? They're coming from design firms, obviously, but who's driving some of these creations? Is it the firms themselves doing this on their own? Are their clients asking for things, like you said, integrating LEDs into products?

JS: A few of what we had looked at were concepts, so the concept may have come from an ID firm or they may have come from students, but I didn't get a sense that clients are necessarily asking for this.

So I would also challenge the designers out there who are working with their clients to steer them toward looking at lower environmental impact solutions, so that was the sense that I got.