Design is not only able to help your business achieve its commercial potential – it can also be vital to meeting your corporate obligations.
New national and European legislation puts the responsibility on manufacturers to meet certain requirements in areas of eco-friendliness, energy efficiency and recyclability. Responsible businesses also need to consider their moral and ethical responsibility to produce products that are “socially inclusive” – suitable for use by disabled or elderly people.
Manufacturers of electrical and electronic goods are among those most affected by recent and impending European legislation. The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive (requiring collection and recycling of electrical goods), the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive (restricting the use of certain substances in manufacturing) and the Energy-Using Products (EuP) Directive (governing products’ energy usage) have potentially serious consequences for the costs and profitability of many UK companies.
'To meet the challenges, businesses need to apply new sustainable design methods to their products and manufacturing processes,' says Dr Aidan Turnbull, head of eco-design at consultancy firm Environ. 'The WEEE and RoHS directives require you to look at using more eco-friendly materials in your product design. Products need to be made more recyclable – so they need to be designed to be easily separated into component materials at their end-of-life. And the upcoming EuP Directive will mean manufacturers have to demonstrate a commitment to reducing their product’s energy consumption from the very beginning of the design process.'
But Turnbull also highlights the positive aspects of implementing sustainable design: 'It can offer many additional benefits to your business – such as enhanced customer perception of your business, reduced manufacturing costs and end-of-life costs, environmental marketing opportunities, better product functionality, and overall increased innovation.'
For example, medical equipment business Smiths Medical worked with Environ to explore the business benefits of sustainable design. 'We brought in experts in innovation management skills and materials engineering,' explains Turnbull. 'A series of workshops encouraged people to think about issues like product disassembly. The skills learnt there were translated into action through site visits by the consultants.' The valuable experience gained was incorporated into a sustainable design guide for use throughout the company. The adoption of sustainable design has produced cost savings for the business, improved product functionality and reduced environmental impacts.
The first step towards compliance and sustainable design is to get up to speed with the issues in detail. Environ has developed two online resources for businesses (www.b2bweee.com and www.eup-ecodesign.com), which contain practical information and guides to the European directives and sustainable design.