Designing Green Products: Matching Design To Consumer Behavior

There’s a lot of confusion and overblown hype about the challenges of creating green products. It’s really pretty simple. Here’s a good rule of thumb: use environmentally responsible materials and burn as few fuel fossil fuels in the process as possible. All other considerations are secondary. The reason is that companies can’t control how consumers use products, for how long they use them or how they dispose of them. Companies can only control what they make and how they make it. Specifying green materials and reducing energy consumption ensures that consumers are offered a product choice that is tangibly less harmful to the planet than standard choices regardless of what ultimately becomes of it.

Some companies claim their products are green because they are built to last a lifetime. But what environmental good is realistically served if consumers throw them in a landfill after a few short years? Some companies claim their products are green because they are biodegradable. But what environmental good is realistically served if they wind up in a landfill where there is too little oxygen available to biodegrade? Some companies claim their products are green because they are 100% recyclable. But what environmental good is realistically served if consumers have no intention or even idea of where or how to recycle them?

Claiming green credentials when they do not correspond to actual consumer behavior may be done with the best intentions, but it is not helpful in crafting, real, effective solutions to the challenges we face as a consumer culture. Let’s make green products that fit the way we live.

To be sure, many companies and industries are working on innovative solutions to alleviate the environmental impact of the entire product lifecycle. For example, Interface FLOR offers a remarkable take-back program for its modular carpet tiles as well as those from any other manufacturer. Once the tiles are returned to the company after their useful consumer life, Interface recycles them into new modular tiles. In December, 2007 alone Interface successfully recycled over 60,000 pounds of carpet tile into new product.

Patagonia is spearheading recycling initiatives in the clothing industry with its Common Threads Garment Recycling take-back program for its Capilene base layers as well as certain garments made of fleece and organic cotton. Consumers can bring them back to stores or mail them back to the company after the clothing’s useful life and Patagonia will breakdown and reuse the material in new garments. The program is really unique though it could be made even more effective if consumers were somehow incented to participate rather than giving their clothing back for free.

Computer companies know this and will often take back computers from consumers and provide trade-in credit to encourage consumer loyalty. On the personal computer front, HP is now designing computers with more modular components and securing them with heavy-duty snaps instead of glues to make its corporate recycling initiatives more efficient. This is real progress.

Most surprisingly of all, perhaps the most enlightened industry on the planet when it comes to environmental product lifecycle considerations is the automotive industry, which on average recycles 84% of every car (in terms of weight) at the end of its useful life and uses the materials in new cars, roads, buildings, and other consumer products.

These are wonderful examples of what’s possible when we think about creating an abundant, green economy in balance with nature’s capabilities to infinitely sustain it. Designing with the entire product lifecycle in mind is extremely important, but to make environmental product claims without attending first to product materials and energy consumption is not necessarily to consumers’ benefit or to the planet’s.

-- Josh