Sustainable Products

Sustainable Products
The Basic Principles
Extracts from ‘The Total Beauty of Sustainable

Products’
Edwin Datschefski - RotoVision - 2001
ISBN 2-88046-545-1
Produced with the kind permission of RotoVision
The products contained in this
presentation are included for illustrative
purposes and no other conclusions should
be drawn from their use.
• Only One in 10,000 products is
designed with the environment in
mind
• Can a product really represent the

pinnacle of mankind’s genius if it
is made using polluting methods?
◆ The five basic principles of
sustainable product design are:
▪ Cyclic
▪ Solar
▪ Efficient
▪ Safe
▪ Social
• Good Design Goes Beyond
Appearances
Towards
Total
Beauty
Cyclic
• Products are made from

compostable organic materials or
from minerals which are
continuously recycled in a closed
loop.
Solar
• Products in manufacture and use

consume only renewable energy
that is cyclic and safe
Safe
• All releases to air, water, land or

space are food for other systems.
Efficient
• Products in manufacture and use

require 90% less energy, materials
and water than equivalent
products did in 1990
Social
• Product manufacture and use

supports basic human rights and
natural justice
It’s not just about recycled paper or washing powder
It’s about
re-designing
everything
Products are the source of all
environmental problems.
It may seem surprising, but most
environmental problems are caused by
unintentional side-effects of the
manufacture, use and disposal of
products.
An individual product may look

harmless enough,
but the environmental damage
it causes happens elsewhere,
out of sight and mind, ‘hidden’ from
the consumer and often from the
designer as well.
Major issues such as pollution,
deforestation, species loss, and global
warming are all by-products of the
activities that provide consumers
with food, transport, shelter, clothing
and the endless array of consumer
goods on the market today.
“I call this the ‘Hidden Ugliness’ of
products.”
Edwin Datchefski
Over 30 tonnes of waste are

produced for every one tonne of
product that reaches the consumer.
And then 98 per cent of those
products are thrown away within
six months!
The Computer
About a quarter of a computer is
plastic, mostly the casing. It’s a candy
coloured translucent plastic called
polycarbonate, the same stuff that
CD’s are made from. It is made from
phosgene, which was used as poison
gas in the first world war, and
Bisphenol A, an endocrine disruptor.
The gold in circuit boards of a PC may have
come from Romania, where a gold mining
accident caused one of the worst river
pollution accidents in Europe.
Environmental damage from gold extraction
is routine; for every ounce of gold extracted
in Brazil, there are nine tonnes of waste,
including silt and mercury run-off which kills
fish and other aquatic life downstream.
Computer junking is also happening at a
faster rate. The lifespan of computers is
only about three to five years. Despite a
significant increase in computer recycling.
Every year about 30 million computers are

dumped, incinerated, shipped as waste
exports or put into temporary storage or
people’s attics.
The Chair
The steel for the frame was made in
Europe from pig iron, from ore that had
been dug out of a huge open-cast mine
in Brazil that had originally been
forested land.
A steel mill will burn about 20kg of coal
to make the steel for one chair.
The steel for many chairs is chrome-

plated to make it look shiny.
Wastes from the chromium-plating
process are dumped in rivers, especially
in developing countries, damaging fish
and making the water undrinkable.
The plastics in the chair, such as the arms

and the polyurethane foam padding, are
all products of the oil industry.
One of the concerns about oil is that it is

inevitably spilt in oceans and rivers.
The leather seat was made by taking the
skin of cow and treating it with a variety
of substances, including mineral salts,
formaldehyde, coal tar derivatives, and
various oils, dyes, and finishes, some of
them cyanide-based. Most leather is
chrome-tanned, meaning that chairs can
give the environment a double dose of
chrome pollution.
Tee Shirts
The manufacture of a T-shirt requires the
use of 150g (1/3lb) of chemical fertilisers
and pesticides.
Cotton accounts for 25 per cent of the
world’s insecticide use.
Farm workers exposed to excess toxins are
at risk from poisoning and health
problems.
A study in Ghana revealed that some

farmers are so used to using pesticides
without protective clothing that they
actually feel proud when they feel a bit
sick at the end of the day, because it
shows the chemicals are working
properly.
Many clothes are sewn together by part-

time workers who make less than the legal
minimum wage, and who are forced to
work long hours and unpaid overtime.
Hard Rock café Tee shirts use only local

labour and pay locally enhanced wages
A Desk Lamp
A typical desk lamp will use 1,200 kWh of
electricity during its ten-year life. This
would require about half a tonne of coal
to be burnt at the power station, or in
most countries a more complex mix of
fuels such as oil, natural gas and uranium
oxide.
The copper in the wires of a lamp could
have come from the Panguna copper
mine of Bougainville in the North
Solomons, where about half a billion
tonnes of waste ore were discharged into
the local river, killing all aquatic life.
Their livelihood and food source ruined,
the local people resorted to armed
conflict against the mining company and
successfully booted them out, creating
their own independent republic.
The bulb contains mercury, a toxic heavy

metal. When the bulb blows it may get
thrown out with the normal rubbish and
dumped in a landfill, increasing the risk
of mercury leaking into drinking water.
Every year, more mercury ends up as
emissions to air, water and soil than there
is mercury used in products such as
batteries, fluorescent tubes, electrical
equipment, paint and tooth fillings.
The base and neck of the lamp is made of
aluminium. It weights about 2kg, which
means that 100kg of waste was produced
in order to make it.
Magazine
It takes 5kWh of energy to turn wood into
a thick magazine, enough energy to run a
lamp for 100 hours. It takes as much
energy to make a tonne of steel as it does
to make a tonne of paper.
Glossy paper is in fact only about 70 per
cent paper. The rest is made up of fillers
and clays.
Inks based on heavy metals such as arsenic,
cadmium and lead have now been largely
phased out. However, there are still
concerns about the toxicity of the latest
generation of dyes. Yellow 12 is widely
used in full-colour printing, and its
ingredients include 3,3’ dichlorobenzidene,
a known carcinogen which is also a suspect
liver and kidney toxicant.
The printing process produces a variety of

wastes, including isopropanol alcohol,
contaminated water, some silver from plate
making, and various cloths, inks, solvents
and cleaning chemicals.
Hardly any of the products mentioned in

design magazines are sustainable. In fact,
some of the products receiving praise
cause known environmental problems.
Overall, the design and manufacture of
products is certainly not all bad. There has
been a lot of improvement. Billions of
pounds are being spent on cleaning up
industry, and environmental laws are
getting stricter every day. But are these
measures enough?
The answer is clearly no, as the
environment is still in a mess.
Legalised pollution’ is the problem – firms

are allowed to put smoke into the air and
poisons into the water, as long as they do
not breach a certain agreed level. You are
legally allowed to put pollutants into their
air when you drive your car.
But just because these things are legal
does not mean that they are right.
Most companies try and comply with the

local laws where they manufacture goods.
And some of those laws are about the
environment. But passively complying
with environmental laws is not the same
as actively designing to improve the
environmental performance of a product.
“Man is the only species capable of

generating waste – things that no
The End?
other life on earth wants to have.”
Gunter Pauli, Industrial Ecologist

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Sustainable Products

The Basic Principles

Extracts from ‘The Total Beauty of Sustainable

• Can a product really represent the

• Good Design Goes Beyond

• Products are made from

• Products in manufacture and use

• All releases to air, water, land or

• Products in manufacture and use

• Product manufacture and use

An individual product may look

Over 30 tonnes of waste are

Every year about 30 million computers are

The steel for many chairs is chrome-

The plastics in the chair, such as the arms

One of the concerns about oil is that it is

A study in Ghana revealed that some

Many clothes are sewn together by part-

Hard Rock café Tee shirts use only local

The bulb contains mercury, a toxic heavy

The printing process produces a variety of

Hardly any of the products mentioned in

Legalised pollution’ is the problem – firms

Most companies try and comply with the

“Man is the only species capable of

Gunter Pauli, Industrial Ecologist

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