Advanced Design and Manufacturing Engineering Centre, School of Architecture Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG1 4FQ, UK
Prof. Daizhong Su
Advanced Design and Manufacturing Engineering Centre, School of Architecture Design and the Built Environment, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham NG1 4FQ, UK
Sustainable product innovation and its communication with consumers are essential for the realisation of sustainability through sustainable consumption. This research conducted a structured review addressing sustainable product innovation, including sustainable product development and service, environmental and socio-economic impacts, communication of the sustainable product innovation to consumers via ecolabelling and declarations, and sustainability benchmarking. The review revealed that current research in sustainable product development and service focuses more on environmental and economic aspects, but the social aspect has not been given enough attention, and the interconnection between product development and service needs to be further addressed. Systematic sustainable innovation, considering the whole life cycle of the product to control and improve overall sustainability in the early product development stages should be paid more attention. To overcome the gaps, a framework for sustainable product development and services (SPDS) was developed and presented. Furthermore, this review found that communicating understandable environmental and socio-economic performance of products and services with consumers is still challenging. Barriers are identified in deriving benchmarks through sustainability performance assessments. This paper also provides examples of overcoming the barriers in sustainable benchmarking and communication with the “eco-cost” method, which engages both B2B and B2C customers to promote sustainable consumption.
1 July 2021 in Sustainable Production and Consumption
An approach for integrating life-cycle assessment (LCA) into the eco-design of lighting products was developed, and LCAs of five lighting products that are currently on the market were then carried out using this approach. Based on the results of these LCAs, the sustainability requests for lighting products were derived and embedded into the product design specification (PDS), thus ensuring that any product developed according to the PDS would have the desired eco-design features. A new sustainable lighting product was then designed according to the PDS and manufactured, after which the new product underwent LCA. Upon comparing the results of the LCA of the new product with the LCA results for the existing lighting products, the newly designed product was found to provide better environmental performance than the existing products (a 27–58% reduction in environmental impact).
Lighting products are essential for our modern life nowadays, but they also produce high negative impacts on the environment. Although there are tools and methods available for reducing the environmental impact of lighting products, it is a challenging task to integrate them throughout the product development process. To overcome the challenge, this research developed an approach to integrate tools/methods relevant for the eco-design through product development process to reduce the environmental impact of lighting products. Six types of methods, such module design, and 30 tools, such as lifecycle assessment software packages, are considered in the integrated approach. The product specification with eco-constrains is established for implementation at each design stage to ensure the product eco-features. The approach was applied in the development of an LED table lamp which was then assessed in comparison with a benchmark LED lamp regarding environmental lifecycle impact and lighting performance. The comparative assessment results indicate that the LED lamp developed with this approach is much better than the benchmark lamp.