QMS & EMS London

Scotland’s oldest university is aiming to be energy self-sufficient by 2016. A paper mill had been operating in the village of Guardbridge outside St Andrews in Fife for more than 130 years when it closed in 2008. One reason for its demise was the rising cost of energy, ironic considering its imminent transformation to a biomass plant constructed primarily to slash energy bills at St Andrews University. The 6MW biomass plant is a key part of St Andrews’ ambitions to become the first university in the UK to be carbon-neutral for energy by 2016. A 12MW wind farm being built just outside the town will also help the university realise its ambition. Together, the projects should reduce the institution’s carbon emissions by 29,000 tonnes a year.

A smartphone uses nearly 13,000 litres of water and 18 square metres of land, the study found, with two fifths due to pollution during manufacturing and assembly. A pair of leather boots requires 14,500 litres of water, but this rises to 25,000 litres where leather tanneries dump untreated chemicals into the environment, according to the report. A 100g bar of chocolate uses 2.5m² of land and 1,400 litres of water, while a t-shirt requires four litres of water and just over 4m² of land, the research revealed.

8. NEXT STEPS Now what? Given all of the information in this guide, it might be hard to figure out exactly what to do, or do differently, on the proverbial Monday morning. Developing your skill in sustainable design will take some time, but there are plenty of ways to put these tools and techniques into practice immediately.

7. COMMUNICATING THE RESULTS Product development is a process that touches many parts of an organization and its various partners and customers. Sustainable design can generate innovative and attractive solutions, but they may never see the light of day unless the features and benefits can be communicated effectively. This section outlines some ways to communicate the value of sustainable solutions to several of the major stakeholders involved with most products.

6. THE SUSTAINABLE DESIGN STRATEGIES Looking at impacts in the context of lifecycle stages is a good way to measure them, but not as helpful when actually designing or redesigning; after all, sustainable design strategies often affect more than one stage. Let’s look at a few of the strategies that Tom and Priscilla employed during their redesign processes.

The previous sections have laid out the context of sustainability and described how to know it when you see it. However, all of that information is irrelevant if it doesn't enable action—the point of assessing and reporting environmental impacts is to give you information on how design choices affect the relative sustainability of one product compared with other options. This section and the ones that follow show how to put all of that information into action.

4. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER While each of the three environmental assessment choices can be made independently to generate an impact assessment, there are several commonly used approaches. These techniques range from relatively quick, cheap, and low accuracy to much more expensive and time-consuming, but with more rigorous and robust results.

3. INITIAL ANALYSIS DECISIONS Your Influence Is Critical In the midst of the myriad sustainability tools, techniques, global and local activities, and corporate initiatives the product designer plays a key role. This person has an impact in the pivotal stage where decisions are made about what inputs are needed, how they must be processed, what the product’s lifecycle looks like, and what its end of life looks like. Engineering for sustainability early in the design process creates a trajectory that can lock in the benefits from the beginning, whereas leaving environmental impact considerations for later stages creates costly clean-up and accommodation efforts. For instance, a product designed for easy disassembly requires much less effort to convert into recyclable and reusable components than one designed as a single module requiring energy-intensive end-of-life processing. The following graph reflects the advantages of making sustainability a priority as early in t...

This section describes what is meant by “sustainability” and what you need to know about this concept. It starts out broadly, outlining why sustainability is important to the world, then what it means in the context of business, and finally why it is important in your role as a designer, engineer, product specialist, or other type of product design professional.

After a long time I have found an interesting guide on sustainable design & engineering and I must thank Dassault Systèmes - SolidWorks Corp. for it. The ideas of sustainability and sustainable design are a growing part of today’s product design conversations. But exactly what is sustainable design, and how do you create a greener product?  We’ll answer these questions through this Guide to Sustainable Design with interactive content and detailed examples.