We believe sustainability will become as big a driver of value creation over the next decades as quality was over the past 20 years. Sustainability is not about the one action you can take, it is about the road you decide to follow.

There are few completely green or sustainable products. Therefore what is important is to maximize the sustainability of those aspects of your product that you can and to set in motion an innovation program to become increasingly more sustainable over time in the areas where you cannot improve today. This will ensure that you are able to stay ahead of and hopefully draw away from your competitors. This is how Toyota led the quality revolution and have started down the road to leading the sustainability revolution.

Companies miss the opportunity to improve the sustainability of their products because they fail to consider all of the issues which affect sustainability.

What are the issues that make your product less sustainable?

The oldest approach and sometimes most effective given the type of product you manufacture is design for disassembly. The aim is to reduce the combinations of materials and design to ensure that all different material components can easily be taken apart and separated for recycling. Examining what happens at the end of the products life could open new ways to think about the offer.

The strategy most asked for today is the request to find a sustainable or green material to replace the existing material of the product. This is a tough strategy to execute on as most consumer products are made from injection molded plastic and there simply isn’t a viable green substitute available for the bulk of consumer applications yet. For now, the question of structural strength and length of service are the key determining factors to consider.

A partial solution to the materials issue is to examine which harmful substances can be removed from the plastics to reduce their effect on the environment.

A second possibility is to look at the stored energy that is embodied in the materials. Some raw materials processes such as the production of plastics use many, many times more energy than for example metal or wood. Using this strategy it is possible to look for replacement materials that have less stored energy and thus less of a harmful effect on the environment.

Improvements can also be achieved by understanding and looking for reductions in the energy required to make the product. Choices between plastic, metal and natural materials determine to a large extent the sustainability of your product. The choice of material affects the amount of energy used in the production process.

The logistics and transportation part of the product lifecycle contain significant amounts of energy use. Often logistics effects can account for more than the effects of using non renewable materials!

These are the 6 main strategies to help you reduce the environmental load of your products.

But how do you decide which strategy to use? Obviously you would want to choose the option that produces the maximum benefit. In order to determine this it is necessary to begin the process with an analysis of where your product is at present on the road to sustainability. Once you have determined its present sustainability through a Sustainability Audit, you can move on to do the analysis of cost benefits to determine which strategy to follow. The expected outcome is also a determining factor. If the objective is corporate, i.e. there is a directive, desire to improve the company’s sustainability performance, different solutions can be chosen versus if the initiative is driven by marketing that have a deep desire for a very demonstrable difference. We have over 150 techniques to help companies improve their sustainability, regardless of which strategy or combination of strategies is chosen.