Innovation Design 4/4
steaks to stay fresh-looking for longer. New vacuum packs extend shelf life still further, while also reducing the amount of packaging, she adds. However, as anyone who bought an Easter egg in recent weeks will attest a lot of packaging remains superfluous and could be got rid of.
For more durable products, the solu- tions are rather different. These goods are more capable of being recycled – and in many cases new regulations, such as the End of Life Vehicle (ELV) Directive and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive require companies to take responsibility for their products at the end of their lives. “Typically, there is a disconnect between the design stage and how a product is dealt with at the end of its life,” says Nick Morley of the Centre for Reuse and Remanufacturing. “Designers have no incen- tive to focus on end of life they do not bear the costs of dealing with that. It is someone else’s problem.” Regulations such as these should pro- vide an incentive to increasingly design products for recyclability, but accord- ing to Seymourpowell’s Sherwin, “the impact has not been as big as expected on the design side because these industries instead focused on setting up a recycling infrastructure.
“I hope there will be more design- focused solutions in future, I’m not sure these directives will deliver that.” Reuse and remanufacturing offers opportunities to deal with waste more effectively than recy- cling and also to transform the environmental impact of products. However, it requires a profound philo- sophical shift.
“The dominant approach is still to focus purely on a volume driven business model,” says Morley. “Changing this model affects all parts of your busi- ness from operations to finance to distribution. That’s why companies looking to do this often set up separate companies.” The concept is gaining some traction as companies see increasing commodity prices and resource nationalism exposing them to greater raw material risks. A recent report by the London Environmental Investment Forum says that remanufacturing is dominated by big mechanical engineering products such as aircraft engines and gas turbines, but also in ICT, vehicle parts and increasingly, renewable energy. A business model that involves remanufacturing implies a move away from the volume-driven model to one that involves selling services rather than products. Perhaps the purest manifestation of this is in the aero engine market where Rolls-Royce pioneered a concept known as Power by the Hour, whereby airlines pay according to how much the engine is used and the engine maker takes care of maintenance, servicing, upgrade and disposal.
Under such a model, products will be designed so that they last and are cheap to maintain – a profound difference from how many goods are made today.
Reducing packaging is a key focus for Coca-Cola Enterprises, the makers of Coke
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