Aligned For Sustainable Design: An A-B-C-D Approach To Making Better Products

Aligned for Sustainable Design
An A-B-C-D Approach to Making Better Products
May 2008
Business for Social Responsibility and IDEO | Aligned for Sustainable Design 0
About This Report
Companies succeed in sustainable product design, at least in the short term, by developing a more
integrated design process. Rather than just focusing on acquiring new skill sets, they create new
cross-functional interactions in their organizations that enable them to design and commercialize
breakthrough products. Using in-depth case studies, this report offers examples of the introspective
process that organizations have gone through to develop the capacity to design products more
sustainably. These real-world examples illustrate how an Assess-Bridge-Create-Diffuse framework
builds sustainability intelligence and life-cycle awareness into the product design process.
The report was written by Chad White with Emma Stewart, Ph.D., of BSR’s Environmental R&D
team, and Ted Howes with Bob Adams of IDEO. The report was reviewed by Jeremy Faludi of
Worldchanging and Alastair Iles, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Environmental Science, Policy and
Management at UC Berkeley. Interviewees included Ken Alston (MBDC), Bryant Bainbridge and
Erin Dobson (Nike Inc.), Chris Hacker (Johnson & Johnson), Bill Morrissey and Sumi Cate
(Clorox), Paul Murray and Gabriel Wing (Herman Miller Inc.), Monica Oberkofler (Gap Inc.), and
David Rinard (Steelcase Inc.). Please direct comments or questions to BSR’s Environmental R&D
team at environment@bsr.org.
About Business for Social Responsibility

Since 1992, Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) has been providing socially responsible business
solutions to many of the world’s leading corporations. Headquartered in San Francisco and with
offices in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, New York and Paris, BSR is a nonprofit business
association that serves its 250 member companies and other Global 1000 enterprises. Through
advisory services, seminars and research, BSR works with corporations and concerned stakeholders of
all types to create a more just and sustainable global economy. As a non-profit organization, BSR is
uniquely positioned to promote cross-sector collaboration in ways that contribute to the
advancement of corporate social responsibility and business success. For more information, visit
www.bsr.org.
About IDEO
IDEO is an innovation and design firm that uses a human-centered, design-based approach to help
organizations generate new offerings and build new capabilities. Well known for many standard-
setting innovations, including the first mouse (for Apple Computer) and the world’s first notebook
computer (for GRiD Computer), IDEO is a forerunner in the development of products, services and
experiences that bring design strategy to life. IDEO has been independently ranked by global
business leaders as one of the world’s most innovative companies and continues to gain recognition
for its work with the CDC, Acumen Fund, Bank of America, Eli Lilly, Shimano and Eclipse
Aviation—to name a few. For more information, visit www.ideo.com.
Note:
BSR publishes occasional papers as a contribution to the understanding of the role of business in
society and the trends related to sustainable business practices. BSR maintains a policy of not acting
as a representative of its membership, nor does it endorse specific policies or standards. “Stakeholder
Perspectives” that may appear in this publication are intended to illustrate the diversity of opinions
on various issues and do not necessarily reflect the views of the authors.
Table of Contents
I. Executive Summary.................................................................................................................3
II. The Shifting Business Environment for Design .............................................................5

A. Drivers for More Sustainable Design ...................................................................................6
B. Opportunities for Sustainable (Re)Design............................................................................7
C. The Challenge: Evolution of the Design Function...............................................................8
III. Innovation in Design Practice .........................................................................................11
IV. Re-envisioning the Design Function .............................................................................14

A. The Design Pipeline: A Challenge for Sustainability Learning ...........................................16
B. Integrative Product Design: An Alternative Approach........................................................19
C. The A-B-C-D Framework: A Guide for Developing Sustainable Design Intelligence ........21
V. Applying the ABCDs:

Examples from Apparel, Furniture and Cleaning Products .....................................28
A. How Sustainability Became Considered at Nike Inc. .....................................................28
B. The Way a Stand Has Changed a Seat at Herman Miller Inc. .......................................31
C. Reflecting on Green Works in The Clorox Company.....................................................36
VI. Conclusions ..........................................................................................................................38

A. Sustainable Design Is an Innovation in Practice..............................................................38
B. Sustainable Design Is a Kind of Organizational Intelligence............................................38
C. Sustainable Design Is Organizational Learning ...............................................................40
VII. Appendix: Concepts and Tools for Sustainable Design ..........................................42
VIII. Notes and References......................................................................................................47
I. Executive Summary
A wide collection of sustainability frameworks and Sustainability frameworks need to
tools are providing important insights for thinking
acknowledge the adaptations required
about the outcomes or analytical processes of
designing sustainably. Yet they still largely overlook to bring sustainable design into
the adaptations needed for business organizations to practice in business organizations.
put them into practice.
These adaptation challenges are becoming more acute, particularly around:

• The extension of business product relationships into additional life-cycle phases, such as
upstream sourcing and downstream recovery
• The wider range of factors to consider in product design and management, such as eco-
toxicity, recyclability or renewability, many of which lie outside the expertise of traditional
designers and product managers
Addressing these challenges by integrating new Product sustainability expands design from
tools into traditional design practice is a good
start, but companies developing leading a narrow, upstream activity to a broad
sustainable design practices are recognizing that process with complex considerations and a
success in sustainable design involves going steps wider set of participants. It is reframing
beyond that. As they begin to pursue sustainable what design is and who does it.
design, they recognize that many functions
shape design options and choices. Focusing narrowly on an “upstream” design phase overlooks the
ways that many functions shape the sustainability of the final product and that blind spots between
different parts of the organization undermine and impede sustainability opportunities.
This report outlines the “sustainable design Companies create lasting value through
intelligence” needed for an organization to design
better products and create lasting business and
sustainable design by managing across the
customer value. Case studies from apparel, functions and life-cycle phases that shape
furniture and cleaning product companies the sustainability of the final product.
highlight how and why organizational
development takes place to share product innovation ideas, establish a durable business case and
coordinate around designs across life-cycle phases of production.
The A-B-C-D framework in this report breaks sustainability intelligence down into four behaviors,
which make design an area of dynamic organizational learning and interest:
• Assessing material impacts of projects and design capacity in an
organization
Assess Bridge
• Bridging functions and people to make valuable, tractable product
redesigns
• Creating generative internal and external learning projects
• Diffusing lessons and accountability mechanisms that build literacy Create Diffuse
and affect better decision making around the organization
This framework equips companies to address various questions, such as:
• What communication capacities do we need to support sustainability analyses?
• How can designers work with sustainability experts to improve products?
• How can corporate responsibility managers effectively engage the design process to advance the
sustainability of products?
Questions like these highlight the importance in sustainable design of breaking down barriers and
creating cross-functional innovations. In design practice sustainability requires a merging of logics
and tools to enable people to recognize and integrate sustainability factors into product
specifications. In the broader design function it requires expanding coordination channels, creating
feedback communication among groups to develop opportunities and establishing accountability for
design sustainability.
For this reason, leading companies are transitioning

away from a “pipeline” model of product development, “Integrative product design” helps
in which groups throw and receive designs “over a
wall” without understanding the upstream and
companies develop sustainable design
downstream implications. The alternative, more intelligence and spur innovation.
“integrative product design” process featured in this
report draws together disconnected groups and helps them strategize development of the
competencies needed to improve products. It empowers eyes and ears around the organization to
identify and manage sustainability issues emerging on the horizon.
Taking these steps is helping companies not only

to design more sustainable products today, but also
helping them recognize how sustainability can be
Sustainable design is a challenge and
fluid, contextual and evolutionary. Following (and opportunity to build smarter, nimbler,
repeating) the A-B-C-D process of assessing, more sustainable innovation capabilities.
bridging, creating and diffusing helps companies
accumulate the knowledge and (re)design aptitude they need to stay ahead of sustainability concerns
and to make product changes as the world around them changes. It positions them to transform
sustainability into an area of continuous improvement and to build smarter, nimbler and more
sustainable innovation capabilities.
II. The Shifting Business Environment for Design
Compared to manufacturing-related environmental management, government policy and markets
have done little to spur companies to develop and organize themselves around product sustainability.
Similarly, customers have historically lacked
the will and the tools to make sustainability Box 1. Product Life Cycles and Sustainable Design
a robust part of their product purchasing A product life-cycle view is one that considers the
choices. sustainability of a product across all stages of
production and consumption — from its origins to its
As a result, many companies still rely on a end as a desirable service. The stage commonly
traditional design mode that lacks adequate treated as a point of origin is product development,
communication infrastructure to help the where initial marketing and product planning take
company learn to design more sustainably. place. The start of physical activity is the material
In this mode responsibilities for product production phase, in which resources for making
products are harvested. The next stage, when
sustainability are unclear because different
needed, is material processing, which converts
functional units that shape the final design resources into feedstocks. The product fabrication
of a product have not yet developed the phase then turns these input materials into finished
capacity to assess how their choices have goods. From there products enter distribution
social and environmental dimensions. In networks that support customer transactions, after
addition, these functions tend to receive and which the consumer use phase begins. Products stay
pass work through the design process or with the user until a consumer deems its service no
“funnel” with little knowledge or even longer useful and moves to get rid of it. At this point,
end-of-life disposition determines whether a product
awareness of any sustainability initiatives
is reused, recycled or dissipated. In a continuous,
that others are undertaking. In short, when cradle-to-cradle cycle, end-of-life processes feed into
parts of companies lack sustainability another cycle of development.
awareness, coordination bridges and
measurement tools, they miss leading As depicted, life-cycle planning links all of these
innovation opportunities and critical phases into the design function of the organization.
business issues emerging on the horizon. The result is a need to think about sustainability for
each stage of activity and across the life cycle(s) of a
product.
Today the business and regulatory climate is
changing. New stakeholder and investor delivery &
demands are extending business transaction
responsibility beyond the operational distribution

consumer
use
“fenceline” to products and the value chains
that produce them. The diverse set of risks
and opportunities that now confront
companies make consideration of product product end-of-life
fabrication
environmental and social impacts in design design handling
more than a nice thing to do. Increasingly,

it is becoming a matter of remaining
relevant and viable in domestic and global material
economies. Trends suggest that being processing development
inattentive to product sustainability is material

starting to cause business disruptions, loss of production
market share and sully brands. A slew of

product recalls and global debates about
product toxicity have begun to accelerate this trend by spurring calls for new regulatory frameworks
that look across a product’s life cycle. At the same time, those at the vanguard of sustainable product
design are seeing customer loyalty and product margins increase concomitantly with enhanced
innovation capacity and employee satisfaction.
A. Drivers for More Sustainable Design

A variety of regulatory and non-regulatory drivers are beginning to form a new governance paradigm
around product sustainability. To address product social and environmental life-cycle impacts, these
drivers are generating attention toward the product design function in companies as a focus of
sustainability-based reforms.
1. More regulation. The European Union has demonstrated that governments can and will
tackle sustainability issues through product regulation. Directives passed in 2003 have
extended producer responsibility to end-of-life management for Waste Electrical and
Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and required the Restriction on Hazardous Substances
(RoHS) in products for six chemicals so far. The Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and
Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) directive in Europe that came into effect in July 2007 is a
chemical screening regulation that has the potential to extend restrictions to additional
substances and product types.1
While these directives have global effect just by governing access to sizeable European
markets, it is worth noting that other states have followed suit. For example, China has its
own RoHS directive, and efforts underway in California to address data, safety and
technology gaps in chemical regulations have the potential to ripple through supply chains.2
This emerging set of regulations requires new capacities to communicate about sustainable
materials internally and in supply chains.
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2. Global product recalls. A little over six years ago Dutch officials gave Sony an unpleasant
holiday surprise by blocking import of PlayStation modules due to cables with excessively
high cadmium levels. Numerous times in the last year, similar events have occurred. The
rising tide of recalls in the United States included flagship toy brands like Barbie and rising
stars like Thomas the Tank Engine. The unappetizing string of events in the food industry
included melamine found in pet food and the largest-ever meat recall when beef from ailing
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cattle entered the food stream. Product composition audits are on the rise, particularly as
integrated product regulations go into effect (see number 1), and are increasing the cost of
ignorance about upstream material choices.
3. Innovations by competitors and in supply chains. For companies trying to differentiate

their products as green(er), a widening set of eco-labels and green marketing approaches offer
opportunities to build connections to customers. But even for those not positioned to follow
the marketing mega-trend, there are the sustainability initiatives of retail juggernauts like Wal-
Mart and Marks & Spencer, which are reshaping products in their supply chains. The
combined effects of greener customer interest and supply chain eco-discipline are making
product sustainability no longer a market niche, but rather a matter of market access.
4. Demand for product transparency. Missing an eco-label may not be a company’s biggest
problem. Consumers remain skeptical of green marketing but are willing to shun products
based on negative information about their production methods, sustainability ethics and
product claims.5 A growing number of organizations are developing online resources and
researching handheld device applications to help consumers learn what is lurking beneath the
surface of some of their favorite brands. For example, the Environmental Working Group’s
Skin Deep database offers consumers the opportunity to query details about the contents of
personal care and cosmetics products (www.cosmeticsdatabase.com). Another consortium is
producing an Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) to help users
procure greener electronics (www.epeat.net), and ventures like The New American Dream or
National Geographic’s The Green Guide (www.thegreenguide.com) are rallying around the
idea of helping consumers search for products based on sustainability evaluations.
5. Product boycotts and media campaigns. If past success is any indication, then expect activist
NGOs to continue targeting companies at various points in the supply chain to green products
and production. Product boycotts organized by pro-forest sustainability networks have
succeeded in shifting the practices of lumber companies, timber retailers and office supply
manufacturers. Anti-sweatshop campaigns have stimulated unprecedented transparency in
global apparel supply chains. And dogged campaigns against e-waste are driving electronics
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companies to make life-cycle impacts part of their product design processes.
B. Opportunities for Sustainable (Re)Design

Beyond managing risk or pressures from external parties, sustainable design offers a variety of
opportunities to prosper. Companies can gain access to markets, increase market share, reduce or
avoid compliance costs, and more easily attract investor capital. There are also positive ripple effects
related to product performance, cleaner production, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty,
employee morale, and community relations. These opportunities provide the business case for
sustainable product design — the way to strengthen a company’s position and produce benefits for
the bottom line.
1. Better product performance through improved resource efficiency. Learning how to do

more with less has the potential to spill over into better product performance and greater
customer value. Consider the case of semiconductors and electronics. Designs that improve
energy efficiency decrease direct energy use. They also decrease the thermal cycling that
degrades microchips over time, reduce the active ventilation demands in downstream
electronic products like computers, and lessen the energy needed for space conditioning
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where the equipment is used. The cascade multiplies improvements in product value.
2. Strengthened market position. Consumer appetite for sustainability shows signs of

increasing. Sustainability is now more readily associated with higher product quality,
products less likely to cause consumer harm, and products that consumers can feel better
about using.8 These associations make sustainable design a way to align with emerging
consumer interests and to improve customer satisfaction and retention, provided that
sustainability improvements are credible and clearly communicated.9
Sustainable design may also protect corporate value and reputation by reducing risk of
operating crises (e.g., recalls, consumer campaigns, supply chain resilience, labor concerns).
The combination has potential to broaden market access as well as to strengthen your brand
and existing customer relationships.
3. Improved compliance and preparedness. It has become a matter of course that companies
will strive to comply with environmental laws, but the legal landscape continues to change.
An active program in sustainable design not only helps a company meet the obligations of
current environmental laws; it may also avoid the need to operate emission controls or to pay
for hazardous waste treatment, as well as create resources that help the company stay aware of
and prepare for future legal requirements.10
4. Greater acumen and agility. In addition to streamlining regulatory review and costs, a
sustainable design program may improve communication flows and enable a company to
plan and manage complexity more effectively. For example, product leasing or product take-
back as part of a sales contract can alert a company to a customer’s interest in another
purchase. These strategies may increase operating efficiency, reduce business costs and
improve technological agility.
5. Serendipitous innovation. Many companies that undertake sustainability audits of their

product lines identify opportunities for innovation. Some of these innovations emerge
because investigations discover unnecessary complexity that adds costs, such as an
unnecessarily diverse variety of materials going into products. Others come from dialogues
with suppliers, customers and stakeholders that identify better-performing, cost-improving
options and overlooked customer needs.
6. Improved morale and productivity. Closely related to innovation potential, sustainability

initiatives may bolster employees’ satisfaction at work and encourage them to communicate
insights and suggestions for improvement. Employee-driven design can be highly effective
because their intimate knowledge of processes and products is a source of detailed, practical
insights.
The overall point is that product sustainability is emerging as a significant new area for corporate
management. However, the set of attributes that make a product sustainable are still unclear because
accountability structures that reward a firm or hold it responsible for product sustainability are still
forming. In today’s climate it is hard to say where opportunity exists or how soon pressure about the
sustainability of products will turn into a business crisis. The likelihood is that, sooner or later,
inattention to social or environmental impacts will drive a product boycott, block the sale of a
product into advantageous supply chains or markets, or make it hard to attract talent and capital. In
this sense, managing product sustainability extends beyond strategic positioning to prudent
management across a corporate brand.
C. The Challenge: Evolution of Design Intelligence

Product sustainability is more than producing different kinds of products. It is about a different way
of thinking about and making products. But how does a company incorporate sustainability
concerns into its design function, as illustrated in Figure 1?
Figure 1. The Shift to Sustainable Design
Performance
Performance
Social Environmental
new risks and Impacts Impacts
opportunities Sustainable
Design Design
Cost Schedule
Cost Schedule
This question is important, given the nature of sustainability as an unfolding theoretical ideal.
Despite impressive advances, no company can claim yet to offer a truly sustainable product. What
leading companies are achieving now is an ability to continue evolving their design capabilities so
that, as the world around them changes, their abilities to develop more sustainable products can
improve along with it.
Consequently, it’s important to emphasize that designing sustainably is an ongoing learning

process that makes flexibility and adaptability crucial to success. There are already a wide variety of
frameworks available to help companies think about what product sustainability should look like
(Appendix A). An important challenge is developing the organizational capacity to absorb these
evolving insights and to integrate them into a company’s design function.
There are many launching points for sustainable design.

The case studies in this report demonstrate that Sustainable Pilot Project Examples
companies designing more sustainable products get • Single Product Redesign: Nike
started in different ways and take different development creates the Considered Boot. Herman
paths. Some companies have thoroughly redesigned Miller designs its Mirra Chair to
implement a cradle-to-cradle
flagship products, approach.
A sustainable design launched new product
• New Product Line Launch: Clorox
journey has many lines, or invested in launches its Green Works line of
tackling individual natural cleaning products.
launching points. issues applicable to all • Advancing an Aspect of All
their products. Some Products: SC Johnson develops a
have leaped forward through commitments made at the chemical screening Greenlist to shift
top of their organizations. Others have progressed choices toward more sustainable
materials.
gradually in the background as practitioners
concurrently built sustainable design capacity and
business cases. The clear point is that, shaped by different product circumstances and design
functions, companies take different approaches to developing sustainable design intelligence. All of
these approaches can work effectively to improve sustainability and strengthen products.
The framework in this report is generalized from the experiences of several companies. Built from an
organizational development perspective, this ABCD framework describes the process of building
sustainable design capacity into four components — Assessing, Bridging, Creating and Diffusing —
and provides examples to help companies envision it. This framework explains that “sustainable
design intelligence” consists of abilities to:
• Assess material impacts of projects and the design capacity in the organization
• Bridge the right functions and people to make valuable, tractable change
• Create internal and external learning projects
• Diffuse lessons and accountability mechanisms that affect better decision making around the
organization
Leading firms are developing these abilities to deliver real sustainability results, create credible
consumer value and improve business acumen.
Assess Bridge Create Diffuse
Of course, tackling all these challenges simultaneously can make it hard to pick a place to begin —
that is, to identify a particular issue to tackle or a particular kind of product to (re)design as a
starting point. Acknowledging this challenge, Paul Murray shared pragmatic insight based on
experiences at Herman Miller: there is no single promising place to start this process. The important
thing is simply to pick a tractable spot and begin taking meaningful steps forward.
David Rinard, Director of Global

Environmental Performance at Steelcase, offers a “The challenge of sustainability is
similar sentiment. As he explains, there are broad enough that there is no one
challenges no matter where an organization
starts. At the top it is the challenge of justifying
right place to start. The important
resources. At the bottom there is a need for part is just to start somewhere. So,
literacy and insight about how to turn ideas into just pick a location and dig in.”
practice. In the end, innovators just have to start
somewhere. - Paul Murray, EHS Director and product
sustainability innovator at Herman Miller Inc.
The ABCD model is designed to help companies
do this.
III. Innovation in Design Practice
Design is increasingly being viewed as a critical enabling component for sustainability because the
design function is a concentration point for decisions about a large set of human and material
resource flows. Design specifications can have significant economic, environmental and social ripple
effects. For example, design specifications for an American running shoe can impact communities
and ecosystems in Southeast Asia. Formulations for personal care products and pharmaceuticals can
impact the biochemistry in downstream watersheds.
Additionally, design can have a large impact on the

materialization or dematerialization of products.
Design choices about material weight and packaging
have direct impacts on transport costs and fuel use.
Choices about energy efficiency directly impact energy
consumption in a product’s use phase. And choices
about durability, disassembly or re-usability affect the
technological challenges and economics of product
recovery.
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These points are well established as arguments for sustainable design. What has been less discussed
is how to marry a sustainability perspective with the practice of design and innovation. The
challenge is that design practice is values-agnostic by intent. The same methods that can be used to
design positive sustainability programs, such as an effective healthcare program for HIV prevention,
or to design in ways that contribute to sustainability problems, such as enhancing the appeal of
inefficient transportation like SUVs. Good design is generally judged based on its ability to meet a
need. The challenge is developing frameworks that allow people to design with the needs of
sustainability in mind. Addressing this challenge requires more than adding new tools to a designer’s
toolkit. It requires bringing sustainability into the ethos of design.
Following are ways in which sustainability can be integrated into practice in a way that meshes
systematically with the way that designers design.
1. Marry “Human Factors” and “Systems Thinking” in Design Analysis. Leading firms like
IDEO have built design and innovation practice rooted in an understanding of the latent
needs and desires of people. Dubbed the “human factors” aspect of design, a key objective of
designers is to systematically and empathetically integrate human behavioral needs in design.
For this reason, design is carried out by multidisciplinary project teams — with engineers,
industrial designers, anthropologists and business experts all participating in “design.” A
multi-disciplinary approach based on human behavior and needs assessment provides a key
opportunity for linkage to sustainability concerns.
Here is how. Sustainability thinking often takes a systems approach to problems to account
for and chronicle the complex intertwining of resource, social and economic ecosystems.
However, this approach often fails to provide a clear map for changing that system.
For example, replacing one resource-intensive or polluting material with another is not
enough to create real change. Creating a shirt from organic cotton and sustainably harvested
bamboo does not automatically produce positive behavioral change if consumers do not
understand and/or buy the product. Likewise, eliminating toxics and reducing water
consumption in electronics manufacturing are necessary and laudable efforts, but they are
likely to be missed opportunities if they are not considered in the context of how they can be
made meaningful or desirable to users.
Consequently, a powerful component of

sustainable design thinking is the human- CASE STUDY: Pangea Organics
factor approach, which extends traditional One of IDEO’s early projects was for
sustainable design thinking (e.g., life-cycle Pangea Organics, then a 4-year-old
bodycare product company — small in size
analyses and resource assessments). It links
and with limited distribution. Pangea was in
sustainability thinking with important need of an identity and brand language that
questions about how elegant, positive would increase demand while embracing the
technical solutions can be linked with sustainability and organic living philosophies
human interests. upon which the company was founded. After
a deep dive into understanding the
company’s and its customers’ core values,
Linking human-factor and systems-thinking IDEO defined Pangea’s brand principles.
approaches is the new facet of design that These were translated into a full identity
sustainability is bringing to light. The guideline and brand story, which were then
used in sustainable packaging design for 35
combination expands the number of factors
products — including a compostable bar
to evaluate and incorporate into a product soap box inspired by egg cartons and made
design but also increases the opportunity for from 100% post-consumer content. Pangea
synergy and breakthrough innovation. The Organics’ renewed retail presence quickly
challenge is determining when and how to resulted in a tripling of its product
distribution and numerous design awards.
consider the viewpoints of internal and
external stakeholders in a many layered Source: IDEO (2007)
ecosystem.
The important point is that it reinforces what has been the longstanding definition of
effective design practice: finding inspiration in a complex space, establishing reasonable
constraints to guide choices, and crafting solutions that resonate with users. What the
marriage of approaches underscores is the importance of multi-disciplinary teams and cross-
functional organizations. These are elements of an integrative design process (an approach
discussed in detail in Section IV).
2. Select Tools to Match the Task. Design and sustainability are broad domains and a wide
set of techniques have been developed to guide work in them (Appendix A). A challenge in
sustainable design is choosing the technique that fits the task at hand, given the need to
balance rigor with cost-effectiveness. Consequently, designers may need to scale tools to fit
their budget constraints. Consider this set of options:
a. Option One: Full life-cycle assessment (LCA). A comprehensive LCA combined with
stakeholder feedback can offer valuable insights for design and increase the credibility of
a sustainability claim. It is a resource-intensive undertaking, but a very useful technique
for marrying systems-thinking with human-centered sustainable design.
b. Option Two: Simplified LCA. While the insights from a full LCA may always be
desirable, its magnitude can run aground on time- and resource-intensity. A simplified
LCA is an alternative worth considering. It enables a designer to see and understand
some impacts of design choices at a more modest cost.
c. Option Three: Basic Material Assessment. At the low end of the cost scale is a simple
material assessment, such as an activity-based costing of material alternatives. While less
comprehensive than an LCA, it can help designers coarsely understand and assess
impacts of their design choices. It is a minimum standard of review that any sustainable
design should establish.
The selection of the most appropriate tool may depend upon where a company is in the
design process. For instance, when redesigning a desk chair to be more environmentally
sound, questions at the early stages regarding dematerialization and lightness may serve as
inspiration for a new aesthetic approach that can refresh a well-known brand. But as the
chair’s design becomes increasingly resolved, designers also must ask questions as specific as
“what finish shall be specified for this screw?” Answer to the early questions may be resolved
using a basic material assessment, while the later question requires a detailed analysis like a
full LCA.
3. Allow Unintuitive Approaches. It is important to keep in mind that traditional designers

generally dislike following checklists or manuals. Their forte is to envision, prototype and
iterate on projects. Accordingly, establishing conditions that facilitate creativity is an
important step to inspiring design innovations and could lead to a product breakthrough.
One way to feed designers’ curiosity is to raise awareness about sustainability with inspiring
speakers, books or experiences. The process may be unintuitive in some areas of practice, but
it is a common approach in design for introducing new considerations and inspiring
alternative ideas.
4. Anticipate Unintended Consequences. Consideration of the system and its users is a

critical expansion of the design process because it helps deal with one of the major pitfalls of
designing for sustainability: the law of unintended consequences. Just because a product is
bio-based, for example, does not mean it is superior to a synthetic product in terms of
environmental performance, since it may be more toxic or resource intensive to produce.
While some outcomes are unpredictable or unknowable until after the fact, the broad reach
of sustainability encourages us to “know what we do not know.” That is, it reinforces the
importance of a multidisciplinary approach as a way to forestall myopia and groupthink, and
it encourages secondary investigations to revisit and revise assumptions.
5. Focus on Staying Dynamic. Design. Sustainability. Both are words of continually evolving
meaning and understanding. As global pressures around natural resources, energy and
stakeholder concerns increasingly alter the business landscape of product-based companies,
more and more companies will make lofty requests of their designers. The landscape will
differ for every company and the answers will rarely be static over time. Increasingly, design
may be an effective approach not only for creating products, but for solving dynamic
problems with unconventional means.
IV. Re-envisioning the Design Function
“Design for Sustainability” frameworks and tools
provide important insights for thinking about the
outcomes or analytical processes of designing
Organizational adaptations are
sustainably. What they rarely discuss are the needed to bring sustainable design
adaptations associated with bringing sustainable into practice in business organizations.
design into practice in business organizations. This
oversight is notable given that product sustainability:
• Extends traditional product relationships into new life-cycle phases, such as upstream
sourcing and downstream recovery
• Requires a wider range of factors to be considered in product design and management, such
as eco-toxicity, recyclability or renewability, many of which lie outside the expertise of
traditional designers and product managers
An often overlooked detail is the impact of these changes on the nature and organization of the
design function. Sustainable design informed by a life-cycle perspective can reveal that:
• A wide range of organizational functions and teams are shaping the design and, thus,
sustainability performance of a product
• Creating the intelligence to design sustainably requires stronger capacity to communicate
and coordinate about sustainability within and between many functional units and
occupational groups, both within the organization and in its supply chain
Sustainable design requires more than an addition of new tools in an early life-cycle phase of
production (i.e., the upstream “design” phase). Rather, sustainable design is comprised of tasks
distributed around the company and, as a result, is a broad organizational function.
To see how this is so, consider the range of activities that might be needed to improve product
sustainability. Relevant tasks might include (to name a few):
• Social and environmental responsibility analysis

• Applied research and development
• Brand and product strategy
• Aesthetic and product service conceptualization
• Product line management and merchandising
• Production planning, procurement and supply chain management
• Marketing
• Reverse logistics and recycling
People performing these tasks may be industrial designers, engineering designers, fashion designers,
technology developers, architects, technical writers, brand managers, manufacturing staff,
merchandisers, planners and consultants who hold titles like designer, engineer, biologist,
anthropologist, writer, chemist, marketer, manager, etc. Their design interactions may take place
during research and development, materials production, material processing or product fabrication.
When packaging is taken into account, design may It is important to treat the many
also include distribution and marketing around
customer transactions. The important thing to note
groups shaping the final product
is that, traditionally, these groups have not all been as part of the design process.
treated as parts of the design process.
As model of the design process, the “design funnel” illustrates how a diverse set of sustainability
activities reshapes the design process (Figure 2). The funnel is a linear representation of design as a
process of increasingly specifying product characteristics. The process begins with concepts, where
design is a blank slate. As strategies narrow, concepts are refined into schematics to inform
prototyping and, eventually, manufacture of goods. These “forward life-cycle” stages of production
culminate in the packaging of a product for the marketplace and its being put into use.
The circles in Figure 2 represent the range of choices at each stage of production and that the people
involved — whether they wear the hats of designers or are manufacturing engineers, merchandisers,
marketers, etc. — have the capacity to impact the design and, thus, the performance of the final
product.
Figure 2. Sustainability and the Design Funnel
concept
increasing specificity
schematics
goods
product
performance
sustainability
metrics
sustainability
goals
sustainability
framework
forward
advancement
in the product
life cycle
The usefulness of the design funnel is its ability to represent design as an ongoing aspect of
production. Decisions made by a range of experts and functions are involved in making a final
product, and this ongoing effort makes it difficult to think of design as something undertaken only
by “designers” in an early life-cycle phase. For example, interaction among designers, production
staff and marketing staff can be an important step in aligning greener options, such as more natural
or biodegradable products, with customer value and making the business case for a sustainable
product advance. Likewise, collaboration among technology researchers, product line planners and
procurement staff can be important for connecting upstream with the supply base to learn about and
source alternative materials to make a product more natural or biodegradable.
The point is that sustainable design may require coordination among conventionally
unconnected parts of the organization. It requires that:
• Companies think about how people in different parts of the organization need to coordinate
with one another
• A company is able, as an organization, to coordinate about product sustainability across
phases of the life cycle
The design funnel also helps illustrate how different assessment techniques may be needed to
enhance decision making at different parts of the process. In the initial phases of design, a broad
sustainability framework may be the right tool for steering the direction of product development. As
concepts resolve and product designs progress down the design funnel, frameworks may need to
evolve into more detailed goals to integrate sustainability into decision making about the function,
form and composition of the product. At various points in the process, but particularly as later-stage
production choices are made, individuals and groups may need metrics that help evaluate the
sustainability performance of a design and choose alternatives.
A. The Design Pipeline: A Challenge for Sustainability Learning

Given the need for coordination, a stumbling block for sustainable design can be the efficiency of a
company’s design funnel. A “design pipeline” is a particularly efficient way to organize in the design
funnel, but it can impede a company’s ability to design sustainably. Why?
To increase efficiency, many companies have organized groups in a kind of design funnel that
functionally specializes and sequences activities. What makes a funnel into a pipeline is the
separation of activities into stages and distribution of responsibilities among them (see Figure 3 on
next page).
A design pipeline facilitates sustainable design only if an organization already has ample knowledge
about and clarity around what sustainability is and who should design with it in mind. That means
that people already know who is responsible for sustainability and how to achieve success. Given the
rapid evolution of sustainability in theory and practice, it is unlikely that most companies have this
foresight. Without it, a design pipeline is going to cause problems.
As a result, companies developing sustainable design programs need communication bandwidth

and cross-linkages across their design funnels that enable them, as organizations, to learn how
to design sustainably. This cross-linked approach is an “integrative” style of product design (which
is described on page 19) and it is valuable for developing a company’s sustainability intelligence.
Figure 3. The Design Funnel and the Communication-Limited Pipeline
concept
increasing specificity
schematics
goods
design
funnel
product
performance
sustainability
metrics
sustainability
goals
sustainability
framework
forward
advancement
in the product
life cycle
pipeline
design
product product product product

conceptualization specification fabrication marketing
often missing
or insufficient
channels
Like any design funnel, the purpose of the pipeline is to whittle down choices
and to move products from early-stage strategies to finished, marketable wares. business
The problem is that the limited feedback in a design pipeline impedes learning strategists
across stages because products are handed off from one group to another. This
distinction is particularly problematic when specialists are separated enough that
they throw specifications “over the wall” from one stage to the next and, aesthetic
consequently, are not knowledgeable about the processes and the choices that the designers
next group makes. Without ample feedforward and feedback communication, the
design funnel lacks the learning infrastructure needed to identify sustainability-
related design risks and opportunities. product line
managers
Some companies, such as global apparel retailer Gap Inc., are recognizing the
challenges that a design pipeline can pose during the transition to sustainability.
Consider how the company’s design funnel works. Gap’s design process begins at production
a broad level with corporate managers, who develop a brand strategy. Then each teams
season fashion designers conceptualize and create designs that they present to
internal merchandisers or “buyers.” These buyers review the design collections
and shape the product lines that will ultimately be sold in the company’s retail marketing
stores. Once the merchandising team has settled on the collection, it hands off teams
product specifications to production teams, who then work with Gap’s sourcing
offices around the world to identify third-party contract factories that have the
right capabilities to make the products. At times, merchandising and production may need to review
and adapt various product details in order to meet budget targets, schedules and performance
requirements. At the same time, marketing teams are working to create the overall marketing
message(s) for each season, which includes both product packaging and in-store messaging. At each
stage in this process, product specifications may be adapted or tweaked, changing material contents,
quantities and qualities. These changes can include the addition or subtraction of non-toxic dyes,
organic fabrics, reduced packaging concepts, greener labels or more durable materials.
For a company like Gap Inc., a pipeline organization can produce challenges to implementing
sustainability initiatives. Without appropriate tools and communication channels, sustainability-
advancing choices made at one stage can be modified in another to align them with each team’s
goals, occupational knowledge and the principles they use to strategize and make decisions. The
result can be blindness to and unintentional undermining of sustainability opportunities.
In evaluating a design funnel, there are two important obstacles to consider in order to design
sustainably across the product life cycle:
business
• Pipeline Blindness: Where does limited purview in the design strategists
funnel leave participants blind to the sustainability impacts of
blind
their products? Without integrative mechanisms that help spot
designers understand the goals, methodologies or change
aesthetic
capacities of their counterparts in other functions and stages of the designers
process, they miss opportunities to change components, modify
content or creatively solve a need.
undermining choice
• Undermining Sustainability Advances: In the design funnel, do product line
managers
participants unknowingly block or undo each other’s sustainability
initiatives? Without ways to measure and communicate product
sustainability throughout the design process, upstream and
downstream groups may be undermining sustainable designs. For production
example, upstream efforts to improve recyclability can be teams
overturned if cost management during production substitutes

cheaper fasteners or materials without conferring about the
changes. Similarly, downstream efforts to improve eco-efficiency marketing
can be constrained if upstream designers perpetuate resource- teams
intensive product specifications.
While much of the sustainable design literature focuses on enabling knowledge and techniques, the
coordination challenges that companies face from pipeline design suggests that redeveloping
communication infrastructure is an important part of building sustainability intelligence. When
there is little infrastructure linking stages (i.e., communication channels, technology and objectives),
it can be very hard for people to identify and cooperate with the sustainability programs of each
other. This limitation also means that innovators may miss viable opportunities because they sit in a
difficult spot to communicate about them. For example, product designers lack the vantage to spot
key issues that corporate social responsibility (CSR) managers often have. Likewise, CSR
practitioners who understand emerging issues often sit in a challenging position to engage in product
design.
An important part of the journey toward sustainable design is organizational learning about these
obstacles and actions taken to overcome them. To develop sustainability intelligence, successful
companies have created new mechanisms that bridge participants in design. These steps have been
an important part of the corporate learning processes and key contributors to success.
B. Integrative Product Design: An Alternative Approach

To design better products, decision makers need to be able to identify options that are more
sustainable and to leverage organizational resources to pursue them. Doing so is difficult in a
pipeline because no functional group is adept enough to identify sustainability options and launch
innovations that systematically survive the design funnel. The reason is that pipeline organization is
based on a clear delineation and distribution of responsibilities. For sustainable design, at the onset it
is unclear what responsibilities should look like, who should have them, and how people should
communicate or work together to make product sustainability happen.
Because sustainability is still unfolding as a

product concept, successful firms are developing For Example…
more integrative product design approaches that Imagine that a company sets a goal of 20-
facilitate ongoing learning about sustainable percent recycled-material content in its
design, as well as product innovations. Integrative products. As an organization it must be able
design recognizes that sustainability is not just to:
about modifying products, but about • Identify appropriate materials to use
modifying the way that products are made. It • Develop and assure designs that can
acknowledges that it is difficult to establish accommodate them
sustainable design responsibilities upfront and • Procure the selected materials
distribute them efficiently among people • Market them based on this recycled
traditionally involved in design. Because of these content attribute (if desired)
challenges, integrative design creates new channels Because no one functional group has been
of communication and coordination that enable in charge of or literate about all of these
learning across groups. It offers a transition path activities, the ability to execute toward a
that helps designers learn to identify sustainability goal like 20-percent recycled content
options and to launch innovations that traverse requires new means of internal and external
coordination.
the design funnel.
One of the keys to integrated design is recognizing the wide variety of organizational actors whose
decisions impact the sustainability of a final product. Integrative design draws them together into a
learning-oriented dialogue about product sustainability across the product life cycle (see Figure 4 on
next page). This organization puts tools in people’s hands that enable them to consider and
communicate about sustainability concepts and options across functions that can shape the design of
the final product.
Figure 4. Integrative Product Design as an Inclusive Life-Cycle Process
As depicted at left, integrative

production product design connects
teams participants around the life
cycle and in ongoing learning
product line marketing loops throughout the design
managers staff
process.
It represents a reflective
design process that
encourages ongoing learning
designers
product end-of-life and innovation.
managers
design Participants in this process
need to build their literacy
about sustainability, as well as
to increase their awareness of
the entire design process. To
business
CSR depict this need, the circle
strategists
managers around each group mimics the
learning cycle in the overall
R&D diagram.
staff
Companies moving toward product sustainability are using integrative design to help them get there.
In the case of Gap Inc., the company recognized the organizational challenges inherent in sustainable
design and introduced cross-functional learning mechanisms to enhance its design function.
Following a series of discussions with a sustainability team, the head of design in one brand called a
meeting of functional heads to talk about product sustainability. This meeting led to monthly
meetings among representatives from design, merchandising, production, marketing, planning,
finance, store operations and social responsibility to discuss the opportunities that sustainability
could present to the brand. As the team began to work through conceptual and practical issues, it
developed cross-functional subteams. These subteams have explored ways to use more sustainable
materials in garments, to improve product packaging and store operations, and to communicate the
sustainability attributes of the brand’s product and business operations to its customers. What is
notable about this cross-functional collaboration is that the brand first stepped back to assess its
capacity and took steps to bridge functions, create a pilot project, and diffuse and share lessons across
the different teams.
C. The A-B-C-D Framework: A Guide for Developing Sustainable Design
Intelligence
Despite differences in their products and starting points, successful companies are building a similar
sustainability intelligence into their design process. This intelligence consists of abilities to assess,
bridge, create and diffuse sustainable design competencies.
The ability to analyze the social and environmental impacts of

Assess products and production and to evaluate organizational capacity to
address them.
The ability to connect ready parties and to bring the right

Bridge functions and the right people together to redesign products.
The ability to generate projects that enable exploration and

Create learning about product sustainability and about changes needed to
the design process.
The ability to deploy tools that build literacy, put information in
Diffuse the hands of the right people in the right place and time, and create
accountability for product outcomes.
This new organizational intelligence is needed because sustainability introduces a range of factors
into organizations that lie outside the expertise of people traditionally called designers. As a result,
sustainable design is not just about making better products, but about developing the capacity
of the organization to make better products. It means increasing the sustainability intelligence of
an organization and making sustainability a systematic part of the design process. It is about re-
envisioning design, not just following a marketing mega-trend, since approaching sustainability in a
one-off manner runs the risk of missing opportunities and of sustainability-related consumer
boycotts.
Leading organizations developing their sustainable design intelligence are doing so by building
communication infrastructure that enables sustainability learning and coordination throughout the
design funnel. This integrative design model is a way for companies to explore relationships
between sustainability and functions throughout their design funnels. There are a few reasons
for companies to adopt an integrative approach:
• Sustainability is still evolving as a concept and companies need to be in a position to assess
how issues are becoming material to their operations
• Companies recognize sustainability issues with different parts of their organizations and need
robust communication channels to bring these insights into the design process
• At the onset of a new sustainability issue, it is often unclear what design responsibilities
should look like, who should have them, and how people should communicate or work
together to make product sustainability happen
The A-B-C-D model helps companies recognize different challenges, as well as think about
sustainable design as a process of organizational development (see Figure 5 on next page). It
represents a process of discovery that cuts across company experiences and applies throughout the
journey toward sustainability.
Figure 5. The A-B-C-D Model as a Flow Chart
Is this issue material for our products?
Yes No
• What aspects of sustainability are
What is our performance? Can we Under what conditions material for our products?
manage these life-cycle impacts? will it be?
Explore with stakeholder and • What is our current level of

Yes No performance in these areas?
supply chain partnerships.
Build literacy and • Who is literate in sustainability and

Do we have internal literacy
integrate new tools. willing to re-envision design?
and traction for redesign? No
Establish accountability.
Yes
At the corporate Among dept or With design • Where is corporate policy change
executive level group managers practitioners needed to bridge functions?
Is a policy or organizational • Where will cross-functional teaming

change the next step? overcome strategic blind spots?
Yes Is a partnership or cross-

No
functional team possible? • Should we make new staff
assignments or hire new specialists?
Need new division of
responsibilities or staff?
Yes No
Yes No
• Will a pilot project explore a new
Explore other product or revise a current one?
Draft strategic What project(s)
opportunities for
plan and policy can we launch?
partnerships. • Should we develop a new line or a
new protocol for all products?
Launch a new Redesign an Improve aspect(s)

product line existing product of all products • Where will internal/external
partnerships identify and fix gaps?
Do we have lessons to diffuse across product lines?

• What kinds of information are
Yes No needed to advance sustainable design?
Do we need organizational Do we need new
Yes Yes
or design process change? information tools? • What kinds of tools are capable of
delivering this information?
No No
Is (re)training needed • How should we build and transfer

Yes
to diffuse lessons? these tools in our organization?
Revisit sustainability strategy and accountability.
Assessment is the ability to analyze the social and environmental impacts of
products and production, as well as to evaluate organizational capacity to
Assess address them. It recognizes that individuals and organizations benefit from figuring
out where they are and it helps them to chart a course.
Sustainability frameworks tend to discuss only assessment of product performance to understand

impacts and prioritize actions to mitigate them. However, to enable sustainability learning,
companies also need to assess their sustainability competency and preparedness to move
forward as an organization. For some issues and product aspects, organizational capacity may be
patchy. It may be easier or more difficult to launch pilot projects because of the literacy, interest and
resources available.
To be helpful, an effective assessment should help to identify:

• Sustainability issues material to a company’s products and how its products perform on them
• Where these issues occur in the product life cycle
• Where there is organizational capacity (i.e., the knowledge, skills and interest) to act
meaningfully and valuably to address them
The assessment should not only evaluate the performance of a product at each life-cycle phase; it
should also help a company understand how its organization affects design in each phase of the life
cycle and where it has capacity to (re)design for sustainability.
These insights are important for identifying capacity development needs, areas for internal alignment
and product innovation opportunities. For example, it is important to understand how upstream
strategic planners are shaping product sustainability and how downstream manufacturing managers
are altering a product’s resource footprint when they make choices to meet schedule or cost
requirements.
In all, a good assessment helps a company become more self-aware about activities across the life
cycle that shape the sustainability performance of a product. It helps an organization locate key
decision events, even if they lie outside the normal purview (e.g., in another department or a supplier
company). It provides a strong learning orientation that helps a company stay on top of issues before
they hit the news.
While assessment explores issue materiality and organizational capacity, bridging

builds connections among ready parties and brings functions together to explore
Bridge and redesign products. It develops communication channels that overcome blind
spots and prevent sustainability choices made in one part of the design funnel from
undermining initiatives in another.
There are three aspects of bridging to keep in mind:

• There are multiple kinds of bridges to build in an organization
• Different kinds of bridges may be appropriate at different times
• Bridges may be useful externally as well as internally
The bridging point for sustainable design may be at
the pinnacle, middle or base of the hierarchy, or at CASE STUDY: DEC
all three. These levels represent different approaches When Digital Equipment Corporation
to organizational change. From the top a policy or (DEC) began its design for environment
organizational change may shift resource flows, program in the mid-1990s, environmental
redistrict work domains or widely legitimize new analysts interfaced most easily with the
production engineering phase of the
product performance criteria and design goals. In the
product design process. However, waiting
middle, managers may identify blind spots and explore until that stage of the process missed
how different functions might work better together — significant opportunities to impact
an important insight for establishing value and materials assessment, energy
working through strategic opportunities and management and ergonomics cost
effectively during conceptualization. As a
implementation challenges. At the bottom, result, DEC developed new routes of
practitioners may explore ways to incorporate collaboration to bring sustainability
alternative information and choices to make different considerations into its product strategy
products. Each of these processes may involve and concept phase.
reshuffling responsibilities or creating new, cross- Source: Rooney, Frank P, 1998. “Designing
functional lines of communication. Particularly in the EHS Principles Into Digital Equipment
middle and at the base of the organization, informal Corporation Products,” Corporate
Environmental Strategy 5 (4): 18-25.
partnerships may be important routes for exploring
integration, identifying alignment opportunities and
building sustainable practice.
Bridging may be opportunistic, since active support for (re)design projects may lie in corners
of the organization. The life-cycle view of a product means that many aspects of an organization
may be affecting product performance. Each is a route into sustainable design. Staff with innovative
ideas and motivation to pursue them may be scattered among the workforce or in different pockets
around the company. (In particular, individuals in the newer generation may be committed to
sustainability and willing to carve out time beyond their direct responsibilities to get involved.)
Learning who has the capacity and interest to get started is a good way to decide whether to begin a
project with a given manufacturing group, marketing group, product development group, etc., and
whether to start at the top, middle or base of the organization.12
External and internal partnerships reinforce each other. External partnerships play a key role in
the sustainable design learning of companies. Many find that the supply base is an important source
of information about the materials they
use, as well as more sustainable alternatives.
Thought and practice leaders, such as Building cross-functional teams or learning-based
McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry coordination fora into an organization and its projects
may be an important step for sustainable design. For
(MBDC), have provided catalyzing example, in the building sector leading designers have
frameworks and insights for organizations recognized the problem that the pipeline creates. To
to leverage in their journeys. Partnerships compensate, they have expanded their charrette
with contradictory as well as cooperative (early design review) process to include a larger range
of stakeholders and specialists who can affect the
external stakeholders are important sources sustainability of the final product. The charrette helps
of learning. Research is revealing that them articulate goals and share ideas at the start of a
organizations that engage diverse partners project.
are more likely to be sustainability
13
leaders.
Creating is a third facet of sustainability intelligence. Creating is the ability to
launch generative pilot projects. That is, a successful project will provide insights to
Create advance sustainable design and create inspiration for another.
Much like the proverb that “every journey begins with a single step,” sustainable
design programs begin with pilot projects. Figure 5 calls attention to three kinds of pilot projects:
• Projects that explore changes in strategy or policy
• Projects that (re)design all or part of a product
• Projects that explore partnering relationships or organizational designs
Pilot projects vary in intensity as well. For example, some pilot projects are modest, such as an
exploration of improvement on a single sustainability factor for a single product. Others are more
aggressive, such as a complete product redesign with the goal of developing a sustainable design
protocol for all new products. The same variation might exist for a strategy or policy change or for a
partnership.
What a pilot project entails depends on the capacity and interest within a company. Its nature also
depends on the bridges that enable it. It may be a quiet project undertaken behind the scenes, or it
may be a very actively supported, highly publicized venture.
Regardless of its product objective or intensity, the goal of a pilot project should be to stimulate
learning. This learning should extend beyond lessons about the product and include discovery of
blind spots and communication gaps in the design process.
The final aspect of sustainability intelligence is diffusion. Diffusion means

developing tools and techniques that advance literacy and create accountability
Diffuse mechanisms that put sustainable design into practice. It is a matter of building
awareness about sustainability and enabling the right information to be on hand at
the right place and time. It means creating a review process to communicate about
and hold people accountable for the sustainability outcomes of the products. This may mean
improving information flow and deploying new decision tools in functions throughout the design
funnel, not just the early conceptualization and specification activities dubbed “design.” It means
creating a series of communication and evaluation tools, such as design indices, that can track the
performance of a product down the design funnel.
Diffusion can take different forms. It can involve putting tools like a sustainability calculator on a
company Intranet. As discussed in the case studies in Section V, it might involve establishing new
design rules, such as the cradle-to-cradle protocol that Herman Miller developed. It might involve
creating a centralized agent to oversee and interface throughout the design funnel, such as Nike’s
Considered Design Team, which engages participants across stages in the design process.
At the same time, companies need to improve their sustainability literacy and integrate tools that can
help decision makers and hold them accountable for prudent, value-adding choices. Sustainability
decision tools differ in sophistication and required literacy. It important to package information
into the right-sized bundles so that people in different circumstances and different levels of
understanding will be able to access and use it readily.
Using chemical screening as an example, the trade-off is between building literacy across the
organization (to expand the number of people who can evaluate chemical hazards) versus deploying
simplified tools that are more broadly accessible but less empowering for designers.
• Chemical screening tools (e.g., SAR-based analyses*) more sophisticated

more literacy required
• Databases of ranked chemicals
• Lists of restricted substances
• Catalog of approved goods less sophisticated

less literacy required
For example, a more sophisticated chemical screening tool can assess substances based on a large
number of hazard characteristics. Some tools may offer ways to aggregate scores on a variety of
endpoints (from toxicity to flammability) and give an overall hazard ranking between LOW and
HIGH. These tools are useful for performing a risk-based chemical substitution analysis. On the
other end, less sophisticated tools include catalogs of approved products, which just restrict users’
choices to products that have already gone through a sustainability screening, but do not require
users to understand dimensions of sustainability. In between there are a range of other options.
An important point is that, persistence greatly improves the diffusion of sustainable design tools
and techniques. Sustainability and corporate social responsibility professionals face resistance in new
areas of communication. It is common for practitioners to push back when asked for new
information or when encouraged to integrate new metrics into their decision processes. There are a
variety of reasons — perceived opportunity costs, transaction costs and the feeling that “it’s too hard
to change” — that are likely to make it more difficult to build sustainability intelligence.
Despite these barriers, what many leaders find is

that people are not outright opposed to “For many people associated with
sustainability, nor are the direct costs of developing products, environmental
information requests prohibitive. Rather, considerations are far removed from the
information requests often require initial learning
to make them understandable and to fit them into mainstream features that [they deem]
work routines. A parallel thing can be said about critical. … It is very easy to mistakenly
metrics. Without assuring literacy among those assume they will know, understand and
who are encouraged to use them, sustainability remember [such considerations],
metrics are likely to be limitedly integrated into
design processes or ignored altogether. The end especially when the environment is one’s
result is that sustainable design may require patient area of responsibility.”
conversations to find ways to reduce the perceived - Frank Rooney,
costs and inertia that make them hard to undertake DEC Manager of Product Stewardship
at first blush. As part of an assessment, a company
*
SAR refers to structure-activity relationships, a study of chemical behavior based on the chemical structure.
should identify the parts of its organization that are ready to explore opportunities, create pilot
projects with them and build out from there.
“Starting the Process with One Candle”
When DEC launched a product stewardship program in the 1990s, it made a pragmatic choice
when staffing its team. It designated a member of its Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS)
staff to be a “product integration manager” (PIM) for a first pilot project. The PIM was a formal
member of the product development team, whose role was to act as a champion for its
sustainability principles (e.g., to reduce hazardous materials, to design for recyclability and to
reduce packaging waste). Given the breadth of these principles, the purpose of the PIM was to
look for sustainability integration with existing design, manufacturing and service requirements.
A successful first pilot project led to creation of PIMs in product development for additional
business units and the development and diffusion of successful sustainability-based innovation. As
typical of early-phase sustainable design efforts, the pilot project revealed key learning
experiences for developing competency to make substantive changes. Although there was some
significant outcome progress, such as reduction in VOC emissions from a switch from solvent-
based to powder surface coatings, the early project successes involved procedural advances like
standardizing fasteners or marking all plastics with material identifiers to facilitate disassembly
and recycling.
An interesting detail for managers leading organizational development is that, as projects

grew, PIMs shared lessons with each other and began to build an expert knowledge source within
the company. This development of the environmental function enabled the product sustainability
team to reach out beyond the design phase to integrate principles and metrics into the production
and marketing of products.
Source: Rooney, Frank P, 1998. “Designing EHS Principles into Digital Equipment Corporation Products,”
Corporate Environmental Strategy 5 (4): 18-25.
V. Applying the ABCDs: Examples from Apparel,
Furniture and Cleaning Products
Designing for sustainability via an integrative design funnel involves a variety of strategic and
operational transitions. The case studies in this section describe how companies have gone through
these transitions and progressed in their journeys toward designing more sustainably.
There are three things worth noting about the experiences of these companies:
• They have chosen to advance, but not wholly reinvent, their existing design processes;
consequently, they have looked for ways to adapt relevant functions and their inter-
relationships to integrate sustainability intelligence into design.
• The primary challenge they faced has been determining how to develop and diffuse
sustainable design competencies into relevant functions.
• They have created new organizational forms and learning bridges in the short run to enable
relevant organizational participants to communicate and coordinate about what
sustainability is and how it is material to their products.
In the examples below, the Assess-Bridge-Create-Diffuse framework highlights aspects of the

organizational evolution that have made progress possible. The lessons extracted are meant to help
companies advance their sustainable design capabilities.
A. How Sustainability Became Considered at Nike Inc.

In 2005 Nike launched a new line of footwear deliberately designed and marketed with sustainability
in mind. Compared to its conventional footwear, the first model in the Considered line, the
Considered Boot, wasted 61 percent less material during manufacturing, required 35 percent less
energy to make, used 89 percent less solvents
(from reduced adhesive usage), and was designed Sustainability Features
for readier recycling in Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe of the Considered Boot
program. Nike expanded Considered into its All • Uses materials found primarily within 200
Conditions line in 2007 with shoe updates that miles of the Nike factory
use less material and toxic adhesives. In January • 80-percent less toxic solvent usage for
adhesion due to an inter-locking sole and a
2008 Nike released the XX3 model of the Air welt stitch
Jordan, a version of its flagship basketball shoe that • Contains hemp and more sustainably
boldly integrated sustainable design features and produced leather to shift toward more
doubly marked the shoe’s 23rd anniversary and the renewable materials that still breathe well
jersey number of its famed namesake. A month • Contains recycled polyethylene teraphthalate
in the laces and recycled rubber from factory
later, Nike released the Trash Talk, a basketball waste in the outsole
shoe comprised entirely of factory scrap material. • Reduces the number of production steps to
improve factory energy efficiency
What started at Nike as a line of shoes has turned • Optimizes material layout to reduce waste in
into a design ethos that the company is applying the cutting process
across its brand. By 2011 Nike plans to have all its • Designed for recycling, notably in Nike’s
Reuse-a-Shoe recovery program
footwear meeting the base level of its Considered
Design Index. The company plans to follow by introducing the metric in 2010 for all its apparel and
by phasing it into its range of equipment offerings beginning in 2011.
How did Nike make its advances? What changes did it make to develop the sustainability
intelligence needed to design more sustainable yet salable products? In contrast to its marketing
tagline, Nike did not “just do it.” Its product design successes needed organizational intelligence
that the company developed over more than a decade.
The origins of Nike’s sustainable design efforts trace to the early 1990s and the creation of a small
department called the Nike Environmental Action Team (NEAT). The initial efforts of NEAT
focused on recycling and education and helped develop Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe program, a recovery
initiative launched in 1993 to turn spent footwear into sport surfaces. As the NEAT team continued
its work through the 1990s, frameworks aligning sustainability and business inspired them to expand
the scope of Nike’s sustainability vision. By the end of the decade NEAT had worked with Nike
management to write the first corporate environmental policy and a set of broad sustainability
goals.14
Empowered by sustainability-oriented corporate policy and goals, NEAT members doggedly

encouraged product design initiatives and a number of important innovations emerged. However,
two problems prevented these efforts from stimulating a significant evolution in sustainable product
design. One was the approach to change, which was based on creating an informal, internal network
of sustainability advocates to act as change agents. Despite the ability to support small projects, this
network lacked sufficient organizational resources to diffuse lessons in a way that catalyzed systemic
improvements in products or the design process. The other problem was the limited integration the
group achieved with functions important in shaping the design funnel. The network that NEAT
created contained many participants from the operations side, but not the customer-facing side of
the business. As a result, NEAT’s innovations lacked critical elements as a business case.
Recognizing the need to re-evaluate, Nike stepped back and made two changes: it
carried out a life-cycle assessment of product impacts and their activities, and it
Assess developed new monitoring tools to guide its efforts. An evaluation conducted with
The Natural Step in 2003 revealed that Nike was not focusing on the most significant
impacts in its product life cycle,
which lie in the supply base upstream of the “Understanding Nike’s global footprint
company’s operations and in downstream use and and prioritizing areas where we have the
disposal of its products. In response to this review, greatest environmental and social impact is
Nike reprioritized and made creating innovative, essential for building a robust business case
sustainable products its unifying environmental
for corporate responsibility and prioritizing
goal.
our efforts.”
To guide the company toward this goal, Nike staff As part of its ongoing assessment efforts, in
developed and rolled out a sustainability index (now
2006 Nike carried out a company-wide
called the Considered Design Index) to all design
teams and factory partners around the globe. The assessment for its packaging footprint. To
Index assesses the footprint of a shoe using three its surprise, Nike found that retail
major metrics — a volatile organic compound packaging contributed almost 75 percent of
(VOC) index, a waste index and a material all waste related to its products.
sustainability index — which reflect Nike’s ongoing Source: Nike FY05-06 Corporate Responsibility Report
goals to reduce product toxicity to zero, to eliminate waste in production and to close material loops.
(Where applicable, it includes a fourth “innovation” metric, which was developed to encourage and
reward new ideas from product teams.) Notably, the overall Considered Design Index is now being
integrated into accountability systems to be evaluated alongside cost and performance in the design
process.
Following the success of the Considered Boot, in

smaller
2005 Nike created a sustainable design team to blind
marketing
Bridge serve as a conduit for product sustainability staff spots
ideas, goals and lessons. Nike had already formed
a Sustainable Development group in the Corporate
Responsibility department to expand on sustainability programs
that NEAT had started. Going a step further, the company pooled aesthetic
designers
core talent to form the Considered Design Team. This small
group of chemists, biologists, material specialists, designers and
product developers works directly with the design functions in
Nike’s footwear, apparel and equipment product lines. With design
reporting lines up through Corporate Responsibility and the engineers
product lines it serves, this team operates with three purposes:

• To develop metrics and tools that can make sustainability
tractable across the design funnel production
teams
• To extend sustainable innovation capacity in product
teams
• To increase the creation and use of less toxic, renewable distribution
and recycled materials & retail more continuity
across the
design funnel
As a knowledge source, an advocate and a communication
channel, the Considered Design Team creates sustainability
bridges across the design funnel. Internally, its engagements correct for gaps in information,
understanding and coordination. Externally, the team interfaces with stakeholders as part of Nike’s
“open-source” approach to corporate responsibility.
Over the years, Nike has grown its sustainability intelligence from a variety of
forward-looking initiatives. As its corporate sustainability reports recount, projects
Create with a sustainability dimension can be traced
back 10 years.15 For example, the Reuse-A-
Shoe program has helped Nike not only 2005
reduce production scrap and divert worn-out shoes from
disposal; it has also laid a foundation for Nike’s recycling of …
2006
waste material into a next generation of shoes like the XX3
or Trash Talk. Its proactive phase-out of the greenhouse gas … 2007
sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) from bladders in air soles and its

voluntary switch to water-based solvents for adhesives … 2008
manufacturing operations has similarly advanced its

sustainability learning capacity around materials chemistry.
Experiences from companies like Nike reveal that creating pilot projects is an important part of
the sustainable design evolution. Despite past innovations, Nike did not have ready channels to
integrate sustainability principles and lessons into its design process. To learn how to design more
sustainable products, it started with a pilot project. Pulling together proven talent from different
functions, Nike created and challenged a sustainable design team to develop a salable, more
sustainable product. In addition to producing the Considered Boot, this pilot project provided
important insights about its process as well. Through ongoing explorations, what began as a single
product evolved first into a line of shoes and now into a design ethos for all product lines.
In addition to supporting pilot projects, the Considered Design Team also serves as a
mechanism for diffusion of lessons across Nike. The team works across functions and
Diffuse product lines to build literacy and to establish goals and metrics for sustainable
design. The members act both as advocates and educators, giving people tools that
allow them to evaluate and report performance on the Considered Design Index.
One of the innovative tools the Considered Design

Team has built to support the use of its Index is a Suggestions for Future Achievement
calculator that computes a Considered bill of materials • Expand the Index to include factory-
level energy, water and climate impacts
score, a solvent use score and a waste score. Another is
• Expand materials assessment to a wider
a database of relative scores for various materials that range of ecological and health effects
designers can browse to select and compare materials. • Incorporate impacts from land-use and
In addition to making the tools readily available on the global production, given growing factory
company Intranet, the team continues to improve its base and business travel
sophistication. For example, it updates predictive • Expand the amount of materials
recycled from one shoe generation to
values for product waste scores based on regular another
measurements of the actual waste data from the • Improve consumer information about
factory. the product performance
• Explain and disclose “environmentally
The efforts to update its Considered Design Index are preferred materials” in detail
one indicator of the ongoing nature of Nike’s journey.
There are many areas left for achievement, which encourage ongoing evolution in its corporate
reporting functions, environmental management systems and supply chain engagement, as well as its
strategic and cultural emphasis on product design as a core competency.
16
B. The Way a Stand Has Changed a Seat at Herman Miller Inc.
Herman Miller, a leading global producer of office
furniture, has a remarkable vision for the future. By Herman Miller’s Perfect Vision 2020
2020 the company strives to have a zero ecological
• Zero ecological footprint:
footprint from its products. It recognizes that - Zero landfill waste
sourcing alternative materials and closing - Zero hazardous waste
manufacturing loops will be hard to obtain amidst - Zero air and water emissions
- 100% renewable energy
current gaps in technology, supply chains and
• All products cradle-to-cradle designed
markets. What gives the company confidence and
• All buildings rated at least LEED Silver
helps maintain its commitment to this ambitious goal
is its past progress in sustainable design.
Take its Mirra Chair as an example. Launched in
Component View of the Mirra Chair 2003, it was co-developed with a design protocol
rooted in recyclability, renewability and reduced
toxicity. The result: well-selling task seating that is
96-percent recyclable, contains no PVC and can be
disassembled in 15 minutes using simple tools.
Building on this as a learning experience, Herman
Miller has now used its new protocol to (re)design
27 percent of its product line.
Mainstream integration of the sustainable design

protocol is a noteworthy accomplishment. Looking
back at Herman Miller’s journey, how did
sustainability get a regular seat at the design
table?
It has through the work of dedicated change agents,

who have built the leading sustainable design
practice now producing positive ripples in the
Noteworthy Features of the Mirra Chair
company’s supply chains and markets. Aided by a
• Contains no polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
• 96% recyclable
supportive company culture,* a band of committed
• Takes 15 minutes to disassemble with practitioners have assiduously explored and
simple tools developed new coordination mechanisms and
learning experiments to enable sustainable design
transitions. This foundational work is an insightful — and little highlighted — aspect of Herman
Miller’s evolution.
The journey to sustainable design has roots 20 years ago, when the environmental department
launched a pollution prevention project to reduce formaldehyde emissions from wood finishing
products. This initial inter-departmental collaboration led to the formation in 1989 of a cross-
functional Environmental Quality Advisory Team
(EQAT), a standing internal working group that draws
together middle managers and experts from around Sustainable Design Questions That
the company. Started as a forum for tactical Herman Miller Asks:
coordination and performance evaluation for • Are materials homogenous enough to
enable recycling?
environmental projects, over time it has grown into a
• Can common tools be used to
primary corporate forum for setting environmental disassemble the product?
strategy and now matrixes 400 people (in a company • Does it take more than 30 seconds to
of around 6,000) into environmental innovation and unfasten any part?
strategic planning. Interestingly, EQAT was designed • Is the material likely to be recycled,
not to include top executives — a choice made to burned or landfilled?
enable directors and managers to explore opportunities
more candidly.
*
Company founder D.J. DuPree (whose father-in-law and early business partner was named Herman Miller) imbued
environmental sensitivity into company culture such that resource conservation has modestly figured into its design and
operations for half a century. In keeping with these progressive ethics, today the company has executives who are supportive of, if
not enthusiastic about, sustainability.
Building on this collaborative model, in the early 1990s Herman Miller launched an
offshoot Design for Environment (DfE) team to take the lead in product redesign.
Assess Pooling talent from development, purchasing, manufacturing and environmental
functions, the DfE team pursued a corporate goal to send zero waste to landfill. Led
by an engineering manager from the manufacturing department, in the mid-1990s
the team undertook a gutsy project to design the breakthrough Aeron Chair using Earth Friendly
Design Guidelines, the first version of its DfE protocol that emphasized recycled content.
A successful outcome from this project generated momentum for another layer of assessment. By the
late 1990s Herman Miller developed interest in a more systematic, cradle-to-cradle approach to
product design, and it dedicated staff in the environmental department to build the DfE capability.
Examining the “materials chemistry” of its products, Herman Miller cataloged every material in
every product — a substantial investment in sustainability learning that has subsequently facilitated
supply chain re-optimizations and significant cost savings.
Teaming up with McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) to dive more

deeply into an examination of its materials, Herman Miller also started building
Bridge bridges. An interdisciplinary discovery team undertook a one-year project
exploring how a cradle-to-cradle approach would influence and require
involvement from different functional operations. Formed with senior
representatives across the company (i.e., from product development, engineering, materials research,
purchasing, finance, marketing and environmental affairs), the team considered a variety of
challenges: how to implement sustainability assessments for products and materials, how to work
with suppliers to procure more sustainable materials, how to hire and retrain staff with sustainability
expertise, how to reshape the design culture to include sustainability, and how to inspire attention to
sustainability throughout the company.
The investment in internal alignment and chemical

audits around materials chemistry was an important Key Facilitators of
step before setting out to engage suppliers and re- Sustainable Design Success
channel procurement around more sustainable • A company founder and culture
generally supportive of sustainability
materials. To study the sustainability of materials
• Formation of a cross-functional advisory
and manufacturing needed to make a chair, Herman team to explore and coordinate changes
Miller asked its suppliers for additional information. in design practice
Addressing concerns that arose around intellectual • Establishment of zero landfill waste
property, it developed new procedures to manage goals and then zero ecological footprint
goals
suppliers’ material information. It also partnered
• Launching a design for environment
with other companies, sometimes from outside its team and projects in materials
sector, to build common communication chemistry
frameworks to improve the flow of environmental • Adequate resources for pilot projects
information. Not all suppliers were ready to be and development of learning and
literacy tools
partners and Herman Miller committed only to
companies who could support its sustainability
needs.
Through this process Herman Miller has launched a series of pilot projects. The first
wave in the mid-1990s concentrated on product durability and reduced impact, and
Create on improving the recyclability and recycled content of its products. A second wave
beginning around 2000 focused on
ecological footprint reduction and
Building Momentum at Herman Miller
stimulated a deeper examination of the supply chain
and product design roots of its material impacts. Other projects helped sustainable
design gain momentum. For example, by
1993 EQAT worked sustainability
These projects helped Herman Miller develop its considerations into the company’s new
“cradle-to-cradle design protocol,” a set of design combined administrative and
guidelines developed to apply across its products. The manufacturing center dubbed the
“GreenHouse.” The design invested
protocol guides consideration of sustainability considerably in daylighting, fresh air
through: ventilation and landscape integration to
improve stormwater management and
• Materials chemistry analysis maintain ambient wildlife habitat. In
• Product ease-of-disassembly review addition to strengthening the company’s
reputation as a good neighbor, the design
• Materials recycling evaluation to improve has had measured increases in employee
recycled content in its products as well as to productivity and job satisfaction.
enable material recycling from them
Herman Miller has integrated the cradle-to-cradle protocol into its new product commissioning
process — a move that assures all products get screened for sustainability.
Working through its implementation issues and strategizing environmental goals

around it has helped Herman Miller identify gaps in occupational literacy and needs
Diffuse for knowledge-sharing tools to replicate sustainable design success across products.
For example, to help design engineers evaluate material options for products, Herman
Miller developed a step-by-step assessment and selection process. The approach guides a user
through evaluation of materials along a variety of
characteristics (human health and eco-toxicological effects,
Ongoing Efforts at Herman Miller
recycle-ability, recycled content and/or use of renewable
• Developing PVC alternatives
resources, and product design for disassembly). To
• Getting formaldehyde out of
improve its usability, the DfE team developed a color- particle board
coded assessment scheme to make it easier to integrate • Exploring alternative chemistry
into new design projects. The scheme has four levels: little for textiles and dyes
or no hazard (green), low to moderate hazard (yellow), • Finding fiberglass replacements
*
high hazard (red), and inadequate information (orange). • Finding safer metal finishes
With the goal of phasing out reds and oranges, staff uses a • Sourcing bio-based materials
simple spreadsheet to evaluate products three times — in • Reducing packaging
the early, middle and final launch phases of the design
process.
*
The CleanGredients program of GreenBlue (www.greenblue.org), the Green Screen of Clean Production Action
(www.cleanproduction.org), and the Greenlist of SC Johnson use comparable four-point, color-coded schemes.
Herman Miller is now working externally to build bridges and diffuse its sustainable design lessons.
Having decided to treat sustainability as a common good, not a matter of market competition, it is
exploring ways to share its protocol with other companies. Leaders in the sustainable design program
are giving presentations at industry conferences and working to build sustainable design standards
through trade associations.
The progress made at Herman Miller has taken patience and persistence. Its success has been
achieved because it has taken the time to establish its assessment capacity, to build appropriate
communication channels, to evolve common language and performance metrics, and to develop
support tools that allowed people to see sustainability in their operating functions and everyday
work.
CASE STUDY: Steelcase

Steelcase offers an interesting contrast in route of progress. Just up the road from Herman
Miller, it is the largest office furniture producer in the country. It also has a founder with
progressive environmental ethics and executives who are supportive of, if not enthusiastic
about, sustainability. Its Think Chair (designed in collaboration with MBDC) contains similarly
noteworthy advances: 99-percent recyclable by weight, contains 44-percent recycled materials,
and can be disassembled in five minutes using ordinary tools.
Yet at Steelcase the patient, persistent work of committed change agents has taken place
more behind the scenes. Unlike Herman Miller, where a formal cross-functional teaming
preceded or coincided with pilot projects, at Steelcase considerable explorations took place early
on informally through “soft authorizations” where slack was available. The difference reveals
how sustainable design may depend more on informal, bottom-up processes in some
companies.
C. Reflecting on Green Works in The Clorox Company
In late 2007 Clorox announced an addition to its product portfolio: a set of cleaners marketed for
their sustainability attributes. Made from sources like coconuts, corn and lemon oil, the
GreenWorks line of household cleaners boasts an ingredient list that is 99-percent plant-derived.
(The fragrance and preservative are the 1 percent not derived from plants.) The design of this
product line also includes strides to make the cleaners more biodegradable, non-allergenic and non-
toxic, as well as to avoid testing on animals and packaging that is non-recyclable. In all, a bold
advance for a company virtually synonymous with bleach and with no previous noteworthy
achievements in sustainable product design.
How has Clorox cleaned up?
Clorox is an interesting case because the company is early in its

sustainability journey. It is, as the company’s eco-director quips,
“at the front end of the pack following the sustainable design
leaders.” The GreenWorks line was its first significant pilot
project and took three years to complete. Having developed it
from the perspective of business growth into a new consumer market, the challenge Clorox now
faces is extracting lessons and building design intelligence that can be applied across its established
brands. Here is a look back at Clorox’s journey and at the road forward.
The GreenWorks story began over three years ago, when goals to increase the top-line
growth of the company identified “natural” cleaning products as an emerging market
Assess mega-trend. This business assessment raised questions for which Clorox had no ready
answers. What would it mean to be a “natural” product? How could the company
increase the “natural” attributes of its products through design? Despite a steady
record of regulatory compliance, Clorox had made no habit of sustainability accounting or reporting.
Developing sustainability intelligence had been largely off the company’s radar.
The GreenWorks experience has motivated Clorox to reconsider its position. For example, Clorox
developed its first formal environmental strategy in 2007, two years after GreenWorks was
underway. In 2006, management authorized a small group of internal leaders to conduct a 90-day
sustainability audit of the company. The goal of this audit was to evaluate the company’s
sustainability capacity and to benchmark it against its competitors.
A review of business units and functions across the company revealed that sustainability initiatives
were already taking place. But most initiatives were local and uncoordinated — a product of the
compliance mindset and decentralized organization that Clorox had emphasized for its
environmental function. The audit team concluded that, although Clorox had ample technical
expertise to make near-term sustainability advances, it lacked a strategic coordinating function to
synergize and build on them. What it needed was the capacity to collect sustainability insights and
diffuse them across the company.
This need is different from what the GreenWorks model could support. To develop
that new product line, Clorox pulled together a team of proven staff and gave them
Bridge the mandate and resources to build a line of natural cleaners. The team had relied
heavily on its supply base and on trade associations for knowledge about natural
materials and market sources for them. Leveraging good relationships with key
suppliers and working closely with the procurement
Key Lessons from GreenWorks
staff, the GreenWorks team collected more information
• Choose language that sparks interest in
about materials and their origins than ever before. This change. The sustainability “mega-trend”
information was needed not only for analysis during worked at Clorox.
product development, but also to communicate credibly • Spend time developing metrics that can
with downstream customers, retailers and steadily guide the process. (At Clorox
environmental advocates willing to endorse the product. the definition of “natural” cleaner was
an important reference point and
guide.)
Coming out of the experience, Clorox needed a new
• Staff new projects with people resilient
way to collect and build on the lessons and external in the face of adversity.
bridges from this project. Heeding findings from the • Compose a team that is passionate, but
sustainability audit, management chose to create a small not overzealous, about the project. If
corporate “Eco Office.” Less than a year old, its purpose their approach is pragmatic, their
is to lead and coordinate sustainability initiatives with passion will be infectious.
an eye toward business growth. As part of this effort,
the Eco Office is considering setting up a cross-functional advisory council to explore where
sustainability makes sense and can be effectively integrated across its 10 business units and roughly
40 brands.
Looking back over the experience, Clorox created several new things in the process of
launching GreenWorks. One was a credible and durable definition of a “natural”
Create cleaner — something it accomplished by leveraging the talents of its public affairs
function and drawing on insights from sustainability thought leaders and NGOs.
This definition has proved to be an important rallying point and source of continuity
through the twists and turns of the GreenWorks development process.
The GreenWorks project also motivated Clorox to add more technical expertise in toxicology and
environmental impact analysis. In addition to creating a corporate environmental strategy and
centralized Eco Office, beefing up these skills in the shared product development function has
expanded its in-house capacity to analyze and communicate sustainability opportunities.
It took approximately one year to convince senior Strategy executives to give

designers the freedom to explore the GreenWorks concept. Initially, Clorox looked at
Diffuse GreenWorks as a product for a niche market. Its recognition that it was able to
develop cleaners on par with conventional competitors at only a modest price increase
has changed that perspective. Within the company there is now a growing belief that
sustainability could be a more mainstream attribute of Clorox’s product offerings.
At a company like Clorox, garnering this support is important

for moving forward in product development. With employees Suggestions for Future Achievement
eager to get involved with sustainability initiatives, what the • Improve consumer information
about product performance and
company needs now is an improved ability to understand
define “natural materials” in detail
and see strategic opportunities in sustainability. Clorox has
• Embrace green chemistry and
taken a positive step by creating the Eco Office with the carbon neutrality across Clorox’s
mission to promote literacy and serve as an information product lines
repository. Its journey forward, and whether it can green • Make the whole product container
more of its works, will depend on the company’s ability to recyclable, not just the bottle
continue building its sustainable design intelligence.
VI. Conclusions
Sustainability is an opportunity for design practice and for the organization of the design function in
the modern company. Realizing this opportunity involves integrating new information in product
analyses and developing communication infrastructure to identify, collect and transmit it. It also
involves remaining reflective and engaged in dialogue with stakeholders to understand the evolving
meaning of sustainability. This combination of introspection and integration — in particular
appropriate accountability systems — is enabling leading firms to create value through sustainable
design.
A. Sustainable Design Is an Innovation in Practice

Because design decisions can impact products across their life cycles, the design process is
increasingly viewed as a critical component of enabling sustainability, and the implication for design
practice is expanded design thinking. It means:
• Marrying “human factors” and “systems thinking” in design analysis
• Selecting appropriate tools for a task’s sustainability challenges
• Anticipating unintended consequences better
• Allowing non-intuitive approaches, since old logics may not suffice
• Focusing on staying dynamic as the systems and issues evolve
The key point to keep in mind is that, as a design challenge, sustainability requires building the
capacity to recognize a sustainability issue. Design teams who can do so will be able to identify
strategic opportunities and to reduce the risk of a sustainability crisis.
B. Sustainable Design Is a Kind of Organizational Intelligence

Sustainable design is more than an innovation in design
practice or analysis during an upstream focal point in incre
asing
Design Funnel
product development. It is a recognition that many p roduc

groups around the company can shape the final design of t specif
ic ity
a product, but may not yet know it. Thus, designing for final
product
sustainability means organizing so that people can g
recognize how their choices are shaping product y th inkin
ilit
sustainability and can identify resources to improve them. inab
susta
It means that, in addition to thinking across the life cycle,
organizations encourage thinking about design Life Cycle
sustainability in each part of their design funnels.
This report highlights ways that companies are
building this sustainability intelligence through production
an integrative design process. Integrating teams
involves expanding coordination channels and product line

managers
marketing
staff
creating feedback communication among groups
who might otherwise be separated into a pipeline
design sequence. By bridging functions and
knowledge centers, integrative design facilitates designers
product end-of-life
managers
new awareness about how groups interact with design
product sustainability, as well as overcomes
purview problems, such as blind spots in the
design funnel that disrupt initiatives and business
strategists
CSR
managers
innovation. As a result, taking these steps helps
R&D
companies not only design more sustainable staff
products today, but also helps them build

smarter, more nimble design processes capable of
sustainable innovation.
In addition to building communication infrastructure that improves design coordination along the
design funnel, leading companies are also developing support tools that help people make more
sustainable choices and build accountability around product outcomes. Tools like sustainability
calculators and chemical databases help people ask and answer questions like:
• How sustainable is this material? How toxic, renewable, reusable, recyclable, biodegradable
and ethical is the product as a result of its use?
• Where in our organization do we have information and/or need to have information to guide
decision making about this material? Who has access to it and how efficiently can they access it?
• How much of this material are we using in our product or in the processes that make it?
What are the implications for our employees? What are the implications for the way that we
envision customers using it?
Even if raising the same sustainability questions, companies have different transition experiences
because their products and underlying design processes vary. However, the communication
infrastructure they develop has similar elements of success. It helps them assess the sustainability of
their products and their capacity as organizations to (re)design them. It bridges functions and people
internally and externally and creates learning engagements that lead to tractable, meaningful and
profitable sustainable product (re)designs. And it diffuses tools so that information is accessible in
the right place and time.
The A-B-C-D model highlights these four behaviors as components of “sustainable design
intelligence,” a dynamic learning model to help companies build more sustainable products.
• Assessing: The ability to analyze the social and environmental impacts of products and
production and to evaluate organizational capacity to address them.
• Bridging: The ability to connect ready parties and to bring the right functions and the
right people together to redesign products.
• Creating: The ability to generate projects that enable exploration and learning about
product sustainability and about changes needed to the design process.
• Diffusing: The ability to deploy tools that build literacy, integrate learned design
principles and build accountability across the design funnel.
C. Sustainable Design Is Organizational Learning

This report introduces sustainable design as a learning orientation. The reason is straightforward.
Sustainability is fluid, contextual and evolving in its meaning. Consequently, a sustainable product is
a moving target. The companies featured are making advances in their product designs, but this
report also focuses on their development of a design function that can continue to learn about
sustainability issues and make product changes as the world around them changes.
In this sense, leading companies recognize that they are making more sustainable products, not yet
altogether sustainable ones. They are approaching sustainable design as an area of continuous
improvement and repeating the process of assessing, bridging, creating and diffusing. They are
accumulating knowledge and information that expands the scope of their sustainable (re)design
capabilities. As part of this process they are working closely with thought leaders, stakeholders and
design experts to understand the changing nature of “sustainability” and emerging design
possibilities. They are paying attention to sustainable design options as the world around them
changes.
A learning orientation is important production

because there are few clear-cut choices. managers
There are no simple lists of input product line
marketing
managers
materials or products that are “good” staff
and few resources that clearly spell out

materials or procurement options as
“bad.” Much of sustainable design is
about developing a capacity to navigate designers product end-of-life
managers
the muddy waters in between. It is design
about learning to think across the
product life cycle, up and down the
supply chain, and across the boundaries
CSR
of an organization to make sustainability business
strategists
managers
visible, tractable and profitable. As the
diagram to the right illustrates, it builds R&D
from initial projects toward integration staff
of sustainable intelligence throughout

the organization. As an area of organizational learning, sustainable design may
start small with pilot projects involving only some parts of the
To conclude, this report explores organization. As sustainability intelligence grows, the design
process should grow and include more functions.
sustainable design by discussing
products; however, sustainable design The diagram above represents this change as growth from pale
also creates opportunities for break- to dark green and from small involvements to robust and routine
connections across functions.
through innovations that can
transform a product offering. For example, a radical redesign can dematerialize a product, such as
miniaturization or creation of all-in-one electronic devices. It can substitute technologies, such as
videoconferencing instead of airline travel. And it can transform ownership patterns and draw closer
together phases of the life cycle, such as shifts to leasing models have done for production and
recycling of electronic equipment and floor covering. These innovations are available to companies
through the synergy of opportunity and design capacity. The challenge is building the practice and
organization to make them achievable.
Appendix: Concepts and Tools for Sustainable Design
This appendix reviews some of the significant concepts and design tools that have been shaping the
development of sustainable design. As an umbrella over terms like eco-design, innovation and
socially conscious design, sustainable design is meant to encourage the development of products that
are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. The list here focuses primarily on
environmental factors and principles of sustainability.17
Closed-loop or Closed-cycle Design

A closed-loop or closed-cycle system recovers materials and returns them from one product
life cycle to another. The idea is a metaphor for biogeochemical cycling in natural ecosystems
18
and is a founding idea behind industrial ecology. Closed-loop or closed-cycle design helps
companies develop products that reduce waste and improve their recyclability. The cradle-to-
cradle concept popularized by William McDonough and Michael Braungart is based on the
idea of closed-cycle design.19
Design for X (DfX)

Design for X is an umbrella term for design approaches that attempt to improve an aspect of
a product. The “X” is the substitutable aspect. Although DfX applies to activities that do not
necessarily have a clear link to sustainability (e.g., Design to Cost, Design for Assembly,
Design for Quality), in sustainable design it serves as a catch-all for sustainability-enhancing
design activities.
Design for Environment (DfE) is the best known of these approaches. It refers to design
activities or analyses undertaken to reduce the environmental impacts of a product, generally
across the product’s life cycle. DfE strives to conserve energy and resources, reduce health
and ecological disturbances, and eliminate product and production waste.
Design for Disassembly (DfD) describes analyses and design efforts undertaken to make a
product more easily, readily and economically recyclable. It includes actions like
standardizing fasteners, making fasteners more easily removed and not fusing materials so
that they cannot be practicably separated.
Design for Recycling (DfR) describes analyses and design efforts undertaken to make a product
more recyclable. DfR includes activities like designing out materials that are not readily
recyclable, marking components to communicate their material contents, and building
systems that facilitate disposal alternatives for decommissioned or spent products.
Design for Biodegradability (DfB) is a still-emerging alternative to the older DfE approaches.
Instead of activities undertaken to improve the longevity or recyclability of a product, design
for biodegradability is a planned product obsolescence around degradation into substances
that become ready nutrients in ecosystems.
Eco-compass
Eco-compass is a term that Dow Europe applied to its multi-criteria evaluation of
environmental components in product design.20 The process graphs six characteristics (service
extension, recoverability, resource conservation, energy intensity, material intensity, and
health and environmental impacts) onto a hexagonal plot. The process is useful for
comparing products and has no absolute baseline.
Ecological Footprint
Ecological footprint is an analysis and visualization tool developed to relate the idea of
human resource usage to productive surface area of earth – in essence, human activity to
21
planetary carrying capacity. Ecological footprint equates a population’s or company’s
resource usage habits to an equivalent amount of surface area (i.e., of land or water) needed
to support it (see www.footprintnetwork.org).
Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

Extended producer responsibility is a framework that assigns producers of products greater
physical and/or financial responsibility for their material impacts, most notably at product
22
end-of-life. As part of a more integrated product policy, EPR is intended to stimulate
producers to consider and design out life-cycle impacts of their products.
Factor X/Factor 10/Factor 4

The “Factor X” (originally “Factor 4”) is a concept developed as a normative guideline for
improving product quality and service delivery while reducing material and energy
intensity.23 Its emphasis on “resource productivity” is intended to spur intense innovation to
decrease material flows through the economy. An extension of this idea is the “Factor 10”
concept, which suggests that long-term development needs to focus on a ten-fold decrease in
material flows. These ideas have their basis in industrial metabolism and material flow
analysis, concepts emerging from industrial ecology.24
Fair Trade
Fair trade is a social movement attempting to reconcile economic disparities that arise in
production chains among sellers and producers. The movement emphasizes equitable pay, as
well as robust social and environmental standards, for laborers working in resource,
extraction and handicraft industries, generally in the developing world. The Fair Trade label
has become a certified standard for more equitable wealth-sharing practices in supply chains.
The nonprofit, multi-stakeholder FLO International is the leading organization governing
fair trade certification globally.
Life-cycle Analysis (LCA)

Life-cycle analysis (sometimes called life-cycle assessment) is a framework for examining the
range of sustainability impacts that occur from the time a product is born into existence (i.e.,
its cradle or womb) until it reaches its death (i.e., its grave or tomb). Life cycles are typically
broken into phases, such as raw material extraction, material processing, manufacturing,
distribution, sale, use and end-of-life. (Note: LCAs rarely consider cross-cutting functions
like design, accounting or marketing as life-cycle stages.)
A cradle-to-grave analysis is intended to account for a full range of resource demands and
environmental burdens associated with a product. As a result, LCA can be a very data-
intensive process, and interpretation of data often requires judgment calls about the relative
importance of different kinds of impacts. Multiple types of LCA have been developed over
time to simplify the process or to extend its insights.
Simplified LCA or Eco-indicator LCA is a simpler version of the more comprehensive LCA. A
simplified LCA reduces the number of indicators and phases considered to those initially
identified as significant.25 There are numerous versions, such as the Environmentally
Responsible Product Assessment matrix.
Basic Materials Assessment or Environmental Effect Analysis (EEA) is a method designed for
early phases of product development and can be done qualitatively. Developed in the 1990s,
it is intended to guide quick identification of significant potential environmental effects and
26
to clarify product goals and objectives early in the design process.
Economic Input-Output LCA (EIO-LCA) is an approach that incorporates data from

commodity input-output databases with the resource requirements and environmental
impacts traditionally included in an LCA. The purpose is to relate material purchases (prices)
to their environmental impacts and is particularly useful when complex resource inputs (such
as materials data based on prices) are involved.
Material Input Per Service Unit (MIPS) is a form of LCA that focuses only on material
inputs. The purpose of MIPS is to draw attention to the material intensity of products and
to serve as a “robust initial measure for estimating the ecological stress potential of goods and
services from cradle to grave.”27 A close conceptual companion to MIPS is the “ecological
rucksack,” which refers to the embodied materials and energy that a product carries with it.
Another related idea is Flaeche Input Per Unit Service (FIPS), which takes the MIPS concept
and extends it to a unit of Earth surface area.
Life-cycle Design
Life-cycle design is the explicit application of life-cycle analysis and planning in product
design.28 It encourages consideration of environmental impacts and trade-offs early in the
product life cycle. Some organizations, such as The Natural Step, have developed tools to
enhance life-cycle considerations throughout the design process. For example, its
Sustainability Product Analysis Matrix (SPA Matrix) uses a hierarchical set of questions to
29
identify and find alternatives to non-sustainable materials in products.
Life-cycle Management (LCM)

Life-cycle management is a product management approach that accounts for the life-cycle
impacts of products and processes. It integrates activity-based and full-cost evaluation into
conventional management tools, like accounting and budgeting, to include environmental
considerations more readily in decision making.
Product Stewardship
Product stewardship describes the engaged management of product environmental impacts,
with emphasis on active participation by actors associated with a particular phase of the
product life cycle. Extended producer responsibility is a form of product stewardship, albeit
one that takes a more limited view about how companies will be involved in product
sustainability.
Sustainable Manufacturing
Closely related to sustainable product design, sustainable manufacturing describes
environmental improvements during the production stages of the product life cycle.
Reducing raw material and energy usage, minimizing waste, and reducing toxicity are
examples of activities that contribute to sustainable manufacturing.
Cleaner Production is an integrated approach to preventing environmental impacts. Often

focusing on production efficiency, it encourages ongoing analysis of material and energy
flows and non-product/waste output. It is closely related to pollution prevention and source
reduction and has been more commonly used outside the United States.
An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a management program that delineates and

clarifies an organization’s environmental responsibilities. The purpose of an EMS is to add
coherency and comprehensiveness to an organization’s environmental operations, to improve
implementation of environmental policies, strategies and goals, and to improve overall
environmental performance. An EMS has conventionally focused on management of
manufacturing operations, but some companies, such as Lucent Technologies, have adapted
the idea to create product-based environmental management systems (PB-EMS).30
Pollution Prevention describes efforts to develop, manage and redevelop manufacturing

processes to reduce pollution. This approach emphasizes process redesign and optimization,
rather than adding pollution control equipment. It has been more widely pursued in the
United States than cleaner production.
Sustainable Manufacturing Standards

There are numerous sustainable manufacturing standards that could be components of a
sustainable product design program.
ISO 14000 is a series of environmental management standards governed through the

International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO 14001 is designed to help
organizations identify environmental aspects, continuously improve in their overall
environmental performance, and develop a systematic approach to environmental
management and communication.
OHSAS 18000 is a series of occupational health and safety management standards. Mirroring
the ISO 14000 series of management standards, OHSAS is designed to help companies
examine and manage the health and safety of their workplaces systematically, with the goal of
continuous improvement.
Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) is a social accountability standard and verification

system to improve labor relations and working conditions. Developed and overseen by Social
Accountability International (www.sa-intl.org), the standard incorporates widely accepted
international labor rights. It encourages a continuous-improvement approach to factory
management and stakeholder involvement to improve the quality of the program.
AccountAbility 1000 (AA1000) is a standard developed by AccountAbility
(www.accountability21.net) to encourage ethical behavior in organizations. The standard is
based on social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting, and is designed to help users
improve social performance, transparency and stakeholder responsiveness.
Zero Emissions
Zero emissions is a concept emphasizing balance between the rate of industrial uptake of
resources and release of wastes within “natural limits.” Grounded in engineering analysis, it
encourages systems analysis focused on integration and optimization. The concept emerged
from work at United Nations University and was launched as a program at the UN in the
mid 1990s.
Zero Waste
The zero waste concept encourages beyond-recycling thinking. Rather than just encouraging
the recovery of waste products, zero waste encourages redesign that cuts out excess material
and energy. It can focus on conserving resource inputs or turning industrial metabolites or
leftovers into feedstocks for other operations. While both approaches reduce expenses
associated with waste management, the former also reduces the costs of input materials.
Practically, zero waste means more advanced materials planning and production integration
to make product and processes more efficient. It is related to other planning tools like Zero
Defect (from Total Quality Management) and Zero Inventory (i.e., Just-In-Time
manufacturing).
VIII. Notes and References
1
See the European Union (EU) Commission Directive 2002/95/EC of 27 January 2003 of the European Parliament and
of the Council on The Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment
(RoHS), effective date 1 July 2006; Directive 2002/96/EC of 27 January 2003 on Waste Electrical and Electronic
Equipment (WEEE), effective date 13 August 2005, amended by member states until 1 January 2006; and Directive
2006/121/EC of and Regulation No. 1907/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Registration,
Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH). For a discussion of REACH, see the BSR issue brief (October
2007), “Achieving Effective REACH Implementation” (available at www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_Reach.pdf).
2
Michael P. Wilson, Megan R. Schwarzman, Timothy F. Malloy, Elinor W. Fanning, and Peter J. Sinsheimer (2008),
“Green Chemistry: Cornerstone to a Sustainable California.” The Centers for Occupational and Environmental Health,
University of California. Available at http://coeh.berkeley.edu/greenchemistry/briefing.
3
BSR (August 2007), “Perspectives on Information Management in Supply Chains” (available at
www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_Info-Management-Supply-Chains.pdf).
4
“In 3rd Recall, Mattel Says More Toys Include Lead,” New York Times, September 5, 2007; “Thomas the Tank Engine
Toys Recalled Because of Lead Paint,” New York Times, June 15, 2007; “Melamine in Pet Food, Wheat Gluten from
China,” Reuters, March 30, 2007; “USDA Orders Largest Meat Recall in U.S. History,” Washington Post, February 18,
2008.
5
For a discussion of credibility concerns, see TerraChoice Environmental Marketing Inc. (November 2007), “The Six
Sins of Greenwashing: A Study of Environmental Claims in North American Consumer Markets” (available at
www.terrachoice.com/Home/Six%20Sins%20of%20Greenwashing) and BSR with Forum for the Future (April 2008)
“Eco-Promising: Communicating the Environmental Credentials of Your Products and Services” (available at
www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_eco-promising_April_2008.pdf). For interesting thoughts about the boycott issue, see also
Monroe Friedman (2001), “Ethical Dilemmas Associated with Consumer Boycotts,” Journal of Social Philosophy 32 (2):
232–240.
6
Dara O’Rourke (2005), “Market Movements: Nongovernmental Organization Strategies to Influence Global
Production and Consumption,” Journal of Industrial Ecology, volume 9, issue 1-2: 115-128. Consider as additional
examples: Rainforest Action Network’s campaign against Home Depot’s selling of old-growth timber (www.ran.org); the
ongoing work of UNITE HERE as part of the anti-sweatshop movement (www.unitehere.org); and the Basel Action
Network’s efforts to stop the international transport of e-waste (www.ban.org).
7
Leading thinkers eloquently make this point again and again. For example, see Karlson Hargroves and Michael H.
Smith (eds.) (2006), The Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21st
Century; Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins (1999), Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial
Revolution; and Daniel Esty and Andrew Winston (2006), Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental
Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage.
8
See Kleanthous and Peck (2006). “Let Them Eat Cake: Satisfying the New Consumer Appetite for Responsible
Brands” (available at www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/let_them_eat_cake_abridged.pdf).
9
See BSR with Forum for the Future (April 2008) “Eco-Promising: Communicating the Environmental Credentials of
Your Products and Services” (available at www.bsr.org/reports/BSR_eco-promising_April_2008.pdf).
10
Stuart Hart advances this argument in his 1995 article, “A Natural Resource-Based View of the Firm,” Academy of
Management Review, 20/4: 986–1014.
11
See William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002), Cradle-to-Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, North
Point Press.
12
For a discussion about partnerships in the building and interior design process, see Sandra Mendler, William Odell,
and Mary Ann Lazarus (2006), The HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design, Second Edition, John Wiley & Sons,
Hoboken, NJ, or ASID (2007), “ASID Research Series on Sustainability: Interior Design and Global Impacts” (available
at www.asid.org/designknowledge/publications/center/2006/idandgi.htm).
13
See the article by Simone Pulver (2005), “Making Sense of Corporate Environmentalism: An Environmental
Contestation Approach to Analyzing the Causes and Consequences of the Climate Change Policy Split in the Oil
Industry,” Organization & Environment 20: 44-83.
14
Nike (2001), Corporate Responsibility Report (available for download at
http://nikeresponsibility.com/#crreport/fy01_cr_report). This report notes that members of NEAT were particularly
inspired by Paul Hawken’s thoughts in The Ecology of Commerce.
15
See Nike (2007), “Innovate for a Better World: Nike FY05-06 Corporate Responsibility Report”; Nike (2004),
Corporate Responsibility Report; and Nike (2001), Corporate Responsibility Report (all available for download at
http://nikeresponsibility.com/#crreport/main).
16
In addition to interviews, material from this case study was also collected from William McDonough and Michael
Braungart, “Anatomy of a Transformation: Herman Miller’s Journey to Sustainability,” (available at
www.mcdonough.com/writings/anatomy_transformation.htm and last accessed May 2008); and “Specifying It: Herman
Miller’s Scott Charon and Susan Lyons @ ICFF 2007,” from the 2007 Metropolis Conference, Design Entrepreneurs:
Rethinking Energy (available at www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2908 and last accessed May 2008).
17
The content of this appendix has been borrowed and adapted from Mandana MacPherson (2004), “Sustainability for
Designers,” a report from The Natural Step – US, San Francisco, CA.
18
See Robert A. Frosch and Nicholas E. Gallopoulos (September 1989), “Strategies for Manufacturing,” Scientific
American 261 (3): 144-152 and Thomas Graedel and Braden Allenby (1995), Industrial Ecology, Prentice Hall,
Inglewood Cliffs, NJ.
19
William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002), Cradle-to-Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, North
Point Press.
20
See Fussler, C. and James, P. (1996), Driving Eco-Innovation: A Breakthrough Discipline for Innovation and
Sustainability, London, Pitman Publishing.
21
See Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees (1995), Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth,
New Society Publishers.
22
See, for example, the European Union directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), which
requires manufacturers to take back and manage electrical and electronic products from consumers.
23
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, 1997. Factor Four – Doubling Wealth, Halving
Resource Use, Earthscan, London.
24
See Robert U. Ayres (1994), “Industrial Metabolism: Theory and Policy.” In R. U. Ayres and U. K. Simonis, (eds.),
Industrial Metabolism: Restructuring for Sustainable Development, United Nations University Press, Tokyo. See also
www.materialflows.net.
25
See Hur T., Lee J., Ryu J., and Kwon E. (2005), “Simplified LCA and matrix methods in identifying the
environmental aspects of a product system,” Journal of Environmental Management 75(3): 229-37.
26
See Mattias Lindahl (1999), “E-FME – A new promising tool for efficient design for environment,” in Proceedings of
Eco-design ’99, First International Symposium on Environmental Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing, Tokyo,
Japan, ISBN 0-7695-007-2, and Mattias Lindahl, C. Jensen and J. Tingström (2000), “A comparison between the
environmental effect analysis and the life-cycle assessment methods based on four case studies,” in Proceedings of the 7th
International Seminar on Life Cycle Engineering, Life Cycle Planning, Design and Management for Eco-Products and
Systems, November 27-29, Tokyo. For a practical guide, see also Carsten Jensen, Måns Johansson, Mattias Lindahl, and
Thomas Magnusson, “Environmental Effect Analysis (EEA) – Principles and Structure” (available at
http://www.eea.nu/ENGD_583.pdf).
27
See Friedrich Schmidt-Bleck, “The Factor 10/MIPS-Concept: Bridging Ecological, Economic, and Social Dimensions
with Sustainability Indicators,” presented in conjunction with the Zero Emissions Forum at the United Nations
University. Available online at www.unu.edu/zef/publications_e/ZEF_EN_1999_03_D.pdf.
28
See Karen G. Shapiro and Allen L. White, 1999. “Right from the Start: Product Stewardship Through Life-Cycle
Design,” Corporate Environmental Strategy 6(1): 15-23.
29
See Mandana MacPherson (2004), “Sustainability for Designers,” a report from The Natural Step – US, San
Francisco, CA.
30
See Kathleen Donnelly, Roger Olds, Fred Blechinger, Debbie Reynolds, and Zoe Beckett-Furnell (2004), “ISO 14001
– Effective Management of Sustainable Design,” The Journal of Sustainable Product Design 4: 43–54.

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Aligned for Sustainable Design

An A-B-C-D Approach to Making Better Products

About Business for Social Responsibility

II. The Shifting Business Environment for Design .............................................................5

III. Innovation in Design Practice .........................................................................................11

IV. Re-envisioning the Design Function .............................................................................14

V. Applying the ABCDs:

VI. Conclusions ..........................................................................................................................38

VII. Appendix: Concepts and Tools for Sustainable Design ..........................................42

VIII. Notes and References......................................................................................................47

These adaptation challenges are becoming more acute, particularly around:

For this reason, leading companies are transitioning

Taking these steps is helping companies not only

responsibility beyond the operational distribution

more than a nice thing to do. Increasingly,

inattentive to product sustainability is material

market share and sully brands. A slew of

A. Drivers for More Sustainable Design

3. Innovations by competitors and in supply chains. For companies trying to differentiate

B. Opportunities for Sustainable (Re)Design

1. Better product performance through improved resource efficiency. Learning how to do

2. Strengthened market position. Consumer appetite for sustainability shows signs of

5. Serendipitous innovation. Many companies that undertake sustainability audits of their

6. Improved morale and productivity. Closely related to innovation potential, sustainability

C. The Challenge: Evolution of Design Intelligence

Consequently, it’s important to emphasize that designing sustainably is an ongoing learning

There are many launching points for sustainable design.

Assess Bridge Create Diffuse

David Rinard, Director of Global

Additionally, design can have a large impact on the

Consequently, a powerful component of

3. Allow Unintuitive Approaches. It is important to keep in mind that traditional designers

4. Anticipate Unintended Consequences. Consideration of the system and its users is a

• Social and environmental responsibility analysis

Figure 2. Sustainability and the Design Funnel

A. The Design Pipeline: A Challenge for Sustainability Learning

As a result, companies developing sustainable design programs need communication bandwidth

product product product product

overturned if cost management during production substitutes

B. Integrative Product Design: An Alternative Approach

Because sustainability is still unfolding as a

As depicted at left, integrative

The ability to analyze the social and environmental impacts of

The ability to connect ready parties and to bring the right

The ability to generate projects that enable exploration and

Explore with stakeholder and • What is our current level of

Build literacy and • Who is literate in sustainability and

Is a policy or organizational • Where will cross-functional teaming

Yes Is a partnership or cross-

Launch a new Redesign an Improve aspect(s)

Do we have lessons to diffuse across product lines?

Is (re)training needed • How should we build and transfer

Revisit sustainability strategy and accountability.

Sustainability frameworks tend to discuss only assessment of product performance to understand

To be helpful, an effective assessment should help to identify:

While assessment explores issue materiality and organizational capacity, bridging

There are three aspects of bridging to keep in mind:

The final aspect of sustainability intelligence is diffusion. Diffusion means