Lecture - Design For Environment

Sustainable Operations Management (DOM403)
Sustainability and new

product design
Dr Sandeep K. Gupta (PhD, MBA, M.Tech)

Assistant Professor, SME, SNU
Case-study: Barilla Inc.
Efforts at sustainable environmental management are
supported by four pillars:
1. Conserving energy and preventing global warming;

2. Conserving natural resources and encouraging
recycling; and
3. Preventing pollution – support reduced environmental
impact from our own business pursuits, and the fourth –
4. Protecting biodiversity – is vital for the planet to raise
Responsiveness of operations to environmental
issues’
Actions motivated by reactive choices made in response to
pressure from regulators, the market or value‐based choices,
which in turn mean compliance choices, such as certifications or
the participation in voluntary improvement programmes related
to environmental impact.
Actions involving end‐of‐pipe pollution control, aimed at
capturing pollutants and wastes, or limiting their impact, through
the improvement of production processes and investments in
technology. These actions generally affect production processes
within and along the supply chain, especially upstream.
Continue…
Actions connected to the design and management of reverse flows,
developed downstream, to capture end‐of‐life products’ value, by
leveraging any possible recovery options, such as remanufacturing,
part harvesting, recycling and so on.
Actions oriented at pro‐active choices (Leong et al., 1990), such as
those linked to pollution prevention and the analysis of
environmental impact along the product life cycle, through the
development of techniques such as the LCA – Life Cycle Assessment
– and product design choices oriented at respecting the environment,
like DFE – Design for Environment. These actions, in contrast with
pollution control, mostly involve product design, internal
manufacturing processes, and those managed along the supply chain.
Aligning Environmental and Supply Chain
Orientation
Sustainability via Circular Economy
• According to Boulding's idea of economy as a circular system is
seen as a prerequisite for the maintenance of the
sustainability of human life on Earth (a closed system with
practically no exchanges of matter with the outside
environment) (Boulding, 1966).
Source: www.wrap.org.uk/about-us/about/wrap-and-circular-economy
• The ultimate goal of promoting Circular Economy is the
decoupling of environmental pressure from economic growth.
• Circular economy is seen as a new business model expected to

lead to a more sustainable development and a harmonious
society (Mathews and Tan, 2011; Europesworld, 2014; Lett, 2014; Naustdalslid, 2014). 10
The principles underlying the Circular Economy are
based on (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2012; 2013):
A circular vision of the life cycle of manufactured goods, which must be created
and designed for multiple life cycles, according to cradle‐to‐cradle logics.
 The need to implement up‐cycling logics, namely the creation – and not the
reduction (down‐cycling) – of value, through processes aimed at reusing
products and materials that create new products and materials of a higher
quality and with improved features.
 The need to think of the relationship with natural resources in terms of resource
effectiveness and not resource efficiency, taking into consideration the
requirement to re‐insert natural resources so far as possible into the biological
cycle that transforms waste into food.
 The incentive to use renewable resources and to take strict action against all
forms of the depletion of natural resources, the use of hazardous materials and
greenhouse emissions and so on.
Example: Black polyester scraps from the end
of a bolt of cloth
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CLOSING THE LOOP
11/07/2020 13
Circular Economy considers Life Cycle
Approach
Circular economy is a model

whereby value from material
assets is recaptured at
multiple points in a product’s
lifecycle.
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Source: http://www.sportinterface.com/circular-economy-and-sport-facility-development/circular-economy/
Shift in development Logic
 the traditional development of an industrial cycle, shown in the centre of the
diagram, proceeds according to a linear logic that starts with the extraction of raw
materials and moves towards production, consumption and the destruction of
value though waste disposal.
 On the contrary, sustainable development must be based on circular cycles, shown
along the sides, which differ due to the nature – that is, the ‘biological and
technical nutrients’, respectively – of the reusable materials and products
concerned: the former are non‐toxic and can be composted, hence guaranteeing
the restorative capacity of natural resources, and the latter must be designed to
have multiple life cycles from a perspective of cradle‐to‐cradle, achieved through
their reuse with the aim of minimising the impact on environmental resources.
Video on Reduce
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Power of Circular Economy
The power of the inner circle refers to minimising
comparative material usage vis‐a‐vis the linear production
system. The tighter the circle, that is, the less a product has to
be changed in reuse, refurbishment and remanufacturing, and
the faster it returns to use, the higher the potential savings on
the shares of material, labour, energy and capital embedded in
the product and on the associated rucksack of externalities
(such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water, toxicity).
The power of circling longer refers to maximising the number
of consecutive cycles (be it reuse, remanufacturing, or
recycling) and/or the time in each cycle.
Continue…
 The power of cascaded use refers to diversifying reuse across the
value chain, as when cotton clothing is reused first as second ‐hand
apparel, then crosses to the furniture industry as fibre ‐fill in
upholstery, and the fibre‐fill is later reused in stone wool insulation
for construction – in each case substituting for an inflow of virgin
materials into the economy – before the cotton fibres are safely
returned to the biosphere.
 The power of pure circles, finally, lies in the fact that
uncontaminated material‐streams increase collection and
redistribution efficiency while maintaining quality, particularly of
technical materials, which, in turn, extends product longevity and
thus increases material productivity.
Evolution of LCA approaches
The aim of the LCA is to analyse and measure the
environmental impact, and at times the social impact, of a
product or a process along its entire life cycle, from extraction
of the raw materials to its end-of-life and disposal.
Generally elements such as energy consumption, the depletion
of minerals and fossil fuels, toxicity, global warming etc. are
evaluated and measured using measurements in equivalent
units, such as the Carbon Footprint or Water Footprint, etc.
(EPA, 1992)
Guidelines for conducting a LCA can be found in various ISO
standards, in particular in ISO 14040, 14041, 14042 and 14043.
Continue…
Cradle‐to‐Gate, if the effects caused along the life cycle from the
extraction of raw materials to the production, packaging and
distribution phases are evaluated. In this case, impact is evaluated
up to the release of the product by a company to its transfer to other
actors downstream or its introduction to the market.
Cradle‐to‐Grave, when the phases linked to the usage cycles of the
product in question by consumers in the primary and secondary
markets are added to the previous phases, until its end ‐of ‐life and
disposal.
Cradle‐to‐Cradle, in the cases where, as mentioned before at the
end of its life cycle, either a part of or the entire product can become
a useful component in new life cycles of the goods it generates.
Eco‐efficiency and eco‐effectiveness
Eco‐efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively‐priced
goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life,
while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity
throughout the life cycle to a level at least in line with the earth’s
estimated carrying capacity. (Schmidheiny and WBCSD, 1992)
The development of eco‐efficiency practices originates from previous
efforts to control and treat pollution or from interventions, often
imposed by environmental regulations, aimed at controlling and
reducing the amount of emissions and affluents released into the
atmosphere through the adoption of end‐of‐pipe technologies,
developed to reduce or remove the polluting agents emitted during the
production process.
Continue…
The more evolved concept interprets this process as circular or closed‐loop, in
which, as already mentioned, the product is ‘reincarnated’ into new products at
the end of its life cycle, repeating subsequent life cycles in the cradle ‐to ‐cradle
logic. This‘The
mayconcept
occur through the use of recovery
of eco‐effectiveness options,
proposes the such as the reuse,
remanufacturing or recycling
transformation of products,
of products and materials and components,
their associated material in such a
way as toflows
minimise
suchthethatextraction
they form and consumption
a supportive of virgin raw
relationship materials.
with
The goal,ecological
therefore, systems
is not to and
minimise
futurethe cradle‐to‐grave materials and
flow of growth’
economic
their dematerialisation,
(Braungart et but al., rather to 1338).
2007, p. exploit them in subsequent life cycles. This
is the case, for example, in products made entirely from natural raw materials,
such as fabrics and carpets made from natural, biodegradable fibres that may be
reused as compost or as inputs in new productions; or the case of manufactured
products, such as bags and backpacks made by reusing lorry tarpaulins or
advertising canvases, recovered after use; or the use of scrapped ‐wood chips
from timber mills to create cross‐laminated timber panels used in construction.
Continue..
Eco‐efficiency approaches claim that ‘less is better’, or that a
reduced use of toxic or scarce materials is beneficial to the
environment by limiting their impact, eco‐effectiveness systems
are based on the affirmation that ‘bigger is better’, where bigger
means the possibility of developing products and businesses that
enable the resources of the planet to be regenerated.
for example, regional development initiatives, such as those
linked to interventions aimed at replanting, repopulating, feeding
and so forth, with the objective of producing a positive footprint
(McDonough and Braungart, 2002, pp. 77 and 78).

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Sustainable Operations Management (DOM403)

Sustainability and new

Dr Sandeep K. Gupta (PhD, MBA, M.Tech)

1. Conserving energy and preventing global warming;

• Circular economy is seen as a new business model expected to

Circular economy is a model

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