4 Ways Businesses Can Make Their Products More Eco-Friendly
Being kind and caring towards the environment has always been important, but for the current generation, it’s even more critical due to the devastating effects our past actions have had on it. What we eat, what we consume, and what we buy, all contribute to the deterioration of the planet we all call home. That’s why as customers and consumers, the population needs to make better choices and smarter choices — and the trends are suggesting that we are.
Due to the need to reverse the damage already inflicted upon the planet, a lot of customers are being far more cautious with what they buy, which can be seen via their spending patterns. People are opting for single use plastic far less frequently and are going for items that are easier to recycle. And for businesses, if they fail to catch on to this eco minded trend, then they run the risk of getting overtaken in the market by those that do.
In product design there are 4 main approaches, collectively known as ‘Design for the Environment’ to reduce the negative environmental and health impacts of product design. Here are the 4 ways businesses can make their products more eco-friendly.
Environmental Processing and Manufacturing
It’s important to consider where the raw minerals and materials used to create your business’s products come from, how they’re extracted and how they’re put together. Some of these materials when processed may not lead to recyclable or biodegradable products and can even create toxic by-products which can pollute and cause havoc to an ecosystem or habitat.
To make sure your processing and manufacturing is eco focused you need to figure out ways to limit waste pollution such as greenhouse gases and energy expenditure. Product portfolio management tools provide a good avenue to do that as it allows you to evaluate your product development and isolate areas of the product’s design or manufacturing process which can be improved upon.
Environmental Packaging
Packaging can create a lot of waste and rubbish, and that’s why a lot of businesses are trying to limit the amount of packaging they need and when they use it, to make it environmentally friendly. By using reusable or recyclable packaging products and by eliminating the use of unnecessary paper or plastic material, as well as making efficient use of space, are the key strategies to create eco-friendly packaging.
Environmental Disposal
When making planet friendly products, an important feature that needs to be considered is how it’s going to be disposed of when it reaches the end of its product lifecycle. Most products get thrown away and left to rot in landfill, so it’s important for product designers to think of ways to reduce this. One is to make them easier to recycle so that consumers are more inclined to dispose of them responsibly. But another thing manufactures can do is to ensure that it has no toxic material, so that if it is thrown away, the consequences aren’t as bad.
Environmental Energy Use
This applies primarily to electronical products, but to make these more eco-friendly, manufactures need to think about how to make them more energy efficient. This means they need to be smart with their design and ensure that they don’t need a whole lot of energy to power or charge, as this can make it far friendlier to the environment. Energy efficient light bulbs are the prime example of this principle in action.
