5 The Pragmatist has amodular slot system –when one slot breaks,it can be posted to themanufacturer for repair

6 The Realist’s pop-apart structure allowsfor sorting ofcomponents withminimal labour cost

1 and 2 Electricalproducts awaitingsorting at a recycling facility

3 Two members of theRoyal College of Artinnovation designengineering trio DesignOut Waste at work

4 The Optimist toaster,with its debossed ‘dateof birth’ and rounds-of-toast tracker

6 Design Week June 2010 www.designweek.co.uk

Sustainable Design / Planned obsolescence

Toast tothe futureMakers of electrical productsseem reluctant to say goodbye tothe era of planned obsolescence.Gina Lovett investigates why theyhave been so slow to embracecradle-to-cradle thinking, andlooks at an innovative approachto devising end-of-life strategies

Cradle-to-cradle thinking has finally hitthe mainstream, capturing the attentionof Arnold Schwarzenegger and celebrity-turned-Green philanthropist Brad Pitt.

They are two of the high-profile names backingYves Béhar’s Green Products Innovation Institute,which launched last month in California. Butwhile the initiative is reaching categories such asfurniture and health and beauty, with cradle-to-cradle certification of brands such as HermanMiller and Aveda, the electronics and electricalproducts industry remains in dire need of aneco-efficiency makeover.

‘It’s easier to close the loops with productslike furniture, but with electronics and electricalitems, there are so many products andcomponents that businesses tend to shy away[from taking action],’ explains Frank O’Connor,director of the Eco Design Centre Wales.‘Applying the cradle-to-cradle process to all ofthese would be extremely time-consuming andexpensive, and require a massive infrastructurebeyond the production and sales processes.’

Another fundamental in the equation is theexisting economic paradigm: with companiesgeared for growth, it is obsolescence andfashionability, not sustainability, that keep thecommercial wheels in motion.

Major consumer electronics companies fromPhilips to Panasonic, under duress from the EUWaste Electrical and Electronic Equipment

Directive, have begun to adopt design-for-disassembly approaches, making their productseasier to sort and recycle. This approach ischaracterised by features such as low- or no-leadsolder, modular electronics boards, snap-fit ratherthan glued joints, and dismantling instructions.

Other schemes such as Hewlett-Packard’sExtended Life programme, which enablescustomers to upgrade and service partsbelonging to discontinued items, is based onproduct longevity, though admittedly it’s more ofa customer loyalty effort than a huge revenue-spinner. However, despite such efforts, andlegislation, there continues to be a startlinginefficiency in the reprocessing and recovery ofmaterials used in electrical items.

Clare Brass, former Design Councilsustainability leader and currently director ofsocial enterprise body the Seed Foundation,points out that unless you have the correctbusiness model and production system from theoutset, even a perfectly valid cradle-to-cradleproduct can be made redundant by a lack ofinfrastructure and services to deal with it.

She explains, ‘You need to link up the biggerpicture and see what else there is that mightaffect the validity of a cradle-to-cradle product.For example, the carpet tile that [carpetcompany] Interface Flor redesigned can be bothrecycled and upcycled, but it is really only able todo this because of the leasing business model it

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You need to link up the bigger picture andsee what else there is that might affect thevalidity of a cradle-to-cradle productClare Brass, Seed Foundation_

Sustainable Design / Planned obsolescence

has. It recognised a need to create and managethe systems around its product. In other words,you need to actually recycle, not justtheoretically recycle.’

Such concerns have driven Royal College ofArt innovation design engineering trio RichGilbert, Adam Paterson and Matthew Laws toexplore how this might work. Their second-yearproject, Design Out Waste – now the foundingphilosophy for a forthcoming company – tookthe ubiquitous toaster as a starting point.

‘The toaster highlights so many of theproblems with waste and use of materials.Larger-scale items – like engines – can self-manage, but it’s the smaller items that end upgetting thrown in the bin,’ says Laws. The trio’sanswer was three end-of-life system strategies– the Realist, the Pragmatist and the Optimist –incorporated into three toaster prototypes.

The Realist is designed as a fast-sellingmass-market item, with a limited life-span.Driven by the need for consumer convenience, atthe end of its consumer-life the Realist will beconventionally recycled by being taken to amaterials recovery facility for dry recyclables.

‘Our existing MRF infrastructures have thecapabilities to stockpile and sort the products, inorder to eventually return them to their originalmanufacturers’ nearest reprocessing facilities,’explains Gilbert. The Realist’s pop-apart structure,dismantled using the trio’s patent-pending rapid

disassembly technology, allows themanufacturer to separate and sort componentswith minimal labour cost, so that material valueis maintained and can be reprocessed anew,avoiding waste and minimising downcycling.

The Pragmatist, based on a repair and life-extension strategy, has a modular toasting slotsystem held together magnetically. When oneslot breaks, it can be posted back to themanufacturer, who repairs it for a small cost. Theremaining slots function as normal.

‘Close relationships with sub-componentsuppliers make it possible to manage thematerials in the most environmental andeconomic way. Some are cleaned, some arerefurbished and others are recycled,’ says Gilbert.

But perhaps the most radical of the strategiesis the Optimist toaster, designed to last for life.The longevity is achieved mainly through thematerials choice, Gilbert says. Cast aluminiumcan be reprocessed indefinitely withoutdegrading. The heavily engineered toaster – withits debossed ‘date of birth’ and rounds-of-toasttracker – aims to transcend novelty and build auser relationship that can extend down thegenerations. ‘Part of the beauty of an olderobject is knowing the details of its past,’ he says.

Despite the celebrity embracing of cradle-to-cradle, lifelong commitment to the Optimistmight still be a struggle – at least for the ficklefashionistas.

_Waste not, want not...

The EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive obligesmanufacturers to meet the cost of managing their share of this burgeoning waste stream. The more difficult it is for the waste management companies to disassemble and recycle manufacturers’products, the more the manufacturers pay – a concept known as ‘individual producer responsibility’

According to the Royal Society of Arts microsite Weeeman.org, the break-even point – the point at which it is environmentally better for theconsumer to buy a new product rather than keep an old one – for mobilephones works out around seven years, but the average person changes theirs every 11 months

The cradle-to-cradle framework, developed in 1995 by architect WilliamMcDonough and chemist Dr Michael Braungart, provides a blueprint forredesigning products and ingredients, enabling them to become the rawmaterials for new goods and services

Downcycling occurs when proprietary polymers, such as thosemanufactured by Dupont and Exxon Mobil, are mixed. Degradation of thematerial happens even if the plastics are the same type, compounding the complexity of recycling_

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