What is ecodesign?
Ecodesign is a approach to design of a product with special cinsideration for the environmental impacts of the product during its whole lifecycle. - retrived from Wikipedia.
What does the term of 'lifecycle' means in the statement above?
- Well, i found out that 'lifecycle' is having the similar meaning of 'the guidelines of ecodesign'.
What are the guidelines of ecodesign?
- Firstly, i want to say what is the purpose of those guidelines.
- The purpose of those guidelines, or we can say the existances of those guidelines is to comprehend the benefits or the harms of a product impacts on the environment.
There are 7 guidelines for ecodesign.
1. Do not design products, but lifecycle.
- From this statement, we can understand that people should not only have to consider about the design, people also have to consider about the lifecycle as well.
- For example, Do not design 'green' products. Instead, people should design environmentally sound product lifecycle. People should think about what are the materials they should use.
2. Natural materials are not always better.
- For example of some products are made from wood. They cannot be recycle, but plastics can often be recycled.
3. Energy consumption: often underestimated.
- This means the total sum of overall energy of the process on the product being produce is worth than the total sum of each part of the product being process.
- Maybe this simple example can clearly interpreted.
a. 10kWh electricity needs 2kg of oil.
b. Making 1kg of plastic needs 1.5 to 2.5kg of oil.
c. A coffee machine uses 300kWh electricity during it's lifetime, equal to 60kg of oil.
d. For the production of the machine less than 1kg of plastic of used.
- People normally underestimate the environmental impacts of energy as you cannot hold electricity or gas in your hands.
4. Increase product lifetime.
- The way to increase the lifetime of a product is make it more durable from a technical point of view, or make it upgradeable.
- For example, allowing the product to insert latest chip in a computer, washing machine or television.
5. Do not design products, but services.
-Here, the statement for this guidline: A service rather than a product can be the right solution.
- People do not always want a product, their intention of buying a product is because they want a solution for a certain problem, thats all!
6. Use a minimun of material.
- Minimize the weight of a product, which means less fuel consumption.
7. Use recycled materials.
- People always unstatisfied. Why? It is because people nowadays keep searching others materials to make a product recyclable. Why dont they just use recycled materials as much as possible?
- As i mentioned in second guidline, use the material which can be often recycled.
- If there is a demand for recycled materials, the supply will follow certainly.
Well, the last thing i would i like to say about this ecodesign is, people can make a huge improvements by simply asking the very obvious "WHY?".
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