Ecodesign: Everything you want to know

Eco-design has come to conceive sustainable products that are desirable to the consumer and more economically feasible. All this without compromising the resources of future generations.

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What is ecodesign?

Eco-design , ecological design or sustainable design is based on the consideration of environmental sustainability as an aspect as important as functionality, quality or aesthetics when creating a product.

Eco-design is included in all phases of the product life cycle. From the extraction of the raw material, through the whole process of manufacturing, distribution, use and even to the last phase where the product’s life ends.

Its objective is to create designs that do not generate a negative impact on the planet. In such an industrialised world as the one we live in, this type of design is becoming increasingly necessary so as not to continue compromising the resources of future generations.

Benefits of eco-design

The practice of eco-design not only brings ecological benefits, but also offers other important utilities. Below, we will tell you the most important ones:

• Less production costs. To manufacture products with ecodesign implies the use of less materials and resources like water, energy, among others, reason why the costs of manufacture diminish.
• Considerable savings. An ecodesigned product is designed to use less energy when operating, which in the long term represents an important saving.
• Itrenews the corporate image. Eco-design will promote a greener image and even open the doors to new markets.
• Improve the quality of the product. Taking into account environmental criteria when designing a product will improve its quality, since it will avoid toxic elements that can damage your health.
• Innovative products. Putting ecodesign criteria into practice often generates incredible ideas in terms of aesthetics and functionality, resulting in the creation of truly innovative products.
• Distinguishing your products on the market. They have an added value that differentiates them from other products on the market, thanks to their respect for the environment.
• Ittakes care of the environment. Eco-designed products respect the environment at every stage. Thus they guarantee to be the best option to not contribute to the negative ecological impact.

Guide to eco-design of containers and packaging

In the following, we will briefly describe the steps to be followed for the application of packaging ecodesign.

Organising the project

To start the project of eco-design of packaging it will be necessary to consider the following aspects

• Define who will command and evaluate the whole process.
• Establish which are the goals to be achieved with the project.
• Determine which specific product(s) the ecodesign will be applied to.

Identify the environmental impact

This step is key to establishing a sustainable vision for packaging that guarantees positive results. This is where it will be necessary:

• Carry out research to find out what the environmental impact generated by packaging in its standard version is during all its stages of existence.
• Once their impact on the environment has been identified, a decision must be made as to which environmental impact or impacts to act against.
• To do this it will be necessary to determine which product ecodesign tool to use and in what time frame.

Evaluate in consensus

It is essential to agree by a majority on the ecodesign strategies that will bring improvements to the current system of packaging. This is in order to obtain more environmentally friendly results. For this it is necessary:

• To take into account the results of the previously selected product ecodesign tool.
• Once these results have been analysed, the most feasible ecodesign strategies must be defined from a technical, economic and commercial point of view.

Concrete the ecodesign plan

Then apply the eco-design strategies for packaging and proceed to check whether the new eco-designed product:

• Has improvements in terms of environmental impact compared to the previous version.
• If the product has positive results, it proceeds to apply the relevant techniques for the industrialisation of the new ecodesigned packaging.

Validate

Finally, you must agree on the basis for communicating the results of the ecodesign process. This is in order to validate that the new sustainable packaging system means real environmental improvements.

Without a doubt, ecodesign is a great alternative to offer our grain of sand for a less polluted world. What do you think about this?