Ally Serge de Gheldere is a design engineer and CEO of Futureproof/ed. Futureproof/ed started out as a business reselling eco-design products and has evolved to a design consultantcy focused on reducing CO2 emissions through better, more cost-effective design of products and buildings.
Ecolizer Designwijzer' is a simple tool for designers and product managers. It's a set of cards bound like a Pantone color guide which let you use eco-indicators to analyze and compare environmental impacts of commonly used materials and processes. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for the people, and in a matter of minutes - Finally!
The set of cards contains background information on the eco-indicators; an explanation of the contents of the cards, a glossary and an example-based tutorial. The bulk of the guide consists of 80 cards with several hundred eco-indicators quantifying the environmental impact of the production, use and discarding phases of materials and processes. These include: ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, polymers, wood, paper and packaging, building materials, chemicals, energy, transportation aa well as buildings, land use, lighting, and 'services.'
The indicators themselves are an updated (August 2005) version of the 'eco-indicator 99'. This method looks at the damage caused in terms of resource depletion, land-use, climate change, ionizing radiation, acidification/eutrophication and toxicity.
The absolute value of the eco-indicator points does not have much practical use one point represents 1/1000th of the annual environmental impact of the average European because the eco-indicator is mainly intended for quick and dirty, relative comparisons of products and components. Use of the guide is really simple. For instance: analysis of the impact of a coffee-maker used twice daily at half capacity, 30 minutes heating and used for 5 years would consist of following steps:
1) production phase: for the polystyrene (PS) of the housing, estimate weight and then look up and add the points for the material and for injection molding both listed on the PS card; repeat for aluminum, glass and steel.
2) usage phase: estimate the total amount of electricity usage (5 years x 365 days/year x 2 uses/day x 0.5 hours/use x 1000 Watt power; look up under 'electricity' and add up points; same for paper used in coffee filters.
3) discarding phase: on the same PS card, you will find the eco-indicator points for discarding of 1 kg of PS. Same steps for the impacts of trashing the paper, glass and metals used in the coffee-maker.
So much eco-design goodness in such a low-tech little package! Even though it mostly contains the same research results, the Ecolizer Designwijzer is orders of magnitudes more accessible and compelling and fun to use than its parents the eco-indicator 99 reports. This a great example of how information (re)design can affect and improve industrial design.
Developed and published by Ovam, the Flemish Waste Agency, the guide is unfortunately written in Dutch and currently only distributed through workshops, but it offers an example of how governments everywhere could make getting eco-design know-how into people's hands in forms they can use.
