Emerging issues in sustainable industrial design practice : implications for designers, manufacturers and educators
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2010
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Industrial designers have been addressing issues of sustainability for many years
with varying levels of intensity and mixed results. Since the 1970s, practitioners
and educators in the field of product design have demonstrated an appreciation of
issues related to the life cycles of products, the conservation of energy and natural
resources , and the recycling of materials, and this awareness has been reflected in
approaches to professional practice and in the academic curricula for industrial
design students. With the advent of the 21st century, a number of emerging
sustainability issues, associated largely with the implications of global warming
and increasing greenhouse gas emissions , have posed new challenges for
governments, manufacturers, and industrial design practitioners and educators.
These issues include those identified from the available literature relate to
Environmental Management Systems, Increases in Off-shore Manufacturing,
Sustainable Procurement, Developments in E-commerce, 'Green' Marketing,
Developments in waste management and recycling, Challenges for Environmental
Legislators, After-sales Product Support, Developments in Ecodesign Tools, The
Opportunities and Challenges of Rapid Prototyping, Emerging Sustainability
Issues for Educators. For industrial designers, the challenges arising from the
emerging issues relate not only to their desire to be ethical, but also to their need
to remain competitive.
The focus of this thesis is upon the sustainability issues that have emerged in the
early years of the 21st century. It looks first at the foundations of a sustainability
consciousness and some traditional attitudes and approaches to sustainability that
have been adopted by industrial design stakeholders since the 1970s. It draws
upon the work of James (2001) and others to develop a theoretical framework on
sustainability issues that are emerging in the early 21st century. This framework is
then used to underpin an investigation conducted among industrial designers and
manufacturers on sustainability issues that have emerged since approximately
2000, and their implications for the sector.
Following identification and analysis of the emerging issues, a number of
strategies are proposed for industrial design stakeholders to meet the challenges
posed by the emerging sustainability issues. These include strategies for
practitioners and manufacturers to promotes sustainability while remaining
competitive, desirable changes to the curriculum of industrial design courses, and
the revision and updating of out-dated environmental legislation.
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