Transcript for EO403 - Lifecycle thinking.PDF

Graduate Apprenticeship - Engineering Design and Manufacture Class: EO403 - Design for X Lifecycle thinking In this video, we're going to look at life-cycle thinking. Life-cycle thinking is a systematic framework that takes a very holistic view of the production and the consumption of a product or s...

Graduate Apprenticeship - Engineering Design and Manufacture Class: EO403 - Design for X Lifecycle thinking In this video, we're going to look at life-cycle thinking. Life-cycle thinking is a systematic framework that takes a very holistic view of the production and the consumption of a product or service. It also assesses all the impacts on the environment throughout the entire life-cycle of the product. Life-cycle thinking is fundamental to any sort of sustainability or design for environment approach. So life-cycle thinking can be thought of as a closed-loop system. In order to reach the conditions of environmental sustainability, all the materials in the products must be balanced in a sustainable system. We can compare that to the natural biological life-cycle system, whereby something grows, it dies, it returns back to the soil, and the whole cycle then starts again. So we are looking to ways in which we can reduce the environmental impacts with the product industrial life-cycle and compare that more to a biological life-cycle. We can think of products in terms of their life-span There are those with short life-spans, and those with medium, and those with long-term life-spans. So if we look at some of the products with a short life-span, perhaps a few hours, that might be packaging, which something's wrapped up, it's delivered, opened, and then discarded, to a few years. What are the possibilities for innovation within these areas for products with short life-spans? Could we perhaps design packaging that's biodegradable? Could we design the packaging that's part of the product or has a second use? Something we don't necessarily consider when we think about short life-span products is the production of CO2 emissions. For example, if we think of the production of a kilogramme of beef, that emits the same amount of carbon dioxide as the average European car travelling 250 kilometres, or the same amount of emission as lighting a light bulb, 100-watt light bulb, for 20 days. If we move on to thinking about medium life-span products, that's probably the products that we interact most with in our daily lives, products lasting between six months and 10 years, and products which are made up of lots of different parts and components. These products contribute to the main environmental impacts in terms of waste, and this, in part, has become over the years due to our culture's consumption of newer and newer goods. Perhaps there is possibility here for innovation in terms of the product development process, the types of materials we use, and so on. With the longer life-span products, that's products that have a life-span of between 25 and 50 years, we think about buildings and structures, and they are responsible for approximately half of the carbon emissions in the UK. We need to think about the new innovations that we can put into these buildings and structures that Page 1/2 will increase their life-span and will reduce any environmental impact. And the final category of products are those in the longest life span area, that's those with a life-span of up to 100 years. These are products that we rarely notice. These are products that are part of the infrastructure, infra coming from the word invisible, and they are there to support our lifestyle and our lives. Power, energy, roads, transport, the telecommunications that we now have, sanitation, they have extensive environmental effects, and as designers, we should be thinking about how we can reduce their environmental impact. Innovation and change can have enormous effect in this particular category. However, any implementation is very costly, and it also takes a long time. When carrying out the development of new products, or when you're involved in the product development process, think about the full life-cycle of the product. Think about how you can reduce environmental impact. Page 2/2