There are impacts on nature and people at all stages of a product lifecycle, including materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, product use and reuse, and end-of-life. For example, synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilisers may be used to product cotton, polluting soils and watercourses. Large mines to extract minerals involve destruction of nature and may involve exploitation of workers. Manufacturing causes air pollution through energy use, and may involve the use of harsh chemicals, affecting workers and the environment. Transportation of materials and components by road, sea, or air produces greenhouse gas emissions.

There are lots of ways in which products can be designed to be more sustainable, for example, by using fewer materials, choosing biodegradable or recyclable materials, and making sure different materials are easy to separate for reuse and recycling. Products can be designed to be more durable and to use less energy.

Often the solutions exist for making more sustainable products, but these might in some cases (but not always) be more time-consuming to organise, more expensive, and considered less aesthetically pleasing. Designing for durability may be at odds with a business model based on volume of sales. Therefore, when decisions are made within companies about how sustainable products will be, people often need to weigh up different priorities, including environmental impacts, costs and profits, aesthetics, and ease and speed of manufacture.

Image attribution: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.