Page 145 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

124 Cha pte r Ei g h t

A. Design for Dematerialization

The rate of material throughput is perhaps the most important indi-
cator of unsustainability in our global economy, as stated in Chap-
ter 1. We are largely sheltered from the enormous flows of materials
that are extracted from nature, converted into products, and finally
released into the environment in order to support our lifestyles.
Material flow is a fundamental driver of energy use, water use, green-
house gas emissions, and most other environmental indicators—the
more we use, the more we waste. Therefore, a principal strategy for
improving sustainability is dematerialization, defined as the reduction
of material throughput in an economic system. Dematerialization has
been popularized in proposals such as Factor 4, which suggests a
doubling of global economic wealth while halving material resource
use [1]. Some argue that a Factor 10 transformation is necessary for
industrialized nations to reach long-term sustainability [2].
Dematerialization includes a variety of techniques, such as in -
creasing material efficiency in operations; designing products with
reduced mass, packaging, or life-cycle energy requirements; replace-
ment of virgin materials with post-industrial or post-consumer
wastes; reducing transportation requirements in the supply chain,
thus re ducing fuel and vehicle utilization; substitution of electronic
services for material-intensive services; and substitution of services

FIGURE 8.3 Design for dematerialization.