Page 48 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

CHAPTER 3

External Drivers:

The Voice of Society

Design … is the only deliberate way out of the
unsustainable dominating and addictive patterns
of individual and social behaviors that have
become the norms in the United States and in

other affluent consumerist societies.
john ehrenfeld [1]

Green Expectations
Society has come to expect a great deal of corporations, beyond deliv-
ering good quality products at affordable costs. Chapter 2 described
the groundswell of environmental awareness, beginning with con-
cerns over environmental pollution and the risks posed to humans
and wildlife, and culminating in the energy and climate change con-
cerns that are central to contemporary policy making. This chapter
examines in greater detail the external forces that are shaping today’s
business landscape. Chapter 4 describes the evolution in business
thinking that has led to the acceptance of corporate environmental
and social responsibility as staples of corporate governance, and
Chapter 5 briefly discusses the emergence of “green” markets. Sus-
tainability has become everyone’s concern, and stakeholders are
counting on the business community to be part of the solution.
Designing products with reduced environmental impacts is
mainly an engineering challenge. However, as companies roll out
the results of their DFE efforts in response to societal expectations,
this poses communication challenges that are far more daunting.
Conflicting political views, debates on methodology, scientific ambi-
guities, and stakeholder perceptions can easily cloud any discussion
of environmental performance. Consumers lose confidence in manu-
facturers’ claims when they are contradicted by competitors or pub-
lic interest groups. Consequently, companies have sought to build
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