Whitepapers

1 Five Steps to Eco Design // MATERIALS Five Steps to Eco Design Improving the Environmental Performance of Products Through Material-led Design / 1. Business Drivers for Eco Design No matter the stage at which your company is in when considering sustainable design, it is important to be clear on two things: the business drivers for eco design and the potential value to the company of investing in the business drivers and potential value of eco design investment. The specifics and overall strength of the business case for eco design will vary from market to market and from company to company. As you read through the following list of commonly cited drivers for eco design, try to consider whether any are relevant to your company. If so, which are the most important? Considering the potential environmental impacts of a product as part of the design process is fast becoming a primary design driver, with companies setting public, tangible, goals to reduce emissions and drive toward net-zero carbon emission targets. Active board members and investors are demanding progress on their product's sustainability, and engineers are quickly adapting to the urgent realities of eco design. This white paper aims to provide a simple introduction to eco design through material-led design. We start with some of the business drivers to help you evaluate investing in this area. In Section 2, drawing on our experience in helping companies implement eco design activities and tools, we present some of the challenges organizations often face when starting out in this area. In Section 3, we share five simple and practical tips that can help you and your organization implement eco design, whether you are a designer, engineer, environmental specialist, or someone involved in the management of product design or development. We introduce the Ansys Granta technology that can support your eco design activities in Section 4 before summarizing the key points for incorporating environmental sustainability into product design in Section 5. A. Product Marketing, Brand Value, and Corporate Social Responsibility Making claims about the environmental performance of operations or products is a double-edged sword for many companies. Such claims may help to increase sales, share prices, and brand value if they address environmental issues that are of concern to customers, analysts, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs); are based on solid scientific evidence; and can be independently verified by interested third parties. However, if environmental claims fail to meet any of these criteria, companies risk being accused of "greenwashing" — making unsubstantiated environmental claims or using environmental marketing on certain topics to gloss over less flattering environmental issues for the company. The simplest answer would appear to be to make no environmental claims at all. However, this in itself can damage a company's brand or share value due to the rising expectations of investors and other stakeholders in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting, increasing scrutiny f rom NGOs, and pressure f rom competitors. Table 1: Summary of business drivers for eco design. Product marketing, brand value, and corporate social responsibility Cost & supply chain management Legislation on energy and hazardous substances Stimulus for innovation A B C D

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