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Sustainability
We believe that as a provider of product design we have a responsibility to help develop more sustainable manufacturing practices and products. At Curedale we continue to integrate design for the environment into our product development process.
Good design is design that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations. We strive to lead in the practical exploration, development and application of global sustainable design and manufacturing.
Some of the ways in which we can work to improve the environmental performance of the products that we design:
1. Use ecodesign strategies appropriate to the product;
2. Reduce overall material content and increase the percentage of recycled material in products;
3. Reduce energy consumption of products that use energy;
4. Specify sustainably grown materials when using wood or agricultural materials;
5. Design disposable products or products that wear out to be more durable and precious;
6. Eliminate unused or unnecessary product features;
7. Design continuously transported products for minimal weight;
8. Design for fast, economical disassembly of major components prior to recycling;
9. Design products so that toxic components (electronics, etc.) are easily removed prior to recycling;
10. Perform comprehensive environmental assessment;
11. Consider all of the ecological impacts from all of the components in the products over its entire life cycle, including extraction of materials from nature, conversion of materials into products, product use, disposal or recycling and transport between these phases;
12. Consider all ecological impacts including global warming, acid rain, smog, habitat damage, human toxicity, water pollution, cancer causing potential, ozone layer depletion and resource depletion;
13. Strive to reduce the largest ecological impacts,
14. Conduct life cycle impact assessment (LCA) to comprehensively identify opportunities for improving ecological performance
15. Encourage new business models and effective communication
16. Support product 'take back' systems that enable product up-grading and material recycling;
17. Lease the product or sell the service of the product to improve long-term performance and end-of-life product collection;
18. Communicate the sound business value of being ecologically responsible to clients and commissioners
19. Discuss market opportunities for meeting basic needs and reducing consumption,
20. Present superior product quality claims ('energy saving', 'contains less toxic waste', etc.) along with other performance features.
Event
Design Green Now
Rob Curedale moderates panel discussion at California State University between a group of top architects and designers. Panelists include designers from top consultancies like Frog, Smart Design and Fuse Project along side leading green producers like the sportswear company Nau.
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Sulo recycling bin
This project was undertaken for one of the largest manufacturers of household litter ins in the world. We modified a standard 240 litre mobile bin by adding a large internal corrugated injection moulding to divide the internal space into two separate compartments for regional councils in Australia and South East Asia. The householder sorts trash in the home and the compartment allows automatic sep
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Recyclable litter bins
Part of the project to design the recycling system for millions of households was to develop components that could be recled themselves for the litter bin. The bins and internal dividers were designed to enable collection every five years for cleaning and recycling. A small percentace of virgin pp material was added to the mix and the bins were remolded in the original injection molding tools with
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