Design-out Waste

Our philosophy is that waste is best removed at source. 80% of the costs and environmental impact of a product are determined at the design phase. Once a product has been designed you know its whole life costs. You know when it will fail, what the warranty claims are likely to be, user costs per unit of utility and what disposal costs are likely to be.

The design phase is crucial. We recently worked with a group of 10 companies in the food and drink sector to minimise and redesign their packaging. This project reduced costs by £1.5 million and reduced carbon impact by 18,000 tonnes CO2.

We were the sole technical consultancy on a second project, entitled Designing-out Waste. Working with 100 businesses overall savings were £2.4 million. These were achieved by implementing waste reduction, waste exchange, energy efficiency and eco-design opportunities. Although eco-design services were delivered to 12% of companies they made up 48% of all savings identified.

The most powerful tool to reduce waste, climate change, environmental damage, and energy use is design. Are you using it effectively?