Index
Sustainable products and packaging
Images: Products and packaging
Design has an enormous influence on society. Design impacts every aspect of our lives. The impact that design has on everyday life is immense, yet it is also inconspicuous. Look around the room you are sitting in, you are surrounded by objects that have been designed and produced by designers.
Design maintains a complex concealment of resource consumption in two key ways. First, the consumption of natural resources is embodied in consumer products in ways that conceal the weight and scale of this depletion. Second; the consumption of natural resources is made inconspicuous in our everyday lives. These two forms of consumption, one from the production side (embodied consumption) and the other from the demand side (inconspicuous consumption), are both driven by design and are presented as major contributors to the ecological crisis.
Therefore a move towards a sustainable society requires the design of products from less resource intensive materials (technical solutions focused at reducing embodied consumption) as well as by changing the resource intensive behaviour of our everyday lives (social solutions focused on addressing inconspicuous consumption).
The guiding question for the research group is ‘How is this design attempting to be sustainable, if this product, practice or design is widely adopted, will this lead to a sustainable society?’ The objective is to work towards positive solutions responding to this question. The Sustainable Product and Packaging group research interests are focused on influencing change in individuals’ behaviour, the designed artefacts that are produced, and the application of the design process to lead to a more sustainable society.
Key Themes – what we research
- People: understanding how people interact with designed artefacts; exploring the role of design in maintaining and shifting habitual behaviours
- Products: influence the outcome of designed artefacts – so that the products produced have the lowest ecological footprint across their lifecycle
- Processes: developing tools and processes to assist organisations embed sustainable and lifecycle thinking in their development process; applying design thinking and processes in new environments
Project list
- Current Projects
- Completed Projects
- Resources
- Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool (PIQET)
- Greenfly
Contact details
For further information please contact Karli Verghese (Program Director, Sustainable Products and Packaging).