Print Email Facebook Twitter Beyond (eco)design: Current approaches to sustainable packaging design Title Beyond (eco)design: Current approaches to sustainable packaging design Author Wever, R. Faculty Industrial Design Engineering Department Design Engineering Date 2014-03-06 Abstract Packaging has always received a lot of attention within the field of design for sustainability. The classical approach has been to mainly focus on reducing the impact of the packaging. This approach stems from the ill-informed position that packaging is superfluous, or at best there only for marketing reasons. This is a rather guild-based approach that, if taken to extremes, would lead to complete elimination of packaging, or at most a quintessential brown paper bag. In industry reality though, the packaging design is seen as a way to differentiate, to stand out from the competition. That view is at odds with the sustainability view. Also, through fulfilling its other functions, such as protection of the packed product, packaging contributes to sustainability. This paper discusses several other approaches, such as circular economy as an alternative perspective on sustainability, prevention of food waste as an alternative design priority, and the eco-cost value ratio as an alternative assessment method. Subsequently, the alternative assessment method, the so-called eco-costs/value ratio, or EVR, is elaborated upon. By comparing the eco-burden of a packaging with the value created, it allows aligning sustainability and marketing performance. Hence, it shows an approach to design for sustainability that is more in line with business reality. In this paper several packaging examples are used, but this method is applicable for all sorts of designs, such as furniture design and service design, as will be briefly discussed as well. Subject EcoDesigngreen designlife cycle assessmentpackagingfood wasteecoefficient value creationcradle to cradlecircular economy To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2d3ebd37-fc37-466b-bab4-50b435f2f78b Publisher Universidad de Monterrey Source UDesign Coloquio, Universidad de Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, March 2014 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c) 2014 Wever, R. Files PDF wever_beyond_ecodesign.pdf 261.48 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:2d3ebd37-fc37-466b-bab4-50b435f2f78b/datastream/OBJ/view