The human life cycle of a product
A few weeks ago I was in Farnham for the Sustainable Innovation 2011 conference. A lot of the buzz during the event was on the product’s life cycle.
Here’s a personal interpretation of how that looks:
Planning (design), manufacture, distribution, selling (which could be argumentatively included in the previous), usage and end of life (disposal).
The speakers showed how the opportunities for innovation were shaped like a butterfly: the greatest chances were at the beginning and at the end, whilst the least could be done in the middle.
More surprisingly, we were shown how, in some products, most polluting activities were carried out in the usage phase: the mere function and maintenance of the product made it non-sustainable.
This inevitably lead to the need to raise awareness amongst consumers and inform them better.
We also looked at proposals from companies that were tackling sustainability issues in one way or another. For instance, Boots made available a “sustainability book” to each store so that if any customer demanded any information on the matter the workers would have it at hand. What I take from this example is that their customers have to actively ask for such information in the first place. And also, that Boots believes they are done printing a book and placing it on a shelf, providing no active training of their floor staff.
I worked for Lush for quite a lot of years (I even trainee-managed their Oxford store for a while) and, whilst every company has their ups and dows, this was something Lush were very good at. They even had a “green person” in each shop, designated to manage sustainability issues locally. Then there would be meetings and training sessions where all of these green people could share ideas and strategies that would be passed on to the rest of their teams.
So, back to Farnham, a weird idea came to my mind (and, like in other cases, it is untested, and may possibly exist in some shape or another): the human life cycle of a product.
We know what happens to a product, and we try to reduce those changes and processes so they become greener. But do we know WHO happens to a product? If, on top of monitoring and improving the chain, we educated and listened to those involved in it, we might even go further.
Designers and innovators and engineers are fantastic at holistic viewing of processes like this, but we are always under the risk of the comfort of our position and knowledge. If we looked and listened to every single hand that touches a product in its life cycle,we might see realities and contexts that are new to us and might shine some light to how to make it better. One might assume how the back label of our jeans is stuck on them, but there is no real context for how it’s done (what kind of energy is consumed there? What conditions are workers in? How do they feel they could improve their situation?).
Through this we might also widen our idea of what sustainable is. It is my belief that a product made by children is not sustainable. A product made by a company where all bosses are male is not sustainable. A process that does not guarantee the personal and legal safety of their workers isn’t either. As obvious as it may sound, none of this was being said in that event. Responsibility and sustainability cannot be different things.
Speaking of which, in the conference there were only two ladies delivering key notes. And no under-30s. Let alone people from really different economic and cultural backgrounds. We cannot innovate doing what we’ve always done. Einstein said
insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results
So let’s start looking elsewhere.
