The eco-design competitions that have popped up like mushrooms after a rain are an exciting sign that our industry has stepped up to the challenge of creating the tools we’ll need to start building a future we can be proud of. For better or worse, these competitions also raise lots of the same questions about how to actually measure a product’s EQ (environmental quotient) that we’re starting to face as the industry begins to factor sustainability into its bottom line. At this early stage, not even the questions are fully-defined, but my recent experiences with several contests illustrate the sorts of issues we’ll all be dealing with in the not-too-distant future.
The simplest eco-topics to deal with are those involving energy. Whether it’s energy conservation or renewable energy technologies, comparing watts in versus watts out makes for a well-defined way to measure a design's performance and overall goodness. When you add in a few other factors like solution cost and estimated reliability, you’ve got a fairly decent set of criteria for judging a contest -- or picking products for your real-world needs. I guess that’s why the
IEEE Future Energy Challenge has enjoyed such popularity since its
inception in 2003.
Things get murky very quickly, however, once you step outside the world of power supplies and solar cells and into computers, appliances, and other stuff which have complicated bills of materials and even more complicated life cycles. All of a sudden you have to start taking into account the materials and energy that went into the product, (not to mention any waste that was created in the process), the resources it consumes during its useful life, and what happens to it afterwards. Without some sort of firm criteria to use, evaluating a product EQ becomes an exercise somewhat akin to defining pornography (I can’t tell you exactly what it is, but I know it when I see it!)
Several competitions I’ve seen recently have suffered from some level of murky criteria. Take for example the
Consumer Electronics Show Innovations Design and Engineering Awards that I was asked to help with for the 2008 season. While the web-based judging system was well-organized and easy to use, the Eco-Design and Sustainable Technology category I was charged with evaluating used the same four criteria that folks used for judging audio equipment, home appliances, and computer furniture. (The CES scoring categories are engineering qualities; aesthetic value; how well the product accomplishes its intended function; any unique or novel features that consumers would find attractive.) While environmentally-conscious products should judged in part on the same things that any consumer product would be, my job would have been much easier if they’d also given me a place to score things like product energy efficiency, the cleanliness of its manufacturing processes, and the take-back and recycling infrastructure behind it. Oh well, there’s always the 2009 competition…
Another instructive example is the
Live Edge international design competition being conducted by electronic distributor Premier Farnell (aka
Newark in the US). Back in May 2007, the competition was announced with great fanfare, and offered great opportunities for engineers and engineering students to develop and even possibly manufacture their environmentally-friendly product. To my puzzlement, I struggled vainly to find anything on their web site that gave a clear set of criteria against which the entries would be judged. It was only some time later that those
criteria appeared on the web site. Thankfully, the contest organizers have put a good deal of thought into what defines a product that is both environmentally positive and commercially feasible. I still think that there are a few gaps in the two-stage judging process that could benefit by more specific scoring for things like recyclability, use of eco-friendly materials, and product life, but this is a good start that we can all learn from.
Hopefully, future contests can take some of the lessons learned here to make their own ranking system better able to truly assess a design’s potential environmental impact -- either positive or negative. Freescale’s recently-announced
Design Challenge might be a great place to start. Launched in late October for the Americas (US, Mexico, and Canada), this is the first phase of a series of global competitions that highlight Freescale’s initiative to make green design a centerpiece of their business strategy. Contestants from North America, Israel, Europe, Japan, India, and China will all be challenged to use at least one of seven Freescale product families in their designs, with the winners appearing at a Grand Challenge event at the end of 2008.
With so much energy being put into this global event, I’m encouraging my friends at Freescale to put a bit of it into talking with some eco-design experts (yes, they do exist!) to come up with a good scoring system. If they do, it will help both the judges to evaluate the entries, and help the contestants focus their talents on the details that will truly improve their design EQ. I’ll also bet it will help everyone involved with the Global Design Challenge get a better understanding of what really counts in building the tools for a sustainable future.
Comments? Questions? Other eco-design competitions you’d like to tell your fellow readers about? E-mail me at
LHG at EN-Genius dot net or add your comments to our Blog via the link below.
