Designing Sustainable Product Service Systems

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Designing SustainableProduct-Service Systems
John R. Ehrenfeld Industrial Society for
Industrial Ecology
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Sustainability Is the Designers Goal
Sustainability is the possibility that human and
other life will flourish on the Earth forever.
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BUT Sustainability Needs a New Design Process

• We cannot engineer a sustainable world merely by
  thinking the way we have for the last 200 or
  300 years (objective rationalism).
• Sustainability requires choice and design.
• Design is not the same as engineering. It is
  about creating within a vision.
• The sustainability vision must recover strategic
  domains that have gotten lost during this time.
• Our sense of our place in the natural world.
• Our sense of ourselves as human beings.
• Our sense of responsibility for our actions.

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Naturalistic Strategic Concepts
Source Our sense of our place in the ecosystem

• Themes
• Protection (Preservation of nature and human
  life)
• Staying within limits (Conservation)
• Strategies
• Industrial Ecology (Nature as a metaphor for
  sustainability)
• Biomimicry
• The Natural Steps 4 principles
• McDonough/Braungart rules
• Natural Capitalism (in part)
• Eco-efficiency (in part)
• Eco-design (DfE, DfR, DfS)

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Humanistic Strategic Concepts
Source Our sense of ourselves as human beings

• Themes
• Authentic satisfaction
• Recapturing being from having
• Reducing commodification of everything
• Emancipation
• Avoiding technological tyranny
• Dignity, autonomy, freedom
• Spiritual consciousness
• Strategy
• Induce mindfulness in use
• Design convivial modes/means of satisfaction

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Moralistic Strategic Concepts
Source Our sense of responsibility for our
actions

• Themes
• Responsibility
• Justice
• Eco-justice
• Equitable distribution of accessto resources
• Strategies
• Corporate social responsibility
• Fair labor practices
• Community involvement
• Extended producer responsibility

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The New Sustainability Triad
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Green or Eco-design Is Only a Part of Reaching
Sustainability

• Historic focus has been on the naturalistic.
• Eco-design, LCA, DfE, biomimicry, TNS, MBDC
• Critical to address all three dimensions.
• The humanistic and moralistic implications of
  products and services has been largely
  unrecognized other than by philosophers and
  sociologists.
• Firms cannot do it alone huge culture changes
  will have to support innovative product/services.
• Product development and market strategies are at
  a rudimentary stage of development.

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Myths about Products Services

• Services are more sustainable than products.
• There is little evidence for this conclusion.
• Products are material services are immaterial.
• No, in every case of satisfaction, worldly
  artifacts are around.

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Products, Services and PSS Are Modes of
Delivering Satisfaction

• The primary difference is ontological and
  relates to the temporality of satisfaction.
• Products, as we call them, produce delayed or
  continuing satisfaction. Services, as we call
  them, produce instant satisfaction.
• Products, services and PSS are not
  technologically distinct.
• All PSS include artifacts and deliver
  satisfaction within a context of infrastructure
  and institutions.
• Differences lie in the context and in user
  (consumer) behavior.

PSS Product-service systems
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Satisfaction Is the Central Theme

• Satisfaction is an assessment by an actor that
  an envisioned future state has been attained.
• Products and services show up only within the
  actions to produce satisfaction.
• Users (consumers) invent their own meanings and
  scripts-in-use.
• There is no inherent preference for either mode
  of delivering satisfaction.
• Consumption is the observable, accountable
  actions taken to produce satisfaction.

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Todays Addictive Pattern of Consumption
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PSS Innovative categories
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Addressing the Other Dimensions

• Current PSS analysis/design focuses mainly on
  dematerialization potential.
• Current design emphasis on utilitarian efficiency
  and transparency runs counter to humanistic needs
  for learning and experiencing relationships.
• Focus on authentic satisfaction can reveal
  humanistic potential.
• Designing in scripts that produce consciousness
  (loss of transparency), competence building
  (emancipation), and contextual experience
  (temporality and being).
• Both can lead to lower levels of thehaving
  consumption mode.
• Less commodification of everyday living.

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Sustainability A Vision We Can Share
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Discussion QuestionWhat Can Be Done to the
Prius to Address the Other Two Dimensions of
Sustainability?