Memorandum by The Institute of Materials,
Minerals and Mining (IoM3)
SUMMARY
Our main observation is that there is a lack
of "standardised" information on eco-design. So it is
difficult for engineers and designers to include considerations
of sustainability and environmental impacts in the evaluation
of new products and processes. There are developments to provide
standards for the supply of this information and there are many
efforts to educate engineers and designers in the most appropriate
use of new materials to minimise the environmental impacts. It
is important that the whole population is made aware of the importance
of resource efficiency not only in relation to climate change
but also in terms of materials availability/security of supply.
The classification of waste needs to be more intelligently defined.
Government policies and objectives should encourage innovation
in new products and processes and the development of new skills
to support a more rapid shift towards sustainability.
1. Better design and use of materials
Better design and a more knowledgeable use of
materials and manufacturing processes can minimise the creation
of waste.
The term waste is a general term which if applied
to materials can create negative implications which do not assist
reuse or recycling. It would be more appropriate to consider material
that is not the primary output to be classified as by-products.
These by-products should only be considered to be waste if they
are not utilised further or are sent to a disposal facility.
The main factor that influences the use of materials
is the availability of the relevant information. In general this
information is related to the engineering performance or specification
of the product and the associated costs. Common standards for
information defining sustainability are not readily available.
Some single factor ratings have been used to compare the performance
of products and materials but more comprehensive methods for full
comparison, taking material, energy and environmental impact into
account need to be agreed as international standards. Given the
lack of information on sustainability indicators, product designers
and project engineers have great difficulty in taking into account
the life-cycle impacts of their design for new products and new
process operations.
The development of new materials is frequently
an opportunity for new and innovative designs. "Materials
World", the monthly magazine of The Institute of Materials
Minerals and Mining (IoM3), publishes many examples of this synergy
every month. There is also strong evidence of interaction between
material scientists and designers. The September 2007 issue of
the magazine "Engineering" includes an article
on the potential uses of new versions of Aluminium—Lithium
alloys for reducing the weight of airframes. The new alloys were
designed to meet the requirements of the design engineers and
the high cost required that the products made from these alloys
had to be manufactured close to the final product size in order
to avoid machining: which would create waste. Another example
was the European project to create light-weight steel automobile
bodies. In this case, the auto-body, the steel and the process
for forming the steel were all designed interactively to produce
the optimum combination of strength, formability and body shape.
These achievements have become possible because of the high levels
of intellectual knowledge and capability of the material scientists
and material engineers, for whom IoM3 is the professional engineering
institute.
It is important that design and material considerations
are integrated. In addition to performance and cost considerations
Eco-design should take the following factors into account:
Design for minimising resource use (commensurate
with performance).
Design for process/product efficiency.
Consider appropriate design life and "end
of life"fate.
Consider all environmental impacts.
Consider human and social factors.
Consider material compatibility factors (in use
and recycling).
Consider potential for dismantling, repair, re-manufacture.
Could recycled inputs be used?
Are substitute materials available?
If we consider the case of light weighting with
advanced high strength steels, these "new" steels are
indeed lighter but they can be difficult to dismantle and even
repair. If the designer does not take this into account the products
may be more difficult to recycle or repair and thus a change introduced
with the aim of improving resource efficiency could have the opposite
effect.
This example highlights the need to adopt a
holistic approach to design, materials and recycling. These issues
should not be separated and viewed in isolation. To move to a
more sustainable approach all aspects of the life cycle of the
product must be considered.
A number of designers have sustainability and
environment factors within their remit but there is a need to
spread the word further, possibly at Graphic Design courses at
University. The IoM3 is encouraging designers to make more imaginative
use of new materials—MADE is a new Magazine initiative from
IoM3.
For packaging, Defra have an active committee
endeavouring to provide standards on how to create CO2 mission
rates for all products, including packaging. These must have a
global consensus to be widely accepted.
The main conclusion for this section is that
there is a lack of information on sustainability in a suitable
or standard form rather than gaps of knowledge and insufficient
communication between all of the stake holders in the product
life cycles. There has been a major global effort for the last
20 years within the ISO Technical Committee TC184/SC4 to develop
international standards for the communication of engineering information
in independent forms that can be processed in the software for
engineering design and for process management. The latest application
of this technology is a new standard, ISO 10303-235, that would
represent sustainability data for computer processing and enable
the data to be conserved for long term archiving. More extensive
use of this technology would enable a market and a supply chain
to be developed for the creation and supply of sustainability
data for use in engineering design. Other standards in the same
series provide resources for managing the information about the
whole life-cycle of a product and could provide a new source of
sustainability information.
2. Business framework
The current policies, regulatory and legal frameworks
seem to confuse and do not support the development of better and
more sustainable products and processes. There is evidence that
the main emphasis in the UK is on avoiding risk, which is inimitable
to innovation. For example, the legislation that provides enhanced
capital allowances for installing specified types of environmental
devices seems to be too restrictive as new types of products do
not qualify because they are not defined in the lists that are
part of the legislation.
The European Commission has recently conducted
a consultation exercise to support the development of action plans
for Sustainable Production and Consumption and Sustainable Industrial
Policy. The aim is to develop a more integrated approach to legislation
and policies that impact on sustainability.
The business conception is that the adoption
of sustainability involves a cost, because this is easily identified
and measurable. However there is insufficient understanding of
the benefits, because the methodology for estimating these is
not well developed and there is not an obvious way of itemising
these benefits in the company accounts. There is a situation similar
to the pressure several years ago to adopt better quality control
and quality assurance in British industries. The adoption of formal
quality procedures was seen first as a cost and a burden on business
but these procedures are now regarded as essential to be able
continue in business.
Some businesses are examining their environmental
performance even if this is from the point of view of identifying
potential liabilities or negative consumer reactions. They need
to be encouraged to work with the environmental authorities to
develop ways of improving their performance. There are a number
of business support agencies that can help them to do this (Carbon
Trust, Envirowise, NISP and the KTNs). Within the packaging world
there are other agencies helping environmental performance eg
WRAP, INCPEN, EUROPEN. Cost reduction techniques can significantly
save on waste as well as adding to the bottom line in packaging.
Other European Member States do many things better with regards
to waste and the environment.
Global businesses are addressing the increase
in consumer interest in environmental issues and some have shown
that taking the lead in advances in Eco-design (eg hybrid cars)
can secure part of the market.
There are initiatives that are in place to encourage
sustainability that come from the European Commission where sustainability
has been incorporated under the umbrella of Innovation. The INNOVA
group of projects and networks have inextricably linked sustainability
and innovation together in order to support the amended Lisbon
Agenda.
3. Government Policy
Government policy should aim to ensure that
the necessary skills to incorporate sustainability into new design
and processes are available and continue to be developed. The
UK Government should support the initiatives of the European Commission
to unite the collection of EU policies that were developed during
a period of learning and the evaluation of alternative strategies.
There is an aspiration to make public procurement
more sustainable but for this to happen some guidelines must be
developed and disseminated to the supply chain. Procurement practice
is still based mainly on initial price because of the lack of
relevant information to make alternative decisions.
Policy should encourage collaboration between
stakeholders involved in different stages of product life cycle;
for example, raw material suppliers, manufacturers, dismantlers,
recyclers, legislators, etc. to ensure that there is a more integrated
approach to sustainability.
Is it possible to consider tax incentives for
businesses that can show that they have made a real improvement
in the sustainability of their operations?
4. Skills
The IoM3 is responsible to the Engineering Council
for the accreditation of university degrees as part of the progress
to Chartered Engineer (CEng) status. Most University courses already
include sustainability and environmental issues in their courses
and there is the opportunity to emphasise this requirement in
future assessments of the suitability of courses. These changes
have been introduced by the engineering profession as an extension
of their social responsibility to ensure the safety of the products
and processes for which they are responsible.
The IoM3 sponsors a range of material based
design courses and competitions for schools and design students.
These are lacking on the packaging side although there are diploma
courses available from The Packaging Society leading to a degree
course. There are innumerable courses, seminars and workshops
on sustainability, eg The Green Summit at RSA London 29/30 Oct.
Employers need to encourage participation and to allow staff to
go. Maybe a Government allowance on such activities could help.
However the extension of the engineering responsibility
to include sustainability and environmental factors will require
a broadening of the knowledge of engineers to include areas of
science for which they have not been traditionally trained and
to include social and political factors which will be in constant
flux.
October 2007
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