Launching a Product - Can We Make Sustainable Products?

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Conscious Design. I'm Ian Peterman, and today I want to talk about, can we make sustainable products? It's a question I get asked, you know, how do we make this product sustainable? Can we make this product sustainable? And I just want to talk a little bit about it, kind of some high-level things to think about, why it's important, and how we can actually go about it and answer the question, can we actually achieve this? So first, what is sustainability? Why sustainability matters? Sustainability versus regenerative. And we'll talk a little bit about that. So I'm going to talk about a lot more as As I record these videos and podcasts and talk about it. And what is being sustainable? What does that mean in terms of products? So what is sustainability? So sustainability is very simply being able to keep doing what we're doing without detrimentally impacting anyone or anything long term. So that means You chop tree down, plant another one, use its wood, wait for it to grow, use, use that one, chop it down, replant, and doing that over and over again. And that of course applies to a lot of different areas. We focus on raw materials as a source of sustainability. But basically just being able to do what we're doing without major negative impacts and kind of just sitting in neutral. You know, really, the more I work in product development, the more I look at how things are done, sustainability is just neutral. Sustainability is neither good nor bad. It simply keeps us in a balance of whatever state we're at right now in terms of environmental or social or, you know, any of these areas around that we're impacting in terms of a sustainable mindset. So why does sustainability matter? Um, it, it really just matters because anything that is obviously detrimental, we're going to use up resources or we're going to cause long-term harm. So, you know, probably don't need to tell you too much about this. We all kind of understand why it matters. But in terms of a product standpoint, it really matters because we do have a finite number of resources. Obviously, we can Talk about developing ways to launch systems into space and mine and gather resources from other planets or asteroids and all that fantastic approach, but that's still going to be pretty limiting and is very resource intensive in order to do that. So as far as products go, sustainability really matters because if you impacts the supply chain by depleting it, the cost of producing the product begins to increase because the amount of the materials that you need in order to develop the product start going into a scarcity mode. That is why certain woods or certain materials are extremely expensive because they're very rare. And so if we were to rarify every single material because we used it all up most of the way, everything would be too expensive to make. No one would want it. No one would be able to afford it. And you kind of kill yourself out of a market. You just destroy your own market and your own supply chain. So from a product standpoint, sustainability matters because you want to be able to produce more products and recapture that material so you can then produce another product down the road that's a better product or, you know, upgraded in some way and be able to sell it again without using up all the material available to us in general. So as far as like a long-term strategy, And yeah, it'll obviously take a while. We've been using materials for thousands of years. Industrial Revolution was not that long ago. And so it is definitely a long-term thought, but it does actually matter in terms of product costs. So the third thing is I want to talk about, in order to kind of come to the answer of can we make sustainable products, is I want to just briefly touch on Sustainable versus regenerative. So we talked about sustainability and how that's kind of a neutral standpoint. Regenerative products— so these are things that are in the process of making them, or the product themselves actually undoes some damage that's been done. So this is things like, there's a company, I think it's called Epic Provisions, that they use regenerative farming to techniques that actually they're able to grow meat, which they then sell into stores. But through raising the cattle, they're able to actually bring back life into what is considered dead ground. They're actually able to buy very cheap land that no one thinks that they can use. They farm it in a very specific, very conscious way in order to Revitalize the ground and bring life back into it, refertilize it, repair that ground at the same time as producing a meat product. So things like that, that is regenerative. That's how you undo damage that's been done. You actually fix something while still producing a product that you can sell in order to do it. And so I give that example because the answer is yes, we can make products that are actually regenerative, that do more than just sit in neutral and a sustainable format, which is great. We should— that's kind of the bare minimum that we should be at. And then we're talking about sustainable products, we can make regenerative products as well. So finally, being sustainable— can we actually make sustainable products? And the answer is Yes, most of the time. There are certain things that are not recyclable, that use materials that we just can't recover yet. Now, there may be technologies down the road that allow us to recover materials better or be able to reuse materials and reprocessing it into products again. Um, but there are times right now with technology we have that there aren't necessarily a really great sustainable option. And so when we look at, can we make a sustainable product, we often want to look at, can we do the product— can we do the product with materials that are sustainable? Can we use sustainable manufacturing methods? And really, at this point, most of the time you can say yes. Occasionally you may run into a roadblock where you just can't yet, but likely there's somebody working on something Right now that will be solving that problem and making a sustainable option. So you want to think about that, and you can— the short answer to this is you can. You can make sustainable product out of pretty much everything that is currently made now. We have plastics that are biodegradable. We have different materials that are able to replace, uh, non-sustainable products. We have things like mushroom leather and other products that allow us to create products that are similar, if not identical, in at least the outward appearance or mechanical properties without using non-sustainable materials. Hey, thanks for watching. We really appreciate our viewers, and if you haven't subscribed yet, please do subscribe to our channel so you can get more great videos like this in your feed and like the video. If you want to learn more about the Peterman Design Firm, please check us out on our website, petermanfirm.com. You'll find link and information in the description. And of course, we're on all social media as well. So check us out there. All right. Thank you.