Design for Sustainability

Sustainability isn’t just a reporting requirement; it’s a design challenge. Most products and supply chain infrastructure weren’t built with circularity, emissions, or future-fit operations in mind.

Our Design for Sustainability offering helps organisations embed environmental thinking into the earliest stages of product and infrastructure development.

Whether you're redesigning a product, planning a new facility, or creating internal design standards, we bring the tools and structure to turn sustainability from a vague goal into clear design decisions withoutcompromising performance or commercial outcomes.

Core challenges faced by organisations today

Product Design Gaps

  • Products are not designed for sustainability, reuse, or recyclability.

  • Material choices, packaging, & form factors increase carbon or waste.

  • No structured framework for measuring product impact across lifecycle.

Infrastructure Blind Spots

  • CapEx decisions made without factoring in emissions, energy, or circularity potential.

  • Warehouses, production units, and logistics hubs are not future-fit.

  • No integration of decarbonisation pathways into design or upgrade plans.

What would help

Sustainable Product Design Frameworks: Methods to embed environmental and circular criteria from concept through production.

Lifecycle Impact Assessment: Clear tools and metrics to quantify product emissions, materials impact, and recyclability.

Infrastructure-by-Design for Sustainability: Decision frameworks for warehouses, factories, and logistics networks that optimise for carbon, energy, and reuse.

CapEx/OpEx Integration: Sustainability embedded into investment decisions, from supplier fit to equipment spec.

Governance and Design Standards: Teams and partners aligned around a shared design language for sustainability.

Our “design for sustainability” products

  • Who it’s for: Firms lacking structured tools to measure product, packaging, or infrastructure sustainability

    What it does: Build custom or low-tech tools to assess emissions, recyclability, material, and infrastructural footprint

    Deliverables: Impact calculator, internal scorecard, supplier data guide

  • Who it’s for: Brands, OEMs, or retailers designing new products or revamping existing lines

    What it does: 3-week engagement to redesign products with sustainability embedded

    Deliverables: Material mapping, emissions baseline, design principles, supplier implications

  • Who it’s for: Supply chain, operations, or facilities teams planning new CapEx or retrofits

    What it does: Assess existing or proposed infrastructure for carbon, energy, and circularity optimisation

    Deliverables: Design briefs, energy models, emissions impact, vendor specs

  • Who it’s for: Product or ops teams needing a shared framework for sustainability in design

    What it does: Codify best practices, materials guidelines, vendor criteria, and decision governance

    Deliverables: Playbook, templates, partner onboarding brief

  • Who it’s for: Brands, OEMs, and manufacturers selling into the EU or forward-leaning retail/sustainability markets, Product and ESG teams looking to future-proof compliance and improve traceability, Supply chain, sustainability, or digital innovation leaders

    What it does: Helps organisations design and implement digital product passports to meet upcoming regulatory requirements, enable circular business models, and provide transparency across the value chain.

    Deliverables: Regulatory and market readiness assessment, DPP data model (materials, sourcing, repairability, recycling, etc.), System integration framework (linking PLM, ERP, supplier data), Pilot DPP for one product/category, Partner and tech stack recommendations (e.g. blockchain, QR/NFC, traceability tools)