Sustainability for Medical Devices
At DCA, we aim to create ‘elegant’ design solutions that typically have fewer parts and offer better functionality than similar products.
We have built on this core approach to develop a tool kit of eco-design tactics that can be deployed to improve the sustainability of the products we develop. These tactics are divided into things that can be done to improve the sustainability of inputs to the product manufacturing process and things that can be done to improve the lifecycle and end-of-life impacts of a product.
Our approach has always been to create designs that make efficient use of materials and components
The circular economy
The aim of the circular economy is to build long-term resilience, generate new economic opportunities and provide environmental and societal benefits.
One important aspect of this model is the distinction drawn between biological and technical cycles. The ultimate aim is that consumption happens only within biological cycles, where material resources can be replenished. In contrast, technical cycles should aim to recover and restore products, components, materials and chemicals through strategies such as reuse, repair or recycling.
Whilst a fully circular economy will be hard to achieve, by searching out opportunities to minimise waste throughout the lifecycle of products we develop, we take steps towards this goal.
At the heart of sustainable thinking is the concept of the circular economy, in which economic activity is decoupled from consumption of finite resources
Roadmaps to a better future
One particularly accessible tool for designers targeting the development of new sustainable products is the concept of ‘waste hierarchy’, which was originally defined in EU Directive 2008/98/EC. This provides a simple prioritisation of approaches that should be taken to protect the environment, from the most to the least preferable tactics.
The top two tiers of the hierarchy encourage reduction in waste generation and reuse of products, both of which drive us to consider developing products that can have a much longer lifespan before becoming waste. Whilst this approach can require fundamental changes to supply chains and business models; opportunities to differentiate are often created by enabling provision of better features and improved performance at a lower overall cost.
At DCA, we help companies to identify and map out new product opportunities and technical roadmaps towards long term sustainability and other business goals. We do this by finding aspirational and technically feasible pathways from near term ‘quick wins’ through to strategic, longer term product development opportunities.
Measuring sustainability
In the context of the circular model, three key parameters are of greatest interest when assessing sustainability.
- Energy consumed in manufacture, distribution and use of a product.
- Amount of material derived from renewable or recycled content.
- Amount of material that can be recovered for re-use at end of life.
But it is inherently hard to make a comprehensive assessment of these factors early within the development process. Detailed life cycle assessments (LCA’s) take a huge amount of time to compile and require detailed knowledge of the full product specification and lifecycle, which is typically unavailable at an early stage.
We therefore start by making simple comparative assessments of the relative environmental performance of new concepts against each other, or a suitable benchmark. As concepts mature and are down-selected, we gradually build more comprehensive assessments, allowing more confident predictions of material usage, manufacturing processes and lifecycle factors to be made
Setting measurable sustainability targets, alongside other design requirements, is an important step in ensuring appropriate focus for design decision making
Helping our clients achieve success through great product design
