Summary

Summary Sustainable Impact Reader (IOB3-2-23)

0 purchase

Course
Sustainable Impact (IOB3223)

Institution
Technische Universiteit Delft (TU Delft)

Grade 2 Industrial Design Engineering TU Delft summary Sustainable Impact (IOB3-5-22/23). A brief summary of the reader "SUSTAINABLE DESIGN FROM VISION TO ACTION 2023 Edition".

[Show more]

Preview 3 out of 35 pages

View example

Uploaded on January 17, 2024
Number of pages 35
Written in 2023/2024
Type Summary

sdg
planetary boundaries
cradle to cradle
c2c
circular economy
whole system mapping
life cycle assessment
lca
materials
metal
plastic
bio based plastic
energy
theory of p
sustainable development goals

Institution
Technische Universiteit Delft (TU Delft)
Education
Industrieel Ontwerpen
Course
Sustainable Impact (IOB3223)

$7.76

Add to cart

Save

100% satisfaction guarantee
Immediately available after payment
Both online and in PDF
No strings attached

Sustainable Impact
2023-2024
Chapter 1 – Sustainable Development Goals
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future
generations to meet their own needs.”

Earth Overshoot Day, the day when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year.

A more detailed definition of sustainability is the “Triple Bottom Line”. It says that organizations should measure
sustainability by their environmental, social, and economic impacts (or, People, Planet, and Prosperity).

Solutions that benefit the planet as well as the economy are considered “viable”.
Benefting both people and the planet is “bearable”: it always requires external fnancial support,
but it improves lives and sustains the planet.
Benefting both people and prosperity is “equitable”: it helps rebalance society.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (“UN SDGs”) are considered the most encompassing
vision of what global sustainability means.
1. No poverty: End poverty in all forms and dimensions by 2030.
2. Zero hunger: End all forms of extreme hunger and malnutrition by 2030.
3. Good health and well-being: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
4. Quality education: Inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. Education
is a key to escaping poverty.
5. Gender equality: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
6. Clean water and sanitation: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all.
7. Affordable and clean energy: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.
8. Decent work and economic growth: Promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and
decent work for all.
9. Industry, innovation, and infrastructure: Build resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and
foster innovation.
10. Reduced inequalities: Reducing inequalities in income as well as those based on age, sex, disability, race,
ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status within a country.
11. Sustainable cities and communities: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
12. Responsible consumption and production: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
13. Climate action: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
14. Life below water: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.
15. Life on land: Sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, halt and reverse land degradation, halt
biodiversity loss.
16. Peace, justice and strong institutions: Promote just, peaceful, and inclusive societies.
17. Partnerships for the goals: Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

The SDG compass was developed to help business (and designers) to define priorities and set goals that align with the
SDGs. This can be done in three steps: defining priorities, setting goals, and integrating:
1. Defining priotities
- Overall
- Raw materials & production
- Distribution & retail
- Use & reuse
- Recovery & disposal
2. Setting Goals
3. Integrating
- Sustainability must be integrated into the core business and design process.

The SDGs are used to identify new (green) growth opportunities and/or to lower companies’ risk profiles.

Points of critique on the SDGs:
- The sheer number of socio-economic goals (14 in total) can result in these being perceived as more important
than the planetary goals (three in total, numbers 13, 14 and 15).
- The SDGs perpetuate the idea that economic growth and technological innovation are needed for
sustainability, for instance through SDG 8 and 9.

Maureen Kint
1

, Sustainable Impact
2023-2024
Chapter 2 – Planetary Boundaries
How do these Earth system processes stabilize or disrupt ecosystems?
- Climate change
- Freshwater change
- Stratospheric ozone
- Atmospheric aerosol loading
- Ocean acidification
- Biogeochemical flows (nitrogen and phosphorus)
- Novel entities
- Land-system change
- Biosphere Integrity

It is important to realize how interlinked all the Earth system processes
are. This means that we do not have the luxury to concentrate our efforts
on any one of them in isolation from the others.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t compare the red bars
with each other.

“Core boundaries”: climate change and biosphere integrity. They are core because they “have the potential to drive the
Earth System into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed”.
Climate change and biosphere integrity are however on a different level – they are crucial to Earth system functioning.

Responding to climate change and other boundaries involves two possible approaches:
- Mitigation is reducing and stabilizing impacts.
- Adaptation is changing infrastructure or behavior to adapt to changes already in the pipeline.

The ‘biosphere’ SDG targets are included in the Planetary Boundaries.
The wedding cake figure is a plea to give more weight to the biosphere targets in the SDGs,
which currently seem to be relatively underrepresented, compared to the many societal
and economic goals.

Critiques on the planetary boundaries model:
- The possibility that the boundaries may be misused by policymakers to “justify
prolonged degradation of the environment up to the point of no return.”
- The model is expert-driven and technocratic.
- The model lacks attention for basic human needs and values. (This is the reason why they developed the
‘doughnut’ framework.)

The “Doughnut Economics” framework of sustainability targets, combines planetary boundaries as an environmental
outer limit (ceiling) with a social inner limit (foundation) of basic human needs and values. It says that industry and society
must not overshoot the nine Planetary Boundaries, but at the same time must not fall short of the twelve social targets of
the UN SDGs.

Maureen Kint
2

, Sustainable Impact
2023-2024
Chapter 3 – Ecodesign
Ecodesign is a sustainable design approach with the explicit goal of minimizing the environmental impact of existing and
newly developed products along their entire life cycle. The core concept is eco-efficiency: maximizing the economic value
of a product while minimizing its potential negative environmental impact.

The idea of using a product lifecycle as the basis for environmental assessment comes from the theory of Industrial
Metabolism. The metabolism of industry is defined as the whole integrated collection of physical processes that convert
raw materials and energy, plus labor, into finished products and wastes in a (more or less) steady-state condition. Robert
Ayres uses the term ‘metabolism’ because of the remarkable parallels between biological and industrial activities, “both
are materials processing systems driven by a flow of free energy”.
Mapping the product lifecycle and its inputs and outputs in this way is the starting point for quantitative assessments like
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) but it can also be used to do a qualitative assessment.

The ecodesign strategy wheel is a tool that helps you consider all stages in a product’s lifecycle. It can be used in different
ways, for instance to:
- Suggest ecodesign strategies for ideation.
- Assess a product on its environmental merits, and identify improvement options.
- Compare a product before and after redesign to understand how its sustainability profile has changed.
The better a product meets the strategy (or list of sub-strategies), the higher the score, with the best scores marked on the
outer ring of the wheel and the worst scores close to the center. As all scores are based on educated guesses, and are not
calculated, the strategy wheel cannot be used to determine the actual ecological impact of a product.

The Ecodesign Strategy Wheel comes with a
few drawbacks and warnings:
- There will be trade-offs.
- Assessing a product with
educated guesses is not easy.
- The wheel was developed with
consumer durables in mind.
- The wheel has a bias towards
environmental sustainability.
- The first question you should
always ask before starting with
the Ecodesign Strategy Wheel is:
do we really need this product?
How could we make users happy
with less stuff?

Maureen Kint
3

The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:

Guaranteed quality through customer reviews

Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.

Quick and easy check-out

You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.

Focus on what matters

Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!

Frequently asked questions

What do I get when I buy this document?

You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.

Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?

Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.

Who am I buying these notes from?

Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller MKint. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.

Will I be stuck with a subscription?

No, you only buy these notes for $7.76. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.

Can Stuvia be trusted?

4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)

66184 documents were sold in the last 30 days

Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 15 years now

Start selling