BU121 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Extended Producer Responsibility, Product Stewardship, Sustainable Engineering
Document Summary
Sustainability should be at the core of every business model. Approaches to sustainability cradle-to-cradle vs. cradle-to-grave design and biomimicry, product stewardship, sustainability through servicizing, and sustainability of the supply chain. Biomimicry: cradle to grave is wasteful, circular economy is more sustainable (closed-loop systems, ideally eliminate the concept of waste, sustainable engineering inspired by nature, learn from nature, do not extract from it. Product stewardship: responsible and ethical management of the health, safety, and environmental aspects of a product throughout its total life cycle, extended producer responsibility. Sell the function of a product rather than the product itself: ex. leasing equipment, ex. Xerox helps companies manage their documents rather than just selling printers. Improvement of social and environmental impacts explicitly considered. Output (completed good/service: successful production involves close coordination with all parts of a company, goods and services require labour but end product is different. Manufacturing creates goods, services create satisfied customers. Design planning: design product line, estimate production capacity.
