“The best argument for good design is that it lasts.
The best argument for good science is that it deplores waste.”
Stephen Bayley
What is CPD[Green]?
The products we use every day have detrimental effects on our planet. Nonrenewable energy is used for development, production, and distribution. Ecosystems are disrupted by material extraction and pollution.
There are numerous perspectives from which to confront this problem including engineering, chemistry, legislation, and socioeconomics. CPD [Green] is our research and development initiative focused on environmental sustainability from an industrial product development perspective. We ponder questions like: what materials are high-performing but also biodegrade after use? How can we design products intelligently to minimize waste? Can we build robust infrastructure for circularity?
Our Goal
To practice, promote, and educate others on sustainable product development.
How We’re Achieving It
Conducting independent research and publishing our findings
Challenging ourselves to apply and master sustainable practices
Partnering with other ambitious entities to enable and promote sustainable practices
Providing sustainable product development services to our customers
Our [Green] Initiatives
“You fall under ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘minimalist’ design”
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Our packages aren't custom-made. They aren't plastic laminated display boxes. We use 100% recycled and reused packaging material, except for the tape. This eliminates the need for producing more packaging that will soon end up in a landfill, and it nearly eliminates our carbon footprint associated with shipping. We also do our best to send boxes without any logos or branding so you can more easily use it again for yourself or your business.
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We are developing many closed-loop material systems within our own R&D and production processes. This means that scraps, chips, and flashing bits that typically end up in the trash are collected, sorted, and re-processed for various projects.
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For our own internal R&D work as well as for customer parts, we offer a wide (and growing) selection of low-emission, recycled, and recyclable materials. We highly prioritize material suppliers that have green credentials and/or emission data about their products. We also prioritize local/domestic suppliers in order to reduce shipping emissions.
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We are developing our own data collection systems for process emissions. This includes, but is not limited to, measuring the electrical energy used for manufacturing processes. The purpose of this is to identify areas where we can improve efficiency, reduce waste, and allocate resources intelligently.
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We highly prioritize domestic suppliers for parts, tools, and materials. When possible, we especially prefer to purchase from the WNY area. This helps us cut shipping emissions, develop stronger relationships with suppliers, and expedite deliveries. If you are a supplier relevant to our industry located in Buffalo, NY, contact us!
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The circular economy is a powerful ideology that involves product design in such as way that energy and materials are recirculated as much as possible. This means that when a product is no longer useful, it is purposefully designed to be transformed into something new, broken down (safely) into the environment, or easily repaired. Cross Product Design, LLC is a proud member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation community!
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We have eliminated unnecessary emissions associated with commuting to, maintaining, and temperature controlling auxiliary facilities. Being a primarily web-based company, we have developed processes for interfacing with customers, controlling equipment, and designing parts remotely.
Research Topics
Design Principles
Tools for designing a product with low carbon emissions.
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These are general design practices with the intention of reducing parts' environmental burden over their lifecycle. It is not an exhaustive list and it will grow with time. Some of them overlap with other research topics on this page and each of them could surely be expounded into pages of their own. For the sake of digestibility, we started off with a brief description of each one.
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When designing parts and products, engineers and designers are constrained by a multitude of requirements: parts must cost below a threshold, perform a certain way, look and feel a certain way, be safe, be marketable, and more. Therefore, adding a new set of design constraints (sustainable ones) can understandably be met with reluctance. In order to establish a new standard for parts and products that are environmentally healthier, however, this is absolutely critical. CPD uses these strategies to influence part designs by default, meaning they underlie every design we create. We are always willing to increase our rigor in order to push the boundaries of sustainable product development.
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Design by:
Sourcing and manufacturing locally
Choosing sustainable materials
Design for:Disassembly - make it easy to take apart
Monomaterialism - make it from one material
Dematerialization - make it with less material
Appropriate Lifespan - make it last long but not too long
Reuse - let it have a next life
Efficient Use - make it work with few emissions
Sustainable Behavior - make it encourage sustainability from the user
Emotional Attachment - make the user want to keep it
Correct Disposal - facilitate proper, sustainable discarding
Some items adapted from Moramma's www.sustainabledesignhandbook.com
Cradle to Cradle (C2C)
Making lifecycles truly cyclical.
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Cradle to Cradle (C2C) is design approach that models natural processes wherein materials circulate within the environment. It contrasts from the "cradle to grave" ideology in which materials are extracted, used, and disposed of. In product development, C2C is an ideology for designing products that neither require any new material extraction nor result in waste at the end of their lives. C2C is also a certification granted by the non-profit Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute to products that meet C2C requirements.
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Cradle to Cradle (C2C) is an ambitious way of thinking: It proposes that aspects of a consumer economy can function essentially like a cherry tree: cyclically producing blossoms which ultimately return to the earth to become beneficial nutrients. C2C demonstrates that it is genuinely possible to use and reuse materials after a single extraction process. It gives companies metrics by which to determine products' eco-effectiveness. It lays the groundwork for smart product designs with additional benefits beyond sustainability.
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Lifecycle Analysis (LCA)
Quantified emissions.
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A Lifecycle Analysis (LCA) is a tool for quantifying the environmental impact of a product from inception through development, production, distribution, use, and disposal. This allows engineers to directly compare products and track improvements. This quantification is commonly done in units of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent or CO2e. Essentially, all energy consumption and pollution throughout a lifecycle is converted to CO2 emissions. There are different strategies for conducting LCA's: some are incredibly arduous while some take more of an estimation approach. Generally, LCA's are highly involved analyses and require significant contribution from involved parties like raw material suppliers, part vendors, distribution and logistics teams, marketing teams, users, and disposal companies. CPD is beginning to conduct its own LCA's on products developed in-house and we will work with you to conduct your own.
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LCA's are comprehensive. In order to compare the emissions of a product to its predecessor or competitor, said emissions must be quantified. LCA's are also useful in determining which stages of a given lifecycle are responsible for the greatest emissions or which stages have the most potential for optimization.
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Sustainable Materials
Biodegradable, recyclable, and reusable raw materials.
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This is a widely researched topic. 'Sustainable materials' is our blanket term for any materials that are designed with specific features in mind for carbon-footprint reduction. Such materials can typically be exchanged for more traditional ones and serve similar mechanical purposes. Some materials are biodegradable in natural environments so rather than polluting they add beneficial nutrients to soil as they decompose. Some materials are specifically designed to be made and re-made cyclically without degradation.
On the other hand, there are some 'traditional' materials which, when examined through a sustainability-focused lens, are inferior in a general sense and should be replaced or eliminated where possible. These are typically materials that can't be recycled with modern methods, materials that contain especially harmful chemicals, or materials that demand considerable amounts of CO2e to extract or process. -
We won't try to cover this whole topic and we couldn't if we wanted to. There is a nearly limitless selection of engineering materials with vastly different properties and carbon footprints. Regardless, one particular subset of materials that is particularly hard to break down is polymers. Below is a snapshot of some different polymers and how they generally fair in sustainable design.
Better
Polypropylene, polyethylene, and their related forms - these are generally very recyclable and sometimes can even be combined together.
Recycled polymers (general) - these usually have a reduced carbon footprint from the onset. Chemically recycled materials (that don't require grinding and remelting) are ideal.
Renewable polymers - these are entirely or partially composed of renewable materials like sugar cane, corn, and soy. One example is Polylactic Acid (PLA).
Worse
Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) - this is generally regarded as one of the most toxic polymers found in everyday life. During manufacture and when burned (at end of life, etc.) it releases dangerous carcinogens including dioxins and hydrogen chloride into the atmosphere. PVC is difficult to recycle.
Polystyrene (PS) - this polymer is also difficult to recycle. It is produced with benzene, a carcinogen, and it is notorious for resisting environmental degradation.
www.sundbergferar.com/how-to-materials-selection-in-sustainable-product-design/
Material Optimization
Topological optimization and more.
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With any type of engineering, material allocation is critical to parts' performance. It's typical, however, for parts to be 'overbuilt' when sustainability is not a top design priority. Material optimization involves choosing specific materials and applying them so precisely that parts meet (or exceed) performance requirements with significantly reduced mass, and consequently reduced environmental burden. Using advanced software techniques like topological optimization, we can intelligently design parts to be exactly as strong as they need to be with no extraneous waste. This is also referred to as 'generative design'. Parts designed with such techniques can often be identified by complex organic shapes and intricate lattice structures. These techniques can be applied to parts that are 3D printed, CNC milled, injection molded, cast, welded, and more. CPD can employ these strategies while CAD modeling parts.
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Part mass is a key indicator of relative environmental burden or CO2e. Put simply, it requires more energy (and creates more pollution) to extract and process larger amounts of material. Material optimization, as a general term, is important because it allows engineers to 'trim the fat' from part designs so that only critical areas remain. This is accomplished through digital simulations like Finite Element Analysis (FEA), which break down 3D geometry into discreet nodes and analyzes physics behavior among them when subjected to loads. The simulations can detect precisely where a part is likely to fail and where it has been fortified unnecessarily. From there, Topological optimization can recommend areas for material to be added or subtracted. The end result is a part with highly predictable behavior and low mass relative to its strength. A downside of material optimization is its finite boundaries regarding sustainability - it operates on the principle of using less of a bad thing. Luckily, however, it applies fairly universally and provides performance improvements beyond sustainability.
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Recycling
Is it all it’s cracked up to be?
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Most people have some idea of how recycling works. The concept is to collect previously used products and process their materials into new ones. In this way it is a tool for conserving natural resources and reducing landfill waste. It works for plastics, metals, rubber, and more. It is, however, not without its flaws, and a complex process that if not done correctly is neither sustainable nor economical. CPD is exploring ways to improve and increase recycling - for businesses and consumers.
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Unlike most of these topics, the burden of recycling typically falls on the consumer rather than the designer because it occurs after a product's End of Life (EOL). It is, however, the designer's responsibility to ensure that recycling is beneficial for a given product and that the consumer is properly informed. For the purposes of CPD [Green], we examine various materials' capacity for recycling, the logistics involved for large scale recycling, and its effect on the economy and environment.
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