Designing for the Future: Three Strategies to Embed Sustainability in Product Development
Sustainability is no longer an afterthought, it is now a critical aspect of modern product design. As global regulations tighten and public awareness increases, companies are being called upon not just to reduce emissions, but to revolutionize how they conceive, design, and manufacture products. Yet, despite the urgency, many organizations still treat sustainability as a downstream concern, addressed by supply chain managers or corporate social responsibility teams after a product has already been designed.
This approach must change.
Three impactful strategies are emerging as essential tools for embedding sustainability into the very fabric of product development: Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Systematic Material Selection, and Design Exploration.
These methods provide a practical framework to minimize environmental impact while maintaining a balance between cost, performance, and functionality. In this blog, we investigate each approach and explore how they can be applied independently or combined to reshape the way we design products with sustainability at the core.
Why Sustainability Needs to Start at the Design Stage
Before looking into the methods, it’s important to understand why product design plays such a pivotal role in sustainability. While the focus is often on optimizing the supply chain such as sourcing recycled materials or reducing packaging, these efforts alone cannot achieve net-zero goals.
Design decisions made early in the product development lifecycle can lock in the majority of a product’s environmental impact. In fact, studies show that more than 80% of a product’s sustainability footprint is determined during the concept and design phases. Unfortunately, the further along you go in development, the more expensive and difficult it becomes to make meaningful changes.
Key product design choices, like selecting a material, defining manufacturing processes, or determining geometry, not only influence environmental outcomes but also shape cost, durability, and usability. That’s why sustainability needs to be a core consideration at the front end.
Strategy 1: Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Understanding the Challenge
Traditionally, a complete Life Cycle Assessment is conducted near the end of product development. This detailed audit evaluates a product’s environmental impact from cradle to grave (raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal). While comprehensive, it’s often too late to act on the findings without major delays or cost implications.
The Streamlined Solution
The first method to consider is the Streamlined LCA, a faster, simplified alternative that allows designers to quickly assess environmental impacts during early-stage development. Rather than replacing the detailed LCA, this approach acts as a guidepost, allowing for agile iterations and early interventions.
The key tool here is Granta Selector, which features a functionality called Eco Audit. This enables a rapid estimation of emissions based on parameters such as material type, manufacturing methods, transportation distance, and recycling rate.
A Practical Example
Imagine designing a simple aluminium bracket, forged and machined in Poland and shipped to Sweden. Using the Eco Audit tool, the product’s CO₂ emissions are calculated across stages: raw material production, processing, transportation, usage, and end-of-life. The findings? The majority of emissions stem from material production.
The power of the tool is really shown when the designer can run “what-if” scenarios. What if the aluminium were replaced with PLA (a biodegradable polymer)? The result showed a striking 70-80% decrease in CO₂ emissions, and demonstrates how quickly alternative evaluations can be compared.
While this doesn’t yet consider mechanical strength or performance differences, it provides vital early insights that can steer designs in the right direction.
Strategy 2: Systematic Material Selection
Why Materials Matter
Materials are often the single largest contributor to a product’s environmental footprint. Choosing wisely can unlock significant sustainability gains. But with thousands of material options available, the selection process must be both comprehensive and systematic.
The Approach
The second method focuses on a structured, data-driven way to select materials based on key functional and sustainability criteria. The process involves:
- Creating a material database with relevant properties.
- Defining design constraints, such as required strength, temperature resistance, and chemical durability.
- Filtering out non-compliant materials.
- Ranking remaining candidates by sustainability and cost metrics.
- Analyzing top options to determine trade-offs and performance.
Application to the Bracket Example
Let’s return to the bracket example. The bracket’s primary function is to withstand bending forces. It also needs durability against water and acids, temperature resistance, and compatibility with forging or injection molding.
By plotting all available materials on a performance map such as CO₂ emissions versus cost per unit of stiffness, thousands of options are visualized. Filtering begins: weak materials are eliminated, then those that can’t handle the temperature or are incompatible with selected processes.
Ultimately, two promising alternatives emerge: a low-alloy steel and a recycled PET plastic. Both exhibit significantly reduced emissions compared to aluminium. Yet, neither is a perfect plug-in replacement. The plastic might require additional thickness, and the steel might allow for material reduction due to greater strength.
This is where the next strategy comes into play…..
Strategy 3: Design Exploration and Optimization
Taking Geometry Into Account
So far, we’ve swapped materials using the same geometry. But what if we go further and redesign the geometry to take advantage of different material properties? This is where we apply the Design Exploration process.
This approach leverages advanced simulation tools such as Ansys Discovery that allow designers to experiment with geometry, materials, and loads in real time. These tools combine simulation with rapid iteration, providing nearly instant feedback on both performance (e.g., displacement, thermal response) and environmental impact.
Example in Action
Suppose we modify a protrusion on the bracket. Within seconds, we can assess how the change affects not just mechanical strength but also CO₂ emissions. If the protrusion increases emissions without significantly improving performance, it’s a poor trade-off.
Design exploration allows us to make informed, balanced decisions, optimizing for sustainability without compromising structural integrity.
Notably, Ansys Discovery’s GPU-powered simulations provide fast insights, even for multi-physics problems. Designers no longer need to wait hours for results or rely on specialized simulation teams. This democratizes access to sustainability analysis and embeds it into everyday design workflows.
Bringing It All Together: An Integrated Workflow
Each of the three methods above, Streamlined LCA, Systematic Material Selection, and Design Exploration can stand alone. But their true power lies in integration.
Here’s how they can be combined into a cohesive workflow:
- Start with Material Selection: use constraints and objectives to identify a shortlist of sustainable materials.
- Run Streamlined LCAs: evaluate the carbon footprint and energy use of each material across the product lifecycle.
- Perform Design Exploration: modify geometry, simulate performance, and optimize design based on emissions and functionality.
- Finalize With Detailed LCA: once a final design is selected, conduct a full LCA for compliance and reporting.
This iterative loop enables teams to find optimal designs that balance cost, performance, and sustainability.
Addressing Real-World Questions
- Can these tools handle complex assemblies?
Yes. While the demo focused on a single component, larger tools and workflows can assess hundreds of parts and identify emission hotspots. - What about other environmental harms, like toxicity?
Tools like Granta also track water usage, restricted substances, and toxicity indicators, enabling a more holistic approach. - Can I use supplier-specific data?
Absolutely. Granta’s database supports custom entries, allowing organizations to override default values with their own supplier emissions data. - How often is the data updated?
The Material Universe database is updated with every major Ansys release, typically twice per year, ensuring relevance and accuracy. - Can we integrate with FEA and optimization tools?
Yes. Tools like OptiSLang allow for seamless coupling between material selection, simulation, and optimization which can enable advanced insights.
Conclusion: Rethinking Product Design for a Sustainable Future
Sustainability shouldn’t be a burden. With the right tools and mindset it’s an opportunity for engineers and designers to innovate better, smarter, and greener products. The key is to bring sustainability assessments into the earliest stages of product design.
By using streamlined LCAs to estimate impacts early, systematically selecting materials that balance strength and emissions, and exploring design alternatives through simulation, we can build a future where performance, profit, and planet are no longer at odds.
This new way of working empowers cross-functional teams to make smarter decisions without waiting until it’s too late to change course.
So, whether you’re designing brackets or building the next generation of high-performance systems, sustainability begins upfront.
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