#012 Season 2: Robert Irwin - Senior Industrial Designer, Founder of LearnIndustrialDesign.com, Principal Sustainability Consultant at irwindesigned

Senior Industrial Designer Rob Irwin charts two decades of sustainable practice, from biomimetic lawn-dart redesigns to net-zero houses with $12 power bills. Along the way he demystifies lifecycle thinking: extraction, processing, manufacturing, distribution, use, upgrades, end-of-life, and transport. Rob critiques the limits of current LCA tools—“CO₂ is not the whole story”—and spotlights hidden health impacts like polyester microfibers. He closes with a challenge to designers: treat environmental criteria as a primary design requirement, right alongside cost, form, and function.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

In practice, industrial designers have a limited option when creating a greener product. I mean, our inputs in the design process are typically gated to selecting materials, finishes, and crafting forms. It can be a significant challenge to specify suppliers based on geographic location, to minimize transportation emissions, or to alter manufacturing processes already entrenched in the supply chain. I mean, these decisions are often compartmentalized within established longstanding relationships within the organizations. So how can designers create greener products for a more connected human planet experience? Well, well, well, good morning, afternoon, or evening from wherever you're at. Welcome to another episode of Designing in the Wild, I'm your host, Rob Irwin, and today we're discussing the wonderfully complex topic of lifecycle thinking. But before we dive in, I want to tell you a little bit about a project I've been working on behind the scenes, creatively named Learn Industrial Design. Learn Industrial Design is an online, on-demand industrial design course hub. Like today's Lifecycle Thinking topic, LIDD focuses on teaching professionals and students systems-level thinking, connecting seemingly disparate insights for more equitable, regenerative products, services, and environments. Whether you want to brush up on your research knowledge, understand how to navigate ambiguity, or deep dive into what it means to design for sustainability, We offer you the inside scoop directly from professional industrial designers working around the globe. So check it out and get signed up for 50% off your first course at LearnIndustrialDesign.com. That's LearnIndustrialDesign.com. Now, without further ado, let's get into it. Okay, so throughout my career as an industrial designer, I've had the opportunity to design using sustainable methodologies across several categories. I've used biomimicry back in 2005 when I designed that biomimetic horizontal axis wind turbines. I also redesigned the jarts back in the 70s and 80s. I think some of you might remember them. They were these giant oversized darts lawn darts really and you would toss them really high up in the air and they probably weighed like i don't know a pound and a half uh and they would just come hurling down at the earth and the goal was to kind of get it to land into the ground inside of a little hoop but as you would imagine a lot of kids getting a hold of these things didn't turn out well for some of them, unfortunately. So anyway, I decided to use biomimicry to redesign that toy. And one of my inspirations was the samara seed, which are those little helicopter seeds that elm trees have and a couple of others. Another experience I've had with sustainability is working at Rocky Mountain Institute. I helped with new construction LEED submittal certifications. And LEED, if you don't know, is Leadership for Energy and Environmental Design. It's kind of a cornerstone in sustainable building certifications out there right now. And then in 2006, I started a company called Rethought with a business partner where we decided to design our own LCA from scratch. It's a lifecycle analysis tool. We'll talk a lot about this in the episode a little bit later, but basically we designed a LCA tool from scratch. And we used the NREL's material flow analysis data sheets to understand the inputs and outputs of materials. And basically what that allowed us to do was to dismantle a product, weigh each constituent part, tag it with a material type, and then use our eco indicators or greenhouse gases from inputs and outputs from materials that we were measuring to understand how much of an environmental impact that product was or had on the environment and then what we would do is redesign the product uh with obviously different forms different design uh constituents and attributes maybe speccing different materials uh and then throw that back into the equal into the lca eco analyzer and we would get you know a reduction in energy or material use or greenhouse gases or CO2. And then we could use that, multiply that by the number of units they were producing in a year, and then actually quantify reduction in footprints we were able to generate by redesigning that product. After that, somewhere around 2008, I got into working with a few architects and designed a i would call it a net zero home we used structurally insulated panels or sips and we did some energy modeling on that and through the knowledge that i gained working at rocky mountain institute we implemented a number of strategies like building orientation building materials thicknesses of walls solar shading and a number of other things, like trom walls, which are really cool features in homes that kind of absorb the sun's heat throughout the day and then re-radiate it into the home at night. And what that really amounted to was a house that had a$12 annual utility bill. So after that, I got really big into tiny homes, and this was somewhere around 2010. I started designing my own tiny home, exploring kind of off-grid techniques and how that might look in a design of a tiny home. I designed the custom flatbed trailer for it, went and picked that up in Utah, drove it back, and started building this thing. But funny enough, HGTV at the time was looking for people who were building tiny homes, and long story short, they ended up They ended up filming me for one of the episodes on Tiny House Big Living. The house had a butterfly roof to capture rain, a solar PV unit on the top for all the low voltage lighting inside. I had a little aquaponics set up over the kitchen window and even a chicken coop on the front tongue of the trailer where you could just reach out and grab some fresh eggs in the morning and cook them up. So I've kind of bounced around quite a bit with uh you know sustainable practices and methodologies and i thought i'd get into a little bit of it today given it's you know it's been a hot topic for a while but having been in the kind of sustainability sphere and being an industrial designer for two decades now uh you know it's a it's a deep passion of mine and i really wanted to kind of take a moment to talk through uh you know some of my perspectives and some of the things that are happening right now that you know, have pros, have cons, and maybe talk about how we might get into even making things better. And so, you know, I guess it all starts with the product and the associations of the user with that product. And, you know, we often orient our thoughts, behaviors, and belief systems through the ownership and use of objects in our lives. This relationship with our stuff makes the job and responsibility of an industrial designer, to me, so much more important than specifying an A1 surface finish or a detailed color like RAL 2010 orange. So, you know, much of this is rooted in the association of social status, as culture and commerce have kind of created a hierarchy of product accessibility, including material and manufacturing qualities. Some objects are made to be used once, then tossed in a landfill. Others made to last a decade or more. The end-of-life disposal of an object imposes an out-of-sight, kind of out-of-mind mentality. And the average user doesn't think about it because we've built a system that doesn't require the user to think about where it's off to when the product is no longer needed or stops working. And this connection or lack of connection is, by design, the narrative. What I'm getting at is a single-serve utensil carries little weight or purpose in our life. other than for its very temporary moment to move food into one's mouth and be discarded 15 minutes later, there is zero connection to one time-use tools, and therefore the user has zero personal association with it. It's the association gap, really. It's when we as designers design in that personal association to a product's lifecycle will the environmental impacts begin to be acknowledged. Suppose for a minute that the overarching goal is to create a better, more connected society that elevates the human experience, increases health and happiness, all without hidden environmental costs. Well, as an industrial designer, we can change how users create stories of themselves with the stuff in their lives. And that's by embedding design choices through the lens of lifecycle thinking. When it comes to the object we design and create, How the user associates themselves into the storyline is our currency. But what are we telling our users when the object was made to ultimately be thrown into a landfill or instantly upgraded when it stops working? And how does that bleed into the workings and beliefs of systems of a society? In practice, industrial designers have a limited option when creating a greener product. I mean, our inputs in the design process are typically gated to selecting materials, finishes, and crafting forms. It can be a significant challenge to specify suppliers based on geographic location, to minimize transportation emissions, or to alter manufacturing processes already entrenched in the supply chain. I mean, these decisions are often compartmentalized within established, long-standing relationships within the organizations. So how can designers create greener products for a more connected human planet experience? Well, in a world where the predominant manufacturing methods involve heating, beading, and treating substances to transform raw materials, there will always be misalignments with the Earth's natural cycles. Concentrated minerals and crystals can be found naturally. Still, nothing compares to the energy-intensive processes of smelting down rock rich in hematite and magnetite to make iron ore ingots or refining crude oil to make countless polymer strains of plastics. Nonetheless, we must refine these raw materials to achieve the consistent properties required for the diverse materials available to us as designers and engineers. I mean, it is crucial to recognize, though, that nearly 80% of all products' environmental impact is determined before the design documentation phase. As an industrial designer involved in new product development, knowing this makes me think twice about the design decisions I make. We need to start seeing products as we do cars on the road, for instance, as the toxic, polluting, difficult-to-recycle heaps of material they are. I mean, when we're honest about this, only then we can begin to solve its challenges, right? Lifecycle thinking is a design mindset that takes into account not only the user's pain points, but also analyzes a product's life within the context of the environment, human health, energy, water, transportation, etc., This includes things like material extraction, material processing, product manufacturing, distribution, sales, the use of the product, consumables, energy, water, upgrading the product possibly. It can include the end of life disposition and also transportation. It's a big lift, but I know some of you right now are thinking maybe you've never considered distribution or sales when you're designing. Maybe the client isn't asking for it or it's baked into the culture or design process of the agency you work for. But the fact of the matter is your decisions influence the product's life cycle. And thinking through these areas is a great first step in creating greener products. Many designs don't require these tools to be hired. The irony is that many companies want to make greener products, but may not understand that the decisions of an industrial designer is at the root of creating green products and product lines. So let's take a deeper look into the facets of a product's life cycle. I mentioned extraction from nature. So unless a material is synthesized in a lab using non-toxic inputs, very little water, green energy to power the lab, filters the downstream water outputs, and has a closed loop cycle on the secondary output chemicals, every raw material comes at a cost to our planet. We can start our design on the right foot by selecting renewables or less environmentally intensive resources. After that, you know, we've got to process those raw materials. And simplifying materials processing can reduce emissions and energy use. Techniques that minimize chemical use or waste production, as I mentioned above, are key. Then there's product manufacturing. I mean, efficient manufacturing processes cut costs and environmental impacts. Lean manufacturing is a great example, but there are many others. Techniques gleaned from nature using biomimicry are even more sustainable. Of course, most of nature's materials are synthesized at room temperature, are self-assembling, and generate zero waste. Or if there is a waste product, it's usually taken up by the next creature as a food input in the balance of that ecosystem. Then there's distribution and sales. Minimizing packaging and optimizing logistics can significantly lower the carbon footprint during these stages. There are better ways of shipping products than boxes within boxes, within plastic bags, within styrofoam, of course. So, you know, after the distribution and sales, of course, we have the use and possible upgrading of the products. And designing for durability and easy maintenance ensures longer product lifespans and lesser environmental impacts over time. As designers, we need to work with engineers to understand where limitations exist. push the boundaries alongside them to spec longer-lasting electromechanical sub-assemblies, and design for upgradeability through exchange programs, for instance. Another way is to identify product roadmaps and design for the future vector of product category. Then we can implement strategies with PCBs and casework to allow for future exchanges and upgrades without an entire product needing to be replaced or thrown away, for that matter. Speaking of thrown away, the end-of-life disposition is another big category. in lifecycle thinking. Designing for disassembly and recyclability ensures materials can be reclaimed and reused, reducing the need for raw extraction and processing. This is a tough one because we don't hold companies liable for their products at the end of life. Because of this, there is no back-end liability, so there's very little infrastructure that has been built up to recoup those rare earth metals and parts for new products. Also, due to the readily available new models on the shelf, the most frictionless path is throwing the product out and buying a new one. We need more solutions around the reclaiming of products, resources, and optimizing for materials, recyclability, disassembly, and user communication on how to participate is key. Last but not least in this chain of events is transportation. Transportation happens at instances all along the product development phase, of course, but choosing efficient transportation modes and optimizing routes reduce emissions associated with moving goods between stages. Of course, many supply chains are on the other side of the world, shipped in trucks with no catalytic converters, then put on massive shipping containers with 1.5 to 2 million gallons of diesel burning 2,600 gallons per mile at 25 miles an hour. So choosing materials and supply chains closer to the customer is a huge step in mitigating environmental damage. This, in a nutshell, is lifecycle thinking. One of the tools I use to help me consolidate and measure the earlier subject areas is an LCA tool. These lifecycle analysis tools help a designer walk through the product creation phases step by step. Most LCAs are very materials focused. As you can imagine, One material is more polluting than another, and this information is derived from the inputs required to make a kilogram of material, as well as the outputs generated when it's made. For instance, the off-gassing of materials during production. One thing to note here is that LCAs try to normalize the inputs and outputs using weighted metrics in order to come to a single factor conclusion, such as overall CO2 produced or saved. My problem with this is that Things like eutrophication is an entirely different issue than CO2 in the air or endocrine disrupting molecules. And by weighting all these other metrics and funneling them into one output indicator, i.e. carbon dioxide, we redirect everyone's attention away from the issues that still are happening that are equally, if not more negatively, impact to the balance of sensitive ecologies. It's not uncommon for a material to have hundreds of inputs and hundreds of outputs that are generated in order to produce one material. This is one funnel of how LCAs work. And the reason this is done is because humans have put such a huge level of importance on CO2 as a driving metric for a sustainable future. And the fact of the matter is that these chemicals have far-reaching effects on the environment and climate beyond CO2. Biodiversity, for one, is a huge factor, and one chemical could upset the balance forever somewhere. But with many of the LCA methodologies, by normalizing constituents to CO2 equivalents, a chemical might only amount to a 0.7% increase in CO2 per unit, for instance. However, not actually addressing the larger issue that this particular chemical could decimate an entire population of creatures low on the food chain, which then starts a ripple effect all the way up to the apex predator. LCAs are good at measuring things like CO2 outputs or energy use, transportation, but it's not just the environment here that's important. Human health is a large part of that life cycle thinking. The materials we choose for products play a huge part. Take, for instance, polyester. The majority of materials used in soft goods industry like clothing, backpacks, and shoes all use an overwhelming amount of polyesters. Polyesters, among others, start with a petroleum-based substance, refined oil. Many of these polyesters and the coatings we put on them end up abrading onto and into our bodies. It's happening when our packs are bouncing around on our backs as we hike that beautiful mountain, or when we're squirming around in our office chairs with five minutes to five left on the work clock. There's a reason why indoor air quality in buildings is a metric tracked in the LEED certification process. Every single material from the carpet to the chairs to paper and furniture are all abrading and off-gassing into the air every day, all the time. It's happening with every swoosh of the pants jogging our favorite scenic route through the woods and with every deformation of your sock when you take a step. Polyester is a type of plastic, therefore its microfibers are microplastics. A recent study out of Hong Kong revealed that the major microfiber plastics in the air were from dryer vents venting all the broken microscopic fibers from polyester clothing as people dried their clothes. The same was found for our waterways, traced back to washing clothes. Sorry to be the bearer of unfortunate truths, but the cozy, soft polyester throw you just put away for the summer is breaking off microscopic pieces of plastic fibers and injecting them into the air you breathe every time you snuggle with it. You can't really talk about polyester without getting into the business case for why it's so pervasive, though. Polyester is one of the cheapest materials to procure compared to nearly every other natural fiber out there. It's just a microscopic, tiny polyester fiber strand woven together in various ways to make patterned fabric, and it's all derived from oil. This is a difficult fact of some materials. On one hand, they're very profitable, and on the other, they can be very environmentally damaging. So what's the point of a designer choosing a different, possibly more expensive material if the business case is more interested in quarterly earnings and not as much on environmental degradation? Beholding the shareholders, that comes with expectation of growth. So one approach to this is to point to consumer sentiment for purchase intent. If there is data that shows that they want more sustainable products, that's one way. On the flip side, if you can show a negative customer sentiment and reduced purchase intent for those companies who don't start making changes, this can sway the decision-making just as effectively. A long-term strategy is to do a material cost trends analysis. If there are dwindling supplies over the next five or ten years, or the inflection point in raw material prices versus recycled or alternative materials are lower, then that could be another thread you could pull on. Lifestyle thinking is a concept that pushes us to consider every phase of a product's life cycle, from extraction of raw materials, how it's used, and eventually end-of-life disposal. By understanding the environmental and human impacts at each step, We as designers can make informed choices that significantly reduce footprints while achieving healthy, high-performance products. Imagine the ripple effect of choosing aluminum over plastic, not just based on cost or durability, but for its recyclability and lower lifetime environmental impact. The downside is that aluminum is environmentally costly from the mountaintop clearing that happens and its energy-intensive components. to refine, so ensure the rest of the design and engineering is robust enough to justify the product's expected lifespan and is longer than its counterpart plastic permutation. I recently read somewhere that somewhere in the neighborhood of 75% of the aluminum in products produced today is still in circulation from the original extraction from raw materials from the mountaintops a long time ago, so that's kind of good. It's pivotal to consider a product's lifecycle and material early in the design phase. By integrating eco-friendly materials and processes from the start, designers can dramatically reduce adverse downstream effects. Opting for materials with lower embodied energy, redesigning products to use fewer resources, reducing material thicknesses, or using components that consume less power can substantially improve the product and its environmental footprint. The environment, to me, is just as critical as the design requirement. As crucial as functionality, aesthetics, and cost, environmental attributes must be considered primary objectives. This integrated approach allows businesses to align environmental goals with economic benefits. For certain, companies will be looking more and more to their design teams for products that look good and work well and those that forge a path towards sustainable and profitable futures. Lifecycle thinking is not just about compliance. It's about innovation, leading to functional, beautiful, and sustainable products. Thinking about a product's lifecycle isn't the same as designing a green product. What isn't measured can't be understood, and it's really great that many designers, engineers, and companies are starting to measure these things. Targeting areas in the existing procurement chain where we can reduce our footprint on the environment is great. But that really only treats the symptoms and not the cause. In order to create a truly balanced synergistic existence of humans with the earth, it will require an entire planet focused on developing and deploying regenerative production processes, including invisible frictionless loops from the user to material, water, transportation, and energy. So as we wrap up today's discussion, remember that LCAs aren't perfect. You know, the power of LCAs isn't just the analysis. It's in the action that it inspires. Each choice made in the design process can contribute to a more sustainable, prosperous future. So let's design for today and for tomorrow, shaping a world where industrial design and environmental stewardship go hand in hand. Well, that's it for our show today, folks. Thanks so much for tuning in. I know it was a lot. There's a lot more we could dig into later, and we certainly will. If you have any ideas for the show or want to share how you're applying lifecycle thinking strategies or seeking green product design consultation, you can reach out directly at me and to me at designinginthewildatgmail.com. You can also peruse my past work at erwindesigned.com. That's erwindesigned.com. Also, be sure to check out LearnIndustrialDesign.com and get signed up for that 50% off for your first course. That's LearnIndustrialDesign.com. Once again, thanks so much for tuning in.