While doing some research for my latest article in Supply Chain Asia, I came across the aede project site of the Center for Sustainable Design.

The Asia Eco-Design Electronics (AEDE) project supports electronics companies in Asia that are required to meet increasingly stringent legal and customer requirements related to environmental and social issues from the EU, Japan and the US.

Stock full of research, what I really liked about this site is that it is a repository for those in the electronics industry looking to improve the sustainability of their products.  An issue I have spend a considerable amount of time speaking to friends Jon Li and David Williams of Asentio Design about (see my interview of Jon on sustainable design here).

Conversations that have lead me to believe that the educational capacity of this site is greatly needed:

Q&A with Jon:
1) When contacted by firms to design products, how often are you being asked to design products and packaging together?

Rarely since products we work on are consumer electronics and often passed on to marketing or some other department at end of development process. We are trying to push our clients to design a consistent and holistic experience and thus direct the packaging design… But still no buyers yet.

2) Are your clients asking you to research ways to reduce their environmental footprint via new eco-friendly materials, reducing packaging size/ bulk, other?

No, our clients have yet to date requested anything green. Any requests to reduce anything is driven by economics.

3) How concerned are firms with extending product lifecycles? Is the average product life increasing, staying the same, reducing?

Unfortunately, not concerned at all.. Especially in the mobile phone industry where the fierce competition and the consumer appetite has driven product lifecycles to 6 to 9 months. If you don’t have anything new, you’re history.

4) When developing new products, is there any interest/ pressure to use previous products as a base from which to develop products (i.e. reduce the need to re manufacture the entire product)

Again, unfortunately not in the consumer electronics industry that we’re in. Processing power and memory size increases so quickly that it’s difficult to reuse last year’s technology in new products. Of course there is a lot of reuse of technology as a company extends its offering across price points.

Which was elaborated on by David:

Development of products is a long time so often, components are bought in before the idea is hatched… basic components

tech roadmaps rather than design needs to get in the game early where companies source thier components for simple lifestyle products..there are much fewer players to co-ordinate

Further.

when a product is planned.. it has many parts, each of which will have its own roadmap..the company will buy or develop these parts ahead of time. To put that together requires lots of parts that we may not specify in detail. If we made memory chips – it would be a different story. We would be much closer to the production and raw materials. We can propose better physical materials, plastics, components… but ultimately our client will make the final choice of vendor

Only reinforcing the need for, and importance of, the aede project and its objectives.