Sustainable Products And Packaging
Product and Packaging Stewardship and EcoDesign
The Sustainable Products and Packaging Program aims to reduce the environmental impacts of products and packaging through ecodesign, development of tools, educational curricula, research, consulting and training activities. Sustainable products and packaging addresses environmental issues from design to production to end of life stages.
This Program is currently developing two key life cycle management tools; ‘Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool (PIQET) ©’ and ‘Rapid Assessment Tool (RAT) ©’. PIQET© is an independent scientifically based decision support tool (prototype) for packaging which evaluates environmental impacts of packagingsystems throughout the life cycle. On the other hand, RAT© will assist product designers, engineers and manufacturers to incorporate environmental issues during the product development process. Both tools will be on-line web-based tools; PIQET© is expected to be launched in mid-2007 and RAT© mid-2008.
At a more strategic level, the Centre for Design's work on designing environmentally preferable products and packaging is moving beyond EcoDesign towards Sustainable Product Development. This reflects the need to address 'product systems' through greater attention to Product Stewardship and Producer Responsibility principles, and to take a more integrated and critical approach to sustainable production and consumption.
Longer-term strategies to reduce the environmental impacts of production and consumption systems are being developed through research on sustainable services. This includes business strategies aimed at integrating product manufacturing with support services that optimise product use.
The Centre for Design is also a founding partner in the Sustainable Packaging Alliance (SPA) which includes dedicated research on sustainable packaging systems and the development of tools for the packaging industry.
Our projects include:
Packaging Impact Quick Evaluation Tool - PIQET©
Rapid Assessment Tool - RAT©
BRBA (Buy Recycled Business Alliance) Website
National Eco-Design Curriculum Development
For more information about our Sustainable Products and Packaging Program, contact:
Dr Karli Verghese, Manager Sustainable Products and Packaging, ph +61 3 9925 2237, email Karli.Verghese@rmit.edu.au