acrobat JSPD 8 - The Centre for Sustainable Design

After finishing his studies in Electrical
Engineering at the Delft University of
Technology (DUT), Han Brezet received
his PhD in Environment Sociology at
the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Since 1992, after a career in cleaner
production consultancy, he holds the
chair on eco-design at the sub-faculty
of Industrial Design Engineering at
the DUT. In his present position, he is
leader of the Design for Sustainability
Programme of his Faculty and is
research director of Kathalys, the
Joint Centre for Sustainable Product
Innovation of TNO Industry and
DUT established in 1998.
Professor Han Brezet
JANUARY 1999 · THE JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE PRODUCT DESIGN
INTERVIEW
Director, Section of Environmental Product
Development, Faculty of Industrial Design
Engineering, Delft University of Technology,
the Netherlands
Martin Chartern
Coordinator, The Centre for Sustainable Design, UK
What do you think are the
key challenges of sustainable
development for product
and service development?
One of the key areas that is
often not discussed is the
environmental impact of emerging
service industries eg. information
and communication
technologies (ICT). Often it is
believed that services are environmentally
beneficial. There are
a small number of people deliberately
designing eco-efficient
services, however, the majority
of the service industry pay virtually
no attention to eco aspects,
such as infrastructure and
products used to operate these
services. Integrating eco-design
thinking into the service design
of emerging service industries is
essential.
Another key issue is how government’s
should develop national
product-orientated environment
policies. So far this is limited and
there is generally still a focus on
production aspects – learning
from the Dutch-thinking on
Product Oriented-Environmental
Management Systems (POEMS)
approach could contribute to the
debate. So governments should
support different research
projects in this area. One
example is, a very successful
eco-design project in the
Netherlands, which included
over 600 companies, primarily
SMEs (see the following extract
from ‘The IC EcoDesign project:
results and lessons from a Dutch
initiative to implement ecodesign
in small and mediumsized
companies’ by Carolien G
van Hemel, JSPD2, July 1997). But
since the project was completed
in 1998, there has been no
proactive government policy
to maintain the focus of these
SMEs on POEMS. Also, more
specific government attention
is needed for improving the
energy-efficiency of products
in line with the requirements
of climate change agreements.
It is essential to organise young
students and entrepreneurs to
enable them to increase the
chances of developing better and
more environmentally sustainable
businesses. History has
shown that, with the exception
of what is emerging in Japanese
industries at the moment, that
the old-style dinosaur businesses
are not capable moving into eco-
(re)design, or particularly into
eco-innovation. So how can
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