Sustainable design tools
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Use these tools to help identify and reduce your current and future environmental impact. Answer questions like…
How are we contributing to the climate crisis what can we do about it?
Can we make environmental sustainability part of BAU?
In change there are opportunities - what are ours?
Collaborate with a diverse group of people from across your organisation to help find the opportunities.
1/ Bring sustainability into the brief
Most organisations have made public commitments to reduce their environmental impact, but these commitments are usually absent from the brief or your project plan - and from the mindset of stakeholders. This tool will help you address the gap.
2/ Environmental cost canvas
It’s hard to come up with ideas to reduce your environmental impact if you don’t know what it is. This tool is to help you assess where a product, service or organisation is having an impact. You’ll soon be able to spot opportunities for change within your sphere of influence.
3/ LIFECYCLE IMPACT ASSESSMENT
A customer centred, holistic view that looks at every stage from creation to end of life, including habits and behaviours. We need to ensure that while solving one problem we are not creating another. You can use this for brand new products and services or existing ones. The data you’ve gathered on canvas 2 will be useful here.
4/ green 3x2: how might we…
An ideation tool for use when you have begun to understand the impacts by using previous canvases. You may want to use this to fill in the ‘Opportunities’ row on canvas 3. You’re looking for quick wins in the short term as well as more strategic, longer term change. Bring these things together and you’ll have a plan to reduce your impact that can start today, but doesn’t stop tomorrow.
5/ LEAN GREEN CANVAS
Think how many new businesses the Lean Canvas may have birthed. And then think how many may not have considered the environmental impact because it wasn’t on the canvas. This is simply a Lean Canvas with environmental impact given equal prominence. This canvas also includes social impact for a broader definition of sustainability, but you can stick to environmental factors if you need a narrower focus.
6/ minimise data transfer
Digital products and services require data transfer to operate. But how much? And is it all necessary? Data transfer uses energy in server farms, requires infrastructure capacity, and uses energy on-device. Audio and video streaming, text and images are all data.
7/ Prioritise opportunities
Hopefully by now you have lots of ideas, but what do you start with? Let’s find out. Like all these tools feel free to amend them to suit your needs, or use them as a structure for a whiteboard or post it exercise.
8/ three green horizons
Like canvas 4, this takes a longer term view and is for teams to look at the immediate future but also at longer term macro trends and strategise accordingly. This tool will assist a more expansive discussion and help formulate a plan for change. It combines internal and external sustainability challenges and offers space for sustainability initiatives and vision.