With increasing pressure on the world’s resources – through a complex bundle of sustainability issues such as climate change, material scarcity, toxic pollution, population growth, and increased consumption - the need for new thinking and creative approaches is clearer than ever. Chris Sherwin, Head of Sustainability at design and innovation company Seymourpowell, explains

1. Sustainability:
Your next big innovation opportunity?

2. With increasing pressure on the world’s
resources – through a complex bundle of
sustainability issues such as climate change,
material scarcity, toxic pollution, population
growth, and increased consumption -
the need for new thinking and creative
approaches is clearer than ever.
CHRIS SHERWIN
Head of Sustainability at Seymourpowell
The good news is that businesses and brands are waking up to sustainability risks and
opportunities, and increasingly starting to lead. Whereas such ‘sustainable business’
used to be driven by legal compliance, reducing risks, managing reputation or at best,
cost reductions; sustainable business is now about innovation, entrepreneurship, growth
and opportunity. And whereas companies previously used their quality or supply chain
managers, legal, communications or PR departments, now they turn to their innovators.
Why ‘design’ for sustainability 1. Sustainability in existing product and pack design
In the past, innovation and design has been part of the problem In work with clients we regularly have to manage and balance
– generating more ‘stuff’ to fuel ‘use-and-chuck’ lifestyles. complex factors as part of a brief. That can be cost, aesthetics,
But today, innovators and designers are increasingly part new technology, manufacturability, and now add to that
of the solution. They see that far from constraining design, sustainability issues. Long-term sustainability targets to reduce
sustainability offers a fantastic new set of creative levers – carbon emissions and material use mean we literally have to
allowing us to think up entirely new ways of going about our add sustainability improvements to everything we design going
lives, doing business, and of producing and consuming. forward.
But how do you successfully innovate in this way ensuring you Luckily this can make for better products or packaging design.
win from sustainability? We think it will increasingly be about Our Vaseline packaging redesign for Unilever delivered better
great design. We lay out below three ways Seymourpowell is functionality to consumers, clearer brand alignment across the
going about sustainable innovation, plus explain what you can range, plus a 3% material reduction and a move to a mono-
get from doing so: material - saving carbon emissions, waste, costs and making it
Confidential. © Seymour Powell Limited, 2012. All rights reserved.

3. easier to recycle. These kinds of good design interventions, if
implemented across a whole EU ‘circular’ economy could save
an estimated $630bn in material costs by 2025, according to
the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
2. Build sustainability through brands It falls to this generation of
“Sustainability builds brands” is what companies’ feedback as
the main business benefit. BT famously calculated that 25% of
creative thinkers, innovators and
customers purchasing drivers – plus the resultant brand value designers to imagine a future
- were linked to its sustainability performance. It shows brands
care, positioning them as modern, human, and in touch. This world that we’d all like to live in...
gives brands a higher purpose, which customers often relate to
emotionally.
Brands can help sustainability too, with their ability to normalise and Sustainability (LOHAS) segment in the US is estimated to
new technology and behaviour. They can make sustainability feature over 40 million consumers. In Western Europe it makes
ideas aspirational and meaningful, creating social movements. up 15-25% of various countries population. Business spend
The M&S and Oxfam ‘Shwopping’ partnership to promote on sustainable product development is growing at almost 20%
clothes recycling has saved an incredible 10 million garments annually while growth in clean and green technology investment
from landfill since 2008. Coke recently launched ‘Ekocycle’, its is reported at 5% in a recessionary 2011.
sub-brand to promote recycling and increased take-up among
Successful AND sustainable
young people. Put simply, brands can make new sustainable
Need any more convincing? Sustainability makes money AND
stuff cool, and the sustainability movement desperately needs
sense. Yet it does take a mindset change and different set of
a sprinkling of ‘brand stardust’ to move beyond doom-mongery
skills to spot and act on this – and that’s about innovation and
and finger-wagging.
design. And even if the design community is not yet where
3. New and breakthrough innovation through sustainability sustainability leadership currently resides, it’s where it needs
Toyota’s pioneering Prius hybrid recently became the third to be. It’s my own view that sustainability presents some of the
best selling car in the world. Drink’s brand Innocent smoothies biggest opportunities for innovation and great design the 21st
has captured 75% UK market share with a proposition based century has to offer.
around health and sustainability. The Dyson air blade, the low- It falls to this generation of creative thinkers, innovators and
impact alternative to paper towel drying reported sales up 70% designers to imagine a future world that we’d all like to live in –
in its second year. There is strong evidence of the opportunities and then build it to last. Sustainability features what I believe are
that completely new-to-the-world sustainable products and
services present and this is one of the richest areas for
innovators and designers.
Sales of ethical products in the UK have continued to grow
at 8% over the past two years, even during the recession, To find out more please contact
and stand at a whopping £45bn. The Lifestyles Of Health Tim Duncan - tim.duncan@seymourpowell.com
Confidential. © Seymour Powell Limited, 2012. All rights reserved.