Design for Durability

Planned Obsolescence—The Downfall of Durability 282 How to Design Products for sustainability 289

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nything that developers can do to ex­tend the life of a product or service reduces its resource and environmen­tal impact simply because it doesn’t require a replacement as soon. Quality is one way to accomplish this. (However, this can be prob­lematic for products that respond mostly to short-term trends or where customers are un­convinced that the extra expense is worth the higher price). Another approach is to make the product easily repairable so that most of the parts (and those with the highest impact) can continue to be used. This is difficult for prod­ucts whose technology is evolving rapidly, but often even these products can be designed with modular assembles that allow some parts to be upgraded while others (such as cases) continue to be used.

Anything that developers can do to extend the life of a product or service reduces its resource and environmen­tal impact simply because it doesn’t require a replacement as soon.

Updated: October 2, 2015 — 12:57 pm