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Eco-Design: The First Step Toward Sustainable Food Production

3 min read

When producing food, there are many factors that must be considered, and sustainability is becoming an increasingly important consideration. To make significant strides in reducing their environmental impact, food businesses are recognising the need to embed sustainability early in the development process, starting with product conception. This means integrating environmental considerations into both new and existing product development. Eco-design embodies this approach by incorporating sustainability principles from the outset, strategically minimising environmental impacts throughout a product’s lifecycle. At Sustained, we provide food businesses with the tools to seamlessly integrate and embed eco-design into their processes, transforming both new and existing product development (NPD/EPD).

Understanding Eco-Design

Eco-design involves considering environmental impacts at every stage of a product's lifecycle—from raw material extraction to manufacturing, distribution, use, and disposal. The goal is to minimise negative impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, resource depletion, and pollution while enhancing positive effects, such as recyclability and energy efficiency. This isn't just good for the planet—it makes business sense. Reducing waste, improving resource efficiency, and catering to the growing consumer demand for sustainable products all add up to a compelling economic case.

Why Start with Eco-Design?

For food and beverage businesses, the bulk of environmental impact comes from Scope 3 emissions—those originating in the extended supply chain. To make progress, you need to scrutinise what goes into your products: the raw materials, their origins, and who supplies them.

Integrating environmental considerations from the get-go allows you to make decisions that drastically cut your overall impact. That's the power of eco-design—building sustainability into your products from the ground up. This proactive approach delivers multiple payoffs:

  • Reducing Costs: Efficient resource use and waste reduction lead to cost savings.
  • Enhancing Brand Value: Meeting consumer demand for sustainable products improves brand reputation.
  • Ensuring Compliance: Staying ahead of regulatory requirements avoids potential fines and disruptions.

Key Features of an Effective Eco-Design Solution

An effective eco-design solution for food manufacturers should include:

  1. Comprehensive Impact Assessment: Conduct life cycle assessments (LCAs) that evaluate environmental impacts from cradle to grave, ensuring you look beyond just the raw materials. It's about seeing the full picture.
  2. Real-Time Insights: Provide immediate feedback on the environmental impact of changes, allowing users to quickly see the effects of different materials, processes, and sourcing decisions. Speed of computation is essential for making timely and informed decisions.
  3. Scenario Analysis and Comparison: Enable modelling of different scenarios to simulate the environmental impact of various design choices and compare those side-by-side. 
  4. User-Friendly Interface: Ensure accessibility for non-experts to facilitate widespread adoption within an organisation. If it's not easy to use, it's not going to be used.
  5. Collaborative Tools: Facilitate teamwork with shared access to data and insights, breaking down silos and fostering collaboration across departments.
  6. Custom Data Management: Seamlessly integrate with existing data systems and incorporate primary and secondary data sources for more accurate modelling.
  7. Scalability: Support large-scale operations and handle extensive product portfolios. It should grow with you and adapt to future needs.
  8. Integration with Product Development Tools: Fit seamlessly into your current product development workflow. The goal is to avoid the inefficiencies and headaches of juggling multiple systems.

The Sustained Advantage in Eco-Design

At Sustained, we understand the unique challenges food manufacturers face in hitting sustainability targets. That’s why our eco-design platform isn’t just built to meet the challenge; it’s built to excel.

We provide comprehensive impact assessments, covering everything from cradle to grave, ensuring you see the big picture and beyond. With our real-time insights, you get immediate feedback on the environmental impacts of every tweak you make, allowing for fast, informed decisions.

Our platform also offers scenario analysis, enabling you to model and compare different design choices side-by-side, giving you a clear view of potential outcomes before they happen. The user-friendly interface is designed for experts and non-experts alike, ensuring widespread adoption across your organisation. Collaboration options break down silos, promoting teamwork with shared access to critical data and insights. And if you wish to keep things even simpler for your teams, our Sustained Integrate product will embed effortlessly into your existing product development tools. 

If scale is what you’re after, our APIs and bulk import capabilities ensure we can get all your products synchronised onto our system and our portfolio assessment tools will allow you to analyse the sustainability performance of your entire product range and simulate the impact of changes at a large scale. 

With scale comes regulatory compliance and our multi-methodological support ensures we can assist you across geographies and adapt to the various frameworks in place in the countries you work in. While our system currently supports the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) protocol frameworks, with the Sustained or Foundation Earth eco-labelling methodologies on top, we are built in a way where we can support any number of methodologies to support the needs of our customers.  

Real-World Applications: NPD and EPD

New Product Development (NPD)

In NPD, eco-design can be embedded from the initial concept phase. Our tool allows teams to model different scenarios and choose ingredients, materials and processes that minimise environmental impact. For instance, by assessing the environmental impact of various packaging options, companies can select the most sustainable choice from the outset.

Existing Product Development (EPD)

For existing products, our tool provides insights into current environmental impacts and identifies areas for improvement. Companies can compare different production processes, ingredient sources, or distribution methods to find the most sustainable alternatives. This continuous improvement process not only reduces the overall environmental footprint but also aligns with corporate sustainability goals and regulatory requirements.

Conclusion

Eco-design is a must-have strategy for food businesses aiming to reduce their environmental impact and keep up with growing sustainability demands. At Sustained, we’ve created an eco-design platform that’s comprehensive, user-friendly, and scalable. Plug our tool into your NPD and EPD processes, and you’re not just ensuring your products stay high quality and competitive; you’re making them environmentally sustainable too.